Penrod

reviews.metaphorosis.com

A young boy gets into trouble after trouble with his friends while his faithful dog follows along.

I've read a few of Booth Tarkington's works before, and enjoyed them in a casual way. Penrod didn't work as well for me, primarily for two reasons - it very much feels like an only mildly successful clone of Tom Sawyer, and it's too full of casual racism to ignore.

Penrod came quite a bit later than Twain's work, and it doesn't have the same complexity and depth - it's a light-hearted look at a troublesome young boy out to have fun. But it draws on many of the same elements - clever, charismatic boy, unattainable young girl, childhood antics. It was fun, but too reminiscent of Sawyer to work on its own.

Penrod is also hampered by its social attitudes. While now over a century old, it's still not old enough to get away with the casual racism that peppers its pages. While not ill-intended, it's just too pervasive to ignore - for example, when Penrod is “doing something very unusual and rare, something almost never accomplished except by coloured people or by a boy in school on a spring day: he was doing really nothing at all”. A little of that could be excused by the timeframe in which the novel was written. I found there was too much to accept.

These two factors spoiled my enjoyment of the novel. If you're a big fan of Tarkington and somehow haven't read this, you may enjoy it. Otherwise, I recommend a re-read of Tom Sawyer.

This is one of the funniest books I have ever read. The only way to do it justice is by quoting it:

After Penrod (the 11 year old hero of the story) blurts out something he might have kept to himself:

Nothing is more treacherous than the human mind; nothing else so loves to play the Iscariot. Even when patiently bullied into a semblance of order and training, it may prove but a base and shifty servant. And Penrod's mind was not his servant; it was a master, with the April wind's whims; and it had just played him a diabolical trick. The very jolt with which he came back to the schoolroom in the midst of his fancied flight jarred his day-dream utterly out of him; and he sat, open-mouthed in horror at what he had said.

Perhaps middle-aged people might discern Nature's real intentions in the matter of pain if they would examine a boy's punishments and sorrows, for he prolongs neither beyond their actual duration. With a boy, trouble must be of Homeric dimensions to last overnight. To him, every next day is really a new day. Thus, Penrod woke, next morning, with neither the unspared rod, nor Mr. Kinosling in his mind. Tar, itself, so far as his consideration of it went, might have been an undiscovered substance

Their elders should beware such days. Peril hovers near when the fierceness of weather forces inaction and boys in groups are quiet. The more closely volcanoes, Western rivers, nitroglycerin, and boys are pent, the deadlier is their action at the point of outbreak. Thus, parents and guardians should look for outrages of the most singular violence and of the most peculiar nature during the confining weather of February and August.

Penrod