The Need of Money E-Book

Booth Tarkington

• Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

In "The Need of Money," Booth Tarkington crafts a poignant and incisive exploration of the human condition, filtered through the lens of financial desperation. The narrative unfolds with a blend of humor and gravitas, showcasing Tarkington's masterful use of dialogue and keen characterizations. Set against the backdrop of early 20th-century America, the book offers a vivid portrayal of societal values and the impact of wealth on personal relationships, while illustrating the often absurd lengths to which individuals will go in pursuit of financial stability. Tarkington's style intertwines a light-hearted touch with profound observations, making the text both accessible and deeply resonant. Booth Tarkington, an esteemed American novelist, was no stranger to the complexities of wealth, having experienced both privilege and financial struggle in his life. His background, marked by an acute awareness of class dynamics and a keen interest in societal norms, often informed his writings. Tarkington's firsthand experiences motivated him to investigate the interplay between ambition and morality, which is brilliantly captured in this work. Readers seeking a rich commentary on the intersection of money and morality will find "The Need of Money" to be an enlightening read. With its well-drawn characters and engaging narrative, Tarkington's exploration of financial necessity resonates powerfully even in today's economic landscape. This work is not just a story about money, but a timeless inquiry into what truly sustains human connections. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.

Leseprobe

Booth Tarkington

The Need of Money

Enriched edition. Exploring Class, Greed, and Morality in the Gilded Age

In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience.

Introduction, Studies and Commentaries by Jared Nicholson

Edited and published by Good Press, 2020

[email protected]

EAN 4064066405564

Table of Contents

Introduction

Synopsis

Historical Context

Author Biography

The Need of Money

Analysis

Reflection

Memorable Quotes

Notes

Introduction

Table of Contents

A single dollar can tilt a household, a town, a conscience. Booth Tarkington’s The Need of Money turns that ordinary truth into a searching inquiry about how people measure worth—of themselves, of one another, and of their futures. The title signals a pressure that never announces itself as abstract economics; it is intimate, social, and moral. Through Tarkington’s characteristic blend of humor and quiet scrutiny, the book follows everyday lives as they bend, bargain, and sometimes blossom under financial strain. What emerges is less a ledger of debts than a study of character, where choices around money reveal deeper desires and fears.

Its classic standing rests on precision of observation and breadth of implication. Tarkington wrote with a realism that was never chilly, satirical intelligence warmed by sympathy, and a stylistic clarity that makes the pages feel newly minted. The book engages perennial questions—ambition, respectability, family duty, civic standing—without heavy theorizing, letting scenes and voices carry the argument. In doing so, it helped consolidate an American tradition of social comedy that examines middle-class life from the inside. Subsequent writers of domestic realism and small-town satire inherit from Tarkington a confident method: reveal the culture by tracking what money makes possible and what it refuses.

Booth Tarkington, an American novelist and playwright, built his reputation in the early decades of the twentieth century, and The Need of Money belongs to that milieu in which he produced his signature work. Known for anatomizing the aspirations and anxieties of communities in flux, he wrote with an eye for the telling gesture and the civic ripple. This book focuses that eye on the practical calculus of earning, spending, and owing. Without resorting to melodrama or abstraction, Tarkington situates financial desire within the rhythms of ordinary life, inviting readers to observe how public reputations and private affections alter under material pressures.

The premise is disarmingly simple: the need of money crosses a threshold, and a network of relationships must respond. Family bonds, friendships, romantic hopes, and local standing all feel the pull of scarcity and the temptation of plenty. Tarkington draws the web of motives with such steadiness that the story never reduces people to mere examples; instead, individuals move toward or away from themselves as they manage opportunities and risks. The narrative traces an arc from small transactions to larger reckonings, showing how steady compromise or sudden decision can define a future. The hook is not scandal, but recognition.

Tarkington’s purpose is diagnostic in the most human sense. He wants to show how money becomes a language that we speak even when we imagine we are discussing love, pride, fairness, or duty. In his hands, the ledger becomes a mirror: characters discover what they value because credit and cost force choice. Yet he refuses to moralize. Rather than punishing or rewarding on principle, he watches. The intended effect is clarity, not verdict. Readers come to understand how communities assign merit, how people navigate appearances, and how ethical intentions can be clarified—or confused—by the arithmetic of daily life.

Formally, the book marries social comedy to psychological realism. Dialogue carries much of the argument, and Tarkington’s ear for tonal shifts—confidence shading into defensiveness, or generosity into self-justification—animates each exchange. He favors scenes built around errands, visits, and chance meetings, reinforcing how money quietly threads through ordinary encounters. Prose remains limpid, never decorative for its own sake, so that attention stays on behavior and consequence. This stylistic restraint gives the story its lasting power: readers do not remember rhetorical flourishes so much as the felt progression of choices, the slow accumulation of stakes, and the lucid exposure of motive.

In the larger history of American letters, The Need of Money participates in a conversation about prosperity and character that stretches from nineteenth-century realism to later social satires. Tarkington, a two-time Pulitzer Prize recipient for other novels, helped define how the American middle class could be rendered with candor and affection without sacrificing critique. This book’s contribution lies in the specificity of its social textures and the universality of its theme. By demonstrating how financial desire organizes a community’s hopes and hierarchies, it offers a framework that later narratives would adapt to examine consumption, status anxiety, and the ethics of ambition.

Thematically, the book explores appearance and reality, the calculus of opportunity, and the tug-of-war between self-respect and social recognition. Money, in Tarkington’s treatment, is never merely instrumental; it touches identity. What we buy can disguise or display us, and debt can be both a bridge and a leash. The story tests the boundaries between prudence and fear, generosity and show, strategy and cynicism. It also attends to how different generations appraise risk and reward, suggesting that the need of money feels different to those starting out, to those hoping to consolidate, and to those guarding what they believe they have already won.

Context matters, and Tarkington writes from a United States grappling with modernization, boosters’ optimism, and unease about social mobility. While avoiding any thesis of economics, he captures the cultural weather: a climate in which credit expands possibilities while unsettling certainties. Institutions—banks, offices, civic clubs—frame the drama, but the action is intimate, in kitchens, parlors, and sidewalks. The book recognizes that markets do not exist elsewhere; they live inside conversations and courtships. This situational awareness lets Tarkington register the friction between public ideals of success and private standards of decency, mapping how each informs the other in practice.

Part of the work’s endurance comes from its readability. Tarkington’s sentences carry the ease of spoken thought, yet they compress insights that linger. The humor is gentle but incisive, revealing how people rationalize without turning them into caricatures. Readers return not for a puzzle to solve but for the steady unveiling of motive under strain. That combination of accessibility and depth has kept the book in circulation whenever questions about wealth and worth regain their urgency. It offers a mirror that does not flatter or condemn, allowing us to recognize ourselves without feeling coerced by the author’s verdicts.

Approaching this book today, one can read it as both period portrait and ongoing conversation. Its particulars bear the stamp of the time in which Tarkington wrote, yet the questions it raises remain vividly contemporary: how to balance aspiration with integrity, security with generosity, pride with solidarity. The narrative invites a patient reading, attentive to small shifts in tone and choice. Those increments are where the moral drama resides. Rather than telegraphing lessons, Tarkington allows consequences to find their level, so that readers may test their own intuitions about fairness, responsibility, and the costs we willingly accept in order to belong.

The Need of Money endures because it treats finance as a human art, a negotiation of hopes as much as numbers. It gathers themes of ambition, respectability, love, and civic life into a clear, humane story whose tension lies in recognition rather than surprise. For contemporary audiences confronting questions of work, debt, and status, its insights feel newly minted, its wit bracing, its compassion steady. Tarkington’s classic measure—observant, fair-minded, and quietly daring—animates every page. To read it is to see how money tests and reveals us, and to understand why that examination remains endlessly, uncomfortably, and consolingly relevant.