THENEWYORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2019 69
In 1922, the writer Booth Tarkington appeared on the Times’ list of the twelve greatest American men.
THE CRITICS
BOOKS
THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA
The rise and fall of a literary reputation.BY ROBERT GOTTLIEB
A
trick question: Can you name the
only three writers who have won
the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice?
Faulkner, yes; Updike. And? Hats off
if you came up with Booth Tarkington.
And yet his two prize-winners—“The
Magnificent Ambersons” and “Alice
Adams,” just reissued in one volume by
the Library of America—are not even
the most commercially successful nov-
els of his extraordinarily successful ca-
reer. Nine of his books were ranked
among the top ten sellers of their year
(up there, pre-Stephen King, with Zane
Grey and Mary Roberts Rinehart), and
the outlandishly dissimilar “The Tur-
moil” and “Seventeen” were the No. 1
sellers in consecutive years. And thenthere’s “Penrod,” probably the most be-
loved boys’ book since Tom and Huck,
though I can’t recommend a stroll down
that particular memory lane.
There are thirty or so novels, count-
less short stories and serials, a string of
hit plays. And there were countless hon-
ors: Tarkington was not only commer-
cial but literary—not just the Pulitzers