Sunday, September 14, 2014

Author Suggestion


I would like to make this a regular feature..
If you have not read Booth Tarkington  you may enjoy trying. I especially loved his novel 'Seventeen' which satirizes first love in a teenagers life.
This is an excerpt from the Ambersons providing a look into the past.

 The Magnificent Ambersons
by Booth Tarkington

"Major Amberson had “made a fortune” in 1873, when
other people were losing fortunes, and the magnificence of the Ambersons began then. Magnificence, like the size of a fortune, is always comparative, as even Magnificent Lorenzo may now perceive, if he has happened to haunt New York in 1916; and the Ambersons were magnificent in their day and place. Their splendour lasted throughout all the years that saw their Midland town spread and darken into a city, but reached its topmost during the period when every prosperous family with children kept a Newfoundland dog.

In that town, in those days, all the women who wore silk or velvet knew all the other women who wore silk or velvet, and when there was a new purchase of sealskin, sick people were got to windows to see it go by. Trotters were out, in the winter afternoons, racing light sleighs on National Avenue and Tennessee Street; everybody recognized both the trotters and the drivers; and again knew them as well on summer evenings, when slim buggies whizzed by in renewals of the snow-time rivalry. For that matter, everybody knew everybody else’s family horse-and-carriage, could identify such a silhouette half a mile down the street, and thereby was sure who was going to market, or to a reception, or coming home from office or store to noon dinner or evening supper.

During the earlier years of this period, elegance of personal appearance was believed to rest more upon the texture of garments than upon their shaping. A silk dress needed no remodelling when it was a year or so old; it remained distinguished by merely remaining silk. Old men and governors wore broadcloth; “full dress” was broadcloth with “doeskin” trousers; and there were seen men of all ages to whom a hat meant only that rigid, tall silk thing known to impudence as a “stove-pipe.” In town and country these men would wear no other hat, and, without self-consciousness, they went rowing in such hats.

Shifting fashions of shape replaced aristocracy of texture: dressmakers, shoemakers, hatmakers, and tailors, increasing in cunning and in power, found means to make new clothes old. The long contagion of the “Derby” hat arrived: one season the crown of this hat would be a bucket; the next it would be a spoon. Every house still kept its bootjack, but high-topped boots gave way to shoes and “congress gaiters”; and these were played through fashions that shaped them now with toes like box-ends and now with toes like the prows of racing shells."
(excerpt provided for educational purposes only)

Let me know what you think please?

8 comments:

  1. I've not heard of this book or author. I love the way this author writes in such descriptive fashion. I'll have to check out my library and see if they have this book.

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  2. Hi Annie, I think they made this onto a movie and when I heard the title, it made me think of my mom. We watched a lot of movies. I inherited a lot of her books and my favorite is Gone With The Wind. This also made me think of my economics term paper. It was how the wars affected the fashion industry. That was so long ago. I might even still have that paper somewhere.
    Will you be doing the Chatter Homework page?

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  3. I love the title of this book and remember it from years ago. I am stuck in a mystery book rut right now but maybe it's time for a change.

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  4. I remember it well Annie. I had seen the movie years ago besides reading the book by Booth Tarkington. I think it would be a great feature. :)

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  5. Hi Annie! I'm really playing catchup today. I didn't realize it's been so long since I've blogged and visited friends. Shame on me! Thank you so much for doing the award, I enjoyed your answers very much and getting to know you better! The post dedicated to your father melted my heart. He sounds like he was such a wonderful person. Hope you're enjoying our fall weather. It's been quite amazing, hasn't it? I have never heard of this book but I'm going to add it to my list of reads! It sounds like it's right up my alley. Thank you! Hope you're having a blessed week!

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  6. Hi Annie. Sounds wonderful to me. I love novels from that time period so you know I'll be checking it out. Happy Wednesday!

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