National Avenue

What It's About

Set in a fictional Midwestern city modelled on Tarkington's own Indianapolis, the novel follows Dan and Harlan Oliphant, grandsons of a wealthy and formidable matriarch. The two are polar opposites: Harlan is conservative, snobbish, and protective of the family's old money, while Dan is a boundless optimist who foresees the city's coming industrial and suburban expansion and pursues that vision at great personal cost. The story unfolds as a series of episodes tracing Dan's rise, his strained family relationships, and the toll his single-minded drive takes on those closest to him.

Key Concepts

As the third volume of the "Growth" trilogy, the novel continues Tarkington's preoccupation with the costs and rewards of American industrial expansion, and the tension between inherited gentility and new, self-made wealth. It has been compared to Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt and Main Street for its portrait of Midwestern ambition and conformity, though Tarkington's tone is more sympathetic to his protagonist. Family loyalty, personal sacrifice, and the question of what a life should be spent pursuing run throughout. The book also reflects some uncomfortable period prejudices — including one character's antisemitism — typical of the era but jarring to modern readers. It was, both at the time and since, generally regarded as the weakest of the three novels, with more muted critical and popular reception than its predecessors.

About the Author

Booth Tarkington was an American novelist and dramatist from Indianapolis, Indiana. In the 1910s and 1920s he was among the most widely read authors in the United States and one of only a handful of novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once. Though his reputation has faded considerably since his death, he was a defining chronicler of Midwestern American life in his time.