National Avenue by Booth Tarkington (book recommendations website .txt) 📕
Description
National Avenue, originally titled The Midlander, is Booth Tarkington’s final entry in his Growth Trilogy. Like the previous entries in the series, National Avenue addresses the rapid industrialization of small-town America at the turn of the century, and the socioeconomic changes that such change brings with it.
Dan Oliphant and his brother Harlan are the children of a wealthy small-town businessman. Harlan is a traditional upper-class man—affecting an accent, dressing for dinner, and contemplating beauty and culture—while Dan is boisterous and lively, eager to do big things. Dan sees the rise of industry in America’s east as a harbinger for his own Midwestern town, and sets his mind on building an industrial suburb, Ornaby Addition, next to his city’s downtown.
Dan’s idea is met with scorn and mockery from not only his family, but also his fellow townspeople. Dan persists nonetheless, and soon the town must contend with his dream becoming a reality: noisy cars, smoky factories, huge, unappealing buildings, and the destruction of nature and the environment become the new normal as Dan’s industrial dream is realized.
Where The Turmoil focuses on industrialization’s effect on art and culture, and The Magnificent Ambersons focuses on industry’s destruction of family and of small-town life, National Avenue focuses on the men and women who actually bring that change about. Dan is portrayed sympathetically, but Tarkington makes it clear that his dreams and choices lead to a deeply unhappy family life and the ruination of the land around him. But can Dan really be faulted for his dream, or is industry inevitable, and inevitably destructive?
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- Author: Booth Tarkington
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“Listen!” Martha said. She was still looking up at the smoke against the sky, so far above the long masses of flowering bridal-wreath that bordered the terrace where she and her husband stood. “Listen! That murmur of the city down yonder—why, it’s almost his voice!”
ColophonNational Avenue
was published in 1923 by
Booth Tarkington.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Alex Cabal,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2019 by
Al Haines, Cindy Beyer, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at
Google Books.
The cover page is adapted from
Broad Street Canyon,
a painting completed in 1905 by
Colin Campbell Cooper.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
January 6, 2021, 8:32 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/booth-tarkington/national-avenue.
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