In these very odd financial times, truth is often becoming as strange as fiction… or drama.  In a very interesting article by Patricia Cohen at the New York Times, David Mamet and theatre producer Neil Pepe (among others) talk about their 2006 adaptation of a 1905 play.  Amongst other literary names from 100 years ago, Tarkington also crops up:

Referring to photos taken after Mr. Madoff’s arraignment, Mr. Delbanco said the events “put me in mind of the arrogant Ambersons before they got what Booth Tarkington called their ‘comeuppance.’ ”“But the thing about Bernard Madoff,” he added, “is that we have no idea what he was thinking.”

“I suspect he feels, as several pundits have suggested, that what he did was no different morally from what many big-time brokers and banks have been doing,” Mr. Delbanco wrote in an e-mail message. “But it would take Henry James to give us a deep portrait of such a character.”

I daresay James was not the only author of the period to provide deep portraits of men in financial woes. When re-reading many of Tarkington’s novel, I often feel that he was remarkably prescient about the financial future of our country; certainly, the opening of the compendium-trilogy Growth stages the author as something of a prophet.

But Tarkington was not a prophet, nor was he prescient.  He was just observant, and history tends to repeat itself.

He did, however, draw some interesting (and deep) portraits of men and women with money problems, and not just in Ambersons.  Take a look also, if you’re interested, at The Plutocrat, In the Arena, The Turmoil, The Midlander, The Heritage of Hatcher Ide, The Image of Josephine, Kate Fennigate, and the stories in Three Short Novels.