The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-day Book

I am a huge fan of those novels that satirize the American business man, and we have had a few masters of this genre within the last couple centuries--one of whom only recently passed away, Evan S. Connell. If you haven't read the Mr. and Mrs. Bridge novels, you must!!! They are masterpieces! I am thinking too of Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt, Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit,and William Dean Howells's The Rise of Silas Lapham. All stand in the company of Mark Twain's The Gilded Age.

The Gilded Age refers to the few decades after the Civil War when American business magnates indulged in fanatical--no, maniacal--industrialization. Railroad, oil, and various mining monopolies stripped farmers of their land, enslaved their employees, and bribed the government outright for its continued domination. Families everywhere fell prey to corporate fraud, illegitimate investments, and credit traps. And all the while, government fat cats sat pretty in their Washington suites, buying up more land and swindling ma and pa out of their meager savings.

Old news, you might say. And I have to admit that if you prize novelty over the historically uncanny, you may find this novel (and others like it) a snooze. But what remains valuable about writers like Lewis and Howells is the perennial freshness of their critiques. Lots of things change in a nation whose construct is an impossibly intricate mosaic of difference. But when you read a novel like The Gilded Age, you think, my god, this has been going on since America's beginnings--what those people way back then felt and experienced, I feel and experience too. And there's power in that connection.

AND if you're a fan of Twain, then this is an important novel to read because it's his first. Actually, he co-wrote it with Charles Dudley Warren (not nearly as talented as Twain--not even in the same universe!) on a bet. Though both men had written essays, travelogues, and other journalistic reports, neither had written a novel. And since they were constantly criticizing novels that their wives enjoyed, they were challenged to write something better. Challenge accepted! They threw this beast together in no time. And to have an entire era named after your first novel--well, that's not too bad.