Reflections - The Turmoil

Booth Tarkington is another of those writers who is old-fashion and out of style. He was certainly never the heavy-weight literary figure that William Dean Howells was, so his chances of a significant revival are slim. Still, he wrote some good novels that give a well observed view of life at the beginning of the 20th century. If for nothing else, he will be remembered for providing Orson Wells with the source of The Magnificent Ambersons.

The Turmoil is an novel of industrial wealth; the rise of the self-made man and the decline of gentlemanly, old money families. As we watch the ascendency of the Sheridans, we watch the decline of the Vertrees, and they pass each other on their social ladders.

For all of the bluff and bluster of Mr Sheridan, he is not a man of ill will; nor is he a despotic industrialist. He and his family have many virtues, but as are many upwardly - and downwardly - mobile people, they are uncomfortable about where they are. It takes a few generations to acclimate.

The attraction and empathy between Mary Vertrees - who is a very sensible girl, considering her background, and the fact that the future which must have looked so bright in childhood now looks rather bleak - and Bibbs is genuine, full of gentle affection. They are not using each other for reasons of social status or security. However, it cannot be denied that their circumstances enable their relationship, though it is hard to imagine it being allowed to develop in the previous states of the two families.

Bibbs is a pretty exasperating character. On the one hand, the reader can understand his rebellion against his father, but he does nothing constructive with that rebellion. While working on the shop-floor with the "zinc eater", we are told that he meets with his co-workers and Socialists, and we feel that he might do some good by helping the cause of workers, but this association comes to nothing.

When Bibbs rejects his father's offer of directorships and vice-presidencies, we again hope that he wants to do something else, something noble and noteworthy; but all he wants to do is go on feeding the zinc eater. What are we to make of him?

Sheridan crushes his children fairly comprehensively, but his demands on Bibbs hardly seem as unreasonable as Bibbs feels they are. Bibbs is like a World War I shell shock victim, shunning responsibility, and seeking anonymity. So, perhaps we should not expect him to behave completely rationally.

Mary sees something noble in him, but realizes that there is no future for him - or for her - in lounging around a garret writing poetry. (Bibbs' zinc eater poetry is a grand parody of Vachel Lindsey, just as the opening chapter of The Turmoil is an American mirror of the opening to Dickens' Hard Times). Mary, for all her privileged upbringing, is a competent, practical girl, and much too good for Bibbs.

Bibbs is a foreshadowing of the decline of the Sheridan family. He has no fire in him; if he inherited the family fortune, it would probably be gone by the end of his life, and even Mary knows that to do good, one has to have money.

As for Sheridan's other children, Jim is a sacrifice to his father's business, albeit a willing one. Roscoe, is a lazy, fairly typical spoiled, rich man's son with little regard for others - witness his treatment of Sybil and his attitude towards work. Born into other circumstances, Roscoe would probably have made good, but he has no incentive where he is.

Edith endures as much as she can, and takes positive, if dramatic, action when she sees that her own family could so jeopardize her chances with Lamhorn. She removes him and herself from their potentially corrupting influence. 

The Sheridans aren't corrupt; but Roscoe manifests the sort of moral decline that can pretty quickly become corruption, and catching Lamhorn with Sybil catalyses her elopement.

Bibbs makes the about face from dreamer to businessman, and throws himself into the world or commerce totally. He does keep a philanthropic flame, illustrated by his purchase, above price, of Mr Vertrees shares, but how convincing is this conversion? He gets on very well with his father, and comes to realize Sheridan's love for him when he saves him from injury or death in the street accident - which Mary Vertrees sees.

Bibbs gets the good job, stays friends with his father, and gets the girl, too. He must be a clever lad, but if he is, why could he not see that it was not impossible for a business man to write poetry, too? T. S. Eliot manged it all right, as did Wallace Stevens and a host of others.

The Turmoil is a good read and a fascinating picture of an age and a social microcosm, but I don't think it's first rate literature.

What was Tarkington trying to say in the book? It's pretty unclear because of the way the book rambles like a soap opera rather than with a distinct sense of purpose. There are lots of themes, the de-humanising effect of unbridled industry; the fall of old money - which was supposed to have been earned in a more civilised fashion; the corrupting or debilitating effect of wealth; the destructiveness of imposing one's own ambitions on one's children - all of these are present, but there is no one obvious message to justify the book.

It is this, more than anything else, that leaves The Turmoil and Booth Tarkington in the land of popular fiction, rather than literature, but that doesn't make reading the book less pleasurable, though it does leave one wondering what it was all for.

Several critics have pointed to the maturing of American cities through people like Bibbs with his cultural interests; the development of industrial cities from merely being centres of production to places with colleges, museums, libraries, public amenities and civic pride. It is true that this process took place; it is also true that it was funded by local and national industrialists like Carnegie, Mellon, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and many, many others.

I just can't see Bibbs doing it.