Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) by Carl Van Doren
page 71 of 146 (48%)
page 71 of 146 (48%)
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now luminous, surrounds them. From somewhere sound accents of an
authority not sufficiently explained by the mere accuracy of his versions of life. Though it may indeed be difficult for a thinker of the widest views to contract himself to the dimensions needed for naturalistic art, and though he may often fail when he attempts it, when he does succeed he has the opportunity, which the mere worldling lacks, of ennobling his art with some of the great light of the poets. CHAPTER III ART 1. BOOTH TARKINGTON Booth Tarkington is the glass of adolescence and the mold of Indiana. The hero of his earliest novel, Harkless in _The Gentleman from Indiana_, drifts through that narrative with a melancholy stride because he has been seven long years out of college and has not yet set the prairie on fire. But Mr. Tarkington, at the time of writing distant from Princeton by about the same number of years and also not yet famous, could not put up with failure in a hero. So Harkless appears as a mine of latent splendors. Carlow County idolizes him, evil-doers hate him, grateful old men worship him, devoted young men shadow his unsuspecting steps at night in order to protect him from the villains of Six-Cross-Roads, sweet girls adore him, fortune saves him from dire adventures, and in the end his fellow-voters choose him to represent |
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