A review of Booth Tarkington's The World Does Move (1929):
Smoothly written and closely observed, the second of Booth Tarkington's semi-autobiographical accounts, The World Does move gives weight and specificity to what otherwise seems a cliche.
The World Does Move concerns Tarkington's life from around 1900 (he characterizes the beginning only as the fin de siecle) to 1928, though he is at pains to make it known that the book is not a species of 'autobiographical writing--for this is not a personal memoir.' What he hopes to capture is the changes in the eras, from the fin de siecle to the 1920s. The book lacks the anger of some of his earlier works on the changes to the Midwest (and Indianapolis, which he christens here Midland) and is more ruminative.
At the beginning, he dwells on the way larger changes had even small effects--the replacing of gaslight with electric light, for example, ruining a common joke used in plays about people blowing themselves up with gas. He notes, too, the effect the switch of lighting had on actors--in the gaslight era, old actors could play young characters, and vice versa, because the light was so forgiving. No more in the time of electric lights. He discusses the changing geography of Indianapolis and the various effects of smoke and pollution on the city. He is not too worried about these changes in The World Does Move--and one might imagine because at this time in his life Tarkington was rather buffered from their worst effects.
He is less protected from changing fashions in art, and when he approaches them is more defensive--"In this new age of 'frankness in art' the old fashioned liberal discovered that he was now become a puzzle conservative protesting against what appeared to him a prevailing tainted ugliness, anything but frank." (207). He argues that the older generation of realists--in which he, of course, includes himself--did not ignore sex. int heir writing; it was always implicitly there, just not the focus--and then he turns the criticism around on the new generation: that 'sex' is just a euphemism for sensuality and sexuality and animalism and that the whole variety of human life has been reduced to this euphemism.
His hackles are raised by the "gay mockery" (214) critics used against the dramas and melodramas of the fin de siecle, bristled that everything except architecture had been 'invaded by sex' (220)--including science and philosophy, and harangued playwrights for only caring about shock--for building their dramas for the first night, only. SUch writers, he says, do not realize that they, too, are just part of the 'machine,' 'cycling round and round with it; they do not spin it.' (221).
He takes a veiled swipe at H. L. Mencken and his followers: 'Debunking': "On this altar, they said, everything old must be burned as incense; all believers in anything old were either fools or hypocrites and must be jeered to death. The new questioning, believing Science to be new, could therefore have faith in it--at least so long as it could be interpreted as maintaining the ancient theological theory of predestination now masquerading in the new phrase, 'mechanistic philosophy.' For, like the automobile and all the new machines men had invented for greater speed and for ease to labour, the fast-whirling universe itself must be, these new questioners argued, a machine." (236).
But, then, just before Tarkington proves himself an old fuddy-duddy, he introduces the general article, through the device of his neighbor, Judge Olds (surely a creation--and another reason Tarkington likely did not want this book labeled a memoir; 237). Judge is exercised not only by these same changes, but especially by the rise of the so-called New Woman--smoking, unchaperoned, short-haired, and frank. Tarkington--or rather, the narrator, who seems to be Tarkington--finds himself defending women, and, ultimately, all the changes.
Sure, there is a horrid fascination with sex stories--but this is just a craze, and soon the 'subject will takes its proper proportion.' (249). No, 'The ladies do not belong to us any more, and they don't all live for us and to "manage" us--not quite in the sense they used to. They've decided to live more for themselves." Yes, women spend a lot of money on their appearance, but in the eighteenth century it was men who preened--in wigs and jewelry and perfume.
This is convincing, and shows the narrator to be thoughtful--until he tries to win over the Judge by reading him a fantastic romance story about the end of Atlantis, in which it is proffered that men destroyed that fabled land rather than have women become dominant. I am not sure what to make of this--not the supposed moral of the story, but the presentation. Was this meant to be ironic, funny, satirical--of whom?
At any rate, the story does illustrate Tarkington's point--that the world moves, and it does not do so as a pendulum, but as an 'ascending spiral.' (280). Parts of the past are recycled, and new inventions made: each age its own fashions, and the narrator cannot begrudge the new generation its sense of its self, anymore than he should not have been moved by the delicious claim of the fin de siecle being the end of history. The older generation can objectively see some of what the newer has lost--the new, he could see, were no longer interested in refinement because refinement was a quality of leisure, and the world, moving faster, had little time for leisure (290)--but the new could build things the older generation could not even imagine.
His conclusion, therefore, is more subtle than the opening--or even the first three-quarters--would suggest. There is reason to be critical of the new age, for they too often forget the past altogether, but they also can create works and ideas previously unimaginable, if they attend the past, and the world can continue its upward spiral: "For every new age has at its disposal everything that was fine in all past ages, and its greatness depends upon how well it recognizes and preserves and brings to the aid of its own enlightenment whatever worthy and true things the dead have left on earth behind them' (294).
Smoothly written and closely observed, the second of Booth Tarkington's semi-autobiographical accounts, The World Does move gives weight and specificity to what otherwise seems a cliche.
The World Does Move concerns Tarkington's life from around 1900 (he characterizes the beginning only as the fin de siecle) to 1928, though he is at pains to make it known that the book is not a species of 'autobiographical writing--for this is not a personal memoir.' What he hopes to capture is the changes in the eras, from the fin de siecle to the 1920s. The book lacks the anger of some of his earlier works on the changes to the Midwest (and Indianapolis, which he christens here Midland) and is more ruminative.
At the beginning, he dwells on the way larger changes had even small effects--the replacing of gaslight with electric light, for example, ruining a common joke used in plays about people blowing themselves up with gas. He notes, too, the effect the switch of lighting had on actors--in the gaslight era, old actors could play young characters, and vice versa, because the light was so forgiving. No more in the time of electric lights. He discusses the changing geography of Indianapolis and the various effects of smoke and pollution on the city. He is not too worried about these changes in The World Does Move--and one might imagine because at this time in his life Tarkington was rather buffered from their worst effects.
He is less protected from changing fashions in art, and when he approaches them is more defensive--"In this new age of 'frankness in art' the old fashioned liberal discovered that he was now become a puzzle conservative protesting against what appeared to him a prevailing tainted ugliness, anything but frank." (207). He argues that the older generation of realists--in which he, of course, includes himself--did not ignore sex. int heir writing; it was always implicitly there, just not the focus--and then he turns the criticism around on the new generation: that 'sex' is just a euphemism for sensuality and sexuality and animalism and that the whole variety of human life has been reduced to this euphemism.
His hackles are raised by the "gay mockery" (214) critics used against the dramas and melodramas of the fin de siecle, bristled that everything except architecture had been 'invaded by sex' (220)--including science and philosophy, and harangued playwrights for only caring about shock--for building their dramas for the first night, only. SUch writers, he says, do not realize that they, too, are just part of the 'machine,' 'cycling round and round with it; they do not spin it.' (221).
He takes a veiled swipe at H. L. Mencken and his followers: 'Debunking': "On this altar, they said, everything old must be burned as incense; all believers in anything old were either fools or hypocrites and must be jeered to death. The new questioning, believing Science to be new, could therefore have faith in it--at least so long as it could be interpreted as maintaining the ancient theological theory of predestination now masquerading in the new phrase, 'mechanistic philosophy.' For, like the automobile and all the new machines men had invented for greater speed and for ease to labour, the fast-whirling universe itself must be, these new questioners argued, a machine." (236).
But, then, just before Tarkington proves himself an old fuddy-duddy, he introduces the general article, through the device of his neighbor, Judge Olds (surely a creation--and another reason Tarkington likely did not want this book labeled a memoir; 237). Judge is exercised not only by these same changes, but especially by the rise of the so-called New Woman--smoking, unchaperoned, short-haired, and frank. Tarkington--or rather, the narrator, who seems to be Tarkington--finds himself defending women, and, ultimately, all the changes.
Sure, there is a horrid fascination with sex stories--but this is just a craze, and soon the 'subject will takes its proper proportion.' (249). No, 'The ladies do not belong to us any more, and they don't all live for us and to "manage" us--not quite in the sense they used to. They've decided to live more for themselves." Yes, women spend a lot of money on their appearance, but in the eighteenth century it was men who preened--in wigs and jewelry and perfume.
This is convincing, and shows the narrator to be thoughtful--until he tries to win over the Judge by reading him a fantastic romance story about the end of Atlantis, in which it is proffered that men destroyed that fabled land rather than have women become dominant. I am not sure what to make of this--not the supposed moral of the story, but the presentation. Was this meant to be ironic, funny, satirical--of whom?
At any rate, the story does illustrate Tarkington's point--that the world moves, and it does not do so as a pendulum, but as an 'ascending spiral.' (280). Parts of the past are recycled, and new inventions made: each age its own fashions, and the narrator cannot begrudge the new generation its sense of its self, anymore than he should not have been moved by the delicious claim of the fin de siecle being the end of history. The older generation can objectively see some of what the newer has lost--the new, he could see, were no longer interested in refinement because refinement was a quality of leisure, and the world, moving faster, had little time for leisure (290)--but the new could build things the older generation could not even imagine.
His conclusion, therefore, is more subtle than the opening--or even the first three-quarters--would suggest. There is reason to be critical of the new age, for they too often forget the past altogether, but they also can create works and ideas previously unimaginable, if they attend the past, and the world can continue its upward spiral: "For every new age has at its disposal everything that was fine in all past ages, and its greatness depends upon how well it recognizes and preserves and brings to the aid of its own enlightenment whatever worthy and true things the dead have left on earth behind them' (294).
