He did eventually get back to writing, publishing The Flirt in 1913. It would end a six-year novel-writing drought and be the beginning of what might be called his most fruitful decade. But was the problem “writing plays”? Nah.

I honestly don’t know where folks come up with some of the pictures they do, but here’s one from Flickr: Tarkington’s passport photo from the trip abroad that he and Susanah were about to take… the trip that would inspire The Plutocrat.

“At the blur of parties and receptions at his mansion ‘Seawood’ on South Main Street in Kennebunkport,” writes Portland magazine’s Colin Sargent, “Tarkington’s friends were instructed to rhyme his first name with ‘Soothe,’ easier to swallow if you’ve had a few Sidecars to let people know you’ve really arrived.” If I could have left a comment for Sargent, I would have. What a blast to discover someone so eloquent on Tarkington… and what’s more, who has read My Aimiable Uncle.

In 1908, the New York Times ran a rather tongue-in-cheek (and I suspect craftily fabricated) article about a supposed literary feud between Tarkington and Ade. The two writers corresponded for most of their long adult lives and shared a collaborator in Julian Street. They tended to be each other’s best promoter though they never worked together directly.

From the Butler University Collegian comes the following news about funding for Carmel, Indiana’s Booth Tarkington Theatre: “The city of Carmel will be spending a bit more money in the upcoming year as well to finish the Center for the Performing Arts Complex, including $13.5 million for the Booth-Tarkington (sic) Theater, which will be used for putting on plays and musicals.”

The day after I received this Google alert, a colleague queried me via Facebook about The Plutocrat, the story having been mentioned by Orson Welles during an interview with Peter Bogdanovich some years ago. Very odd to have the book come up twice in succession like that, considering how little know this work is… though it was produced by Fox as Business and Pleasure in 1932, with Will Rogers as Tinker and Joel McCrea as Ogle.

Shorpy.com, “The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog,” has posted a high-res photo of a 1908 New Orleans news-stand that carries a number of magazines in which Tarkington’s work appeared, such as McClure’s, Everybody’s, Collier’s, Harper’s, and the Saturday Evening Post. You really ought to take a pop over and click on the image to get a close-up look.

Believe it or not, one enterprising writer, Bruce L. Weaver, has published a compilation of Novel Openers – First Sentences of 11,000 Fictional Works, Topically Arranged with Subject, Keyword, Author and Title Indexing. I can only assume that Weaver is far more familiar with Tarkington than the average reader. Considering that Tarkington wrote less than 50 novels total (depending on which ones actually count as “novels”), 36 is an extraordinarily large percentage to include here. Personally, I wouldn’t rate Tarkington’s opening lines or paragraphs particularly high. Opening chapters, yes. But I honestly can’t recall a single opening line of a Tarkington novel.

“A great American comedy based on the jaundiced view of human nature by its hero, Penrod Schofield. Penrod is in rebellion against teachers and adults in general, frank about his value judgments. His narrative voice is as distinctive as Huckleberry Finn’s, and like Huck he says more than he realizes. If you read six pages you’ll keep going. Penrod won’t grow up to be a wimp like Holden Caulfield.”

“Booth Tarkington as collectible author is an enigma, wrapped in a contradiction, and drizzled with irony. Ask any book collector or dealer who have been around for a long time and they’ll probably shrug — who cares about Booth Tarkington?” One of my collections was Ennio Morricone soundtracks on LP… and there are hundreds, many of them very, very expensive. I was soon acquiring more LPs than I actually had time to listen to, and I was going broke! Collecting Tarkington was a good alternative. He’s dead, so the list isn’t open-ended… and he only wrote a few dozen books.