Product Description
Newton Booth Tarkington (1869-1946) was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams. Booth Tarkington was born in Indianapolis. He first attended Purdue University but graduated from Princeton University in 1893. While at Princeton he was the editor of the Nassau Literary Magazine and formed the Princeton Triangle Club. He was also voted the most popular man in his class. He was one of… More >>
Posted in 
Tags: 
When Booth Tarkington wrote this book, he made it clear that either he had never been seventeen years old, or (what is more likely) it had been many years since he had been such. I happen to know, because I myself am a seventeen-year-old boy. Even though this is the last day of my life that I will be seventeen, I claim to have a better idea than Tarkington of what it is like to be seventeen, because I am living through it right now. On that authority I say that this book is a totally inaccurate portrayal of the life of a seventeen-year-old boy. I have not read the whole book, but I have read parts here and there, and what I read was a travesty, a mockery, and an insult to every seventeen-year-old boy.
The hero(?) of the book, who is supposed to be seventeen, acts more like a foolish and feeble-minded child of seven. There MAY be 17-year-olds out there who act like William, and I have known one or two who may have come close, but by the title of the book Tarkington claims that this is the average style of behavior of 17-year-olds. It is basically a massive libel of all 17-year-old boys.
The stage of William’s adolescence (and may that word “adolescence” fall into disuse, and be utterly forgotten from our beautiful English language! ), or less euphemistically, his ideas about girls, are more like that of 14- or 15-year-olds, but CERTAINLY not seventeen.
Personally, I find this book nauseating and offensive. If you want to think this book is humorous, go ahead. Unto each his own taste. But please, PLEASE, I beseech you, DO NOT, in the name of all that is true and just, in the name of everyone who has ever won a libel suit in court, DO NOT think this book is about an average seventeen-year-old boy.
All the other reviews of this book were extremely positive, saying that it is sssoooooo realistic. I feel like the last angel of truth in a world of … okay, maybe it’s not that bad. At least hardly anybody reads this book anyway. Perhaps the damage it has caused is not very extensive. That thought will comfort me in many a dark hour.
Rating: 1 / 5
In this novel, Tarkington probes the minds of almost all the characters except the object of hero’s affections. What would cause a girl to manipulate boys to compete for her attention and to show no concern whatsoever over the effect which this is creating? And what would cause a novelist to write about such a girl and give no hint of explanation for her behavior?
Is there anything in Tarkington’s biography which would suggest that he hated women, or that he had reason for hating women?
If you happen to know, please write back.
Rating: 4 / 5
Funny, worth reading, but not nearly up to the Penrod books.
Rating: 4 / 5
My mother recommended this book to me a few months ago. When I finally got around to reading it, I realized it was a good idea. Seeing as I have a 17-year-old brother, this made me laugh until I fell on the floor. And, seeing as my name is Jane it made the little sister seem all that much more realistic. The only complaint I would make is that it is awfully slow. The plot is drawn out a little too much, but I think the author made it a point to do so. One agonizes over painful situations William gets himself into, and laughs at the way he deals with them. Of course, any reader in their right mind finds Miss Pratt to be an obnoxious dits, and that makes it all the more hysterical. Any teenage boy who reads this will think “No, I’d never do anything like that!” But think about it from your mother, or sister’s point of view, and you’ll realize how funny it is. I recommend it to those who are suffering from the feelings teenagers get when they think their world is tumbling down. Just remember what William thought, and you’ll see how trivial it all is… And try to keep Jane’s common sense and good humor. Have fun.
Rating: 3 / 5
The thing about “Seventeen” that is consistently bemusing is the way in which Tarkington evokes a past that seems innocent, even if it was anything but. And even in Tarkington’s cleaned-up version of reality (and, what is, in some ways, a profoundly, almost pathologically, oversimplified version of adolescent emotional life), shadows intrude, if you care to notice them.
It’s probably worth thinking about the notion that this book was nostalgic *for Tarkington* too. That’s probably why it seems a bit peculiar at times. The anachronistic quality of it is not just that it’s set 100 years ago…rather that Tarkington is, deliberately I think, blending the zeitgeist of his own youth with the zeitgeist of the world before 1914.
Opening the book and reading the first chapter carefully is always a strange sort of comfort. As if one has entered a time-machine and can go back to a safe, secure past, where nothing too terrible happens, and life seems comfortable and sunny without being boring. There is a delicate quality to the business of this story that vanished from later fiction, as modernism took over everything.
If you allow yourself to be seduced by what Tarkington is up to in this book, you can be entirely submerged in the welschmerz of it all, something is nearly always pleasurable. Welschmerz is a harmless enough vice, probably best indulged in moderation though, or the magic of Tarkington’s work becomes dulled.
Rating: 5 / 5