Seventeen

Rating:
Summary: Proving the Obvious
Review: This is a sweet story, set in the American heartland at the turn of the 20th Century. The focus is the group of people and the very region which created the American nation as the greatest country in the history of the world. The rhythms of life vastly were different a hundred or so years ago, the dreams were more simple, the morality clearer-cut. Anyone reading SEVENTEEN needs to understand that this book is about a time and place now so far away and different from what we have come to know that it could be science fiction. Yet people remain the same, emotions remain the same. As a result, SEVENTEEN holds its value as the prototypical coming-of-age novel. Booth Tarkington was one of the premiere authors of his era and that is the reason why, decades later, SEVENTEEN remains worth reading. It is the definition of a classic.

Rating:
Summary: The Classic Coming of Age Book
Review: This is a sweet story, set in the American heartland at the turn of the 20th Century. The focus is the group of people and the very region which created the American nation as the greatest country in the history of the world. The rhythms of life vastly were different a hundred or so years ago, the dreams were more simple, the morality clearer-cut. Anyone reading SEVENTEEN needs to understand that this book is about a time and place now so far away and different from what we have come to know that it could be science fiction. Yet people remain the same, emotions remain the same. As a result, SEVENTEEN holds its value as the prototypical coming-of-age novel. Booth Tarkington was one of the premiere authors of his era and that is the reason why, decades later, SEVENTEEN remains worth reading. It is the definition of a classic.

Rating:
Summary: READ THIS BOOK!
Review: This is honestly the funniest book I have ever read- it's the kind that makes you laugh out loud till the point of humiliation. A definite must for any reader with a sense of humour- Tarkington captures every moment in perfect language and real life scenes. This is the book I pick up when I'm depressed or need to laugh- it works every time.

Rating:
Summary: A recommendation with a warning.
Review: This is one of the best books about being a young adult I have read. It is funny and realistic in painting a picture of life at that age. However, Tarkington was writing in a different era, and many of the accepted attitudes and opinions of his intended audience would be offensive to us. If you find Mark Twain impossible to read because of his use of ethnic slurs you will hate this book.

That said, here is a brief excerpt.

"For in the elder teens adolescence may be completed, but not by experience, and these years know their own tragedies. It is the time of life when one finds it unendurable not to seem perfect in all outward matters: in worldly position, in the equipments of wealth, in family, and in the grace, elegance, and dignity of all appearances in public. And yet the youth is continually betrayed by the child still intermittently insistent within him, and by the child which undiplomatic people too often assume him to be. Thus with William's attire: he could ill have borne any suggestion that it was not of the mode, but taking care of it was a different matter. Also, when it came to his appetite, he could and would eat anything at any time, but something younger than his years led him--often in semi-secrecy--to candy-stores and soda-water fountains and ice-cream parlors; he still relished green apples and knew cravings for other dangerous inedibles. But these survivals were far from painful to him; what injured his sensibilities was the disposition on the part of people especially his parents, and frequently his aunts and uncles--to regard him as a little boy. Briefly, the deference his soul demanded in its own right, not from strangers only, but from his family, was about that which is supposed to be shown a Grand Duke visiting his Estates. Therefore William suffered often."

Rating:
Summary: Great Tarkington Book
Review: This is the best Tarkington book I've read yet. Booth captures the essence of the 17-year-old youth in love in this fictional account of a group of 17-year-old boys mooning over the neighborhood girl. He's got the emotions, the irascibility and the hormones all in one story. This book is a stitch as well -- humor similar to The Little Rascals is also included that had me chuckling from time to time. In addition, it gives the reader a view of what dating was back in that era. Attitudes, liberties and customs have certainly changed... Easy to read, light-hearted, and fun...

Rating:
Summary: The Opinion of a Seventeen-Year-Old Boy
Review: 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:
Summary: A boy's first love -- not-to-be-missed, hysterical!
Review: William Baxter, aged seventeen and convinced of his own perfection and general superiority, falls madly in love with a baby-talking girl who visits a friend. Nothing goes right, ever. Booth Tarkington has perfectly captured and depicted the torture that every young man goes through in his late teens. William and the surrounding characters are all so real that it's almost painful. I laughed out loud on the train so often that my fellow riders must have thought I was crazy.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Novel of the Emotional Life of Adolescence
Review: Writing novels about adolescence is difficult; either because the writer in intimately involved in the business of being an adolescent and has not as yet acquired the narrative skills, or because the adult writing about that developmental stage retrospectively colors his memories of how things were. (Françoise Sagan's BONJOUR TRISTESSE is a happy example of a book written by an adolescent that effectively addresses that period.)

Newton Booth Tarkington had produced the PENROD series of juvenile novels before writing SEVENTEEN. In this work, he narrates the summer of love (lower cased letters then) of William Sylvanus Baxter, who is smitten with Miss Lola Pratt, also known as "the Baby Talk Girl" because of her talking baby talk, endearing to William, but grating on the father of the girl whom she is visiting for the summer. I read this book when I was an early teen; and years later read it to my then pre-teen daughter. On both occasions I found it to be amusing and insightful.

William is a typical young boy who goes through a series of pratfalls and misadventures. Like many of his status, he is clueless. He tries to write, um, poetry. A sure sign that his is smitten. Tarkington is able to straddle the fence of finding humor in William's behavior without being unduly condescending.

A young reviewer commented earlier that the emotions and behaviors of his characters where more like fourteen- or fifteen-year old adolescents. I would have to agree with that perspective: from the standpoint of today's teens, if Tarkington's book were written recently, it would probably merit the title "FOURTEEN." Nevertheless, I think that SEVENTEEN was an accurate depiction of middle adolescents of that upper middle social class in that era in history. Certainly, the average mid-teen is more worldly nowadays than back in the early part of the twentieth century (or even back in the 1960's).

Readers fond of esoterica might find it interesting that Lola is based on Rose O'Neill, who later on developed the Kewpie dolls that were so popular in the early part of the twentieth century.

A caution should be made at this time: there are some passages in this book in which African-Americans are depicted cruelly and in an unnecessarily unflattering light. We maybe should regard this book as reflecting too-typical of attitudes prevalent in that time, but not encourage the emulation of these attitudes.

I did find the device of the omniscent narrator to be intrusive at times, and Tarkington's way of tying things up at the end to be unconvincing, but still this is a great book. I can truly say that it offers something for both the young reader and the adult.