Wesley Britton wrote:

>   One quick reference caught my eye when Lou
> mentioned Henry Adams DEMOCRACY, a book I think of automatically when
> pondering "The Gilded Age" as a historical period.  So I offer this topic
> for discussion: does anyone have any compare/contrast ideas on the two
> novels or any similar compare/contrast ideas about other politically
> oriented novels of the era by other writers?

By chance, I was reading DEMOCRACY when Wes sent his challenge.  Having just
finished, I offer these half-baked ideas in hopes of nudging responses.

--DEMOCRACY (1880) is far more tightly written than the sprawly GILDED AGE
(1873).  In that regard (and many others) it's a "better" novel than the
Twain/Warner hodgepodge.   But I think most readers would enjoy THE GILDED AGE
more.

--DEMOCRACY is often too much a novel of ideas.  At its worst, it reads like
utopian fiction (e.g., Howells' A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA) in that the characters
are simply there to utter views.  Few of the minor characters are "realized" at
all.  And none of the major characters take wingsas Twain's Col. Sellers has
done.  Sellers is one of those rare creations (cf. Falstaff, Don Quixote and
Sancho, Tom & Huck, Dracula . . . ) whose vitality transcends the books that
gave them birth.  In six months I doubt I'll remember that Madeleine Lee is the
heroine of Adams' novel.

--Twain and Warner have their subtle moments, and Adams has his crude moments
(e.g., naming a wealthy Jew "Schneidekoupon"--clipper of bond coupons).  But
overall the satire of Grant-era slime is far more subtle in DEMOCRACY.  Adams
prefers the well-sharpened knife;Twain and Warner prefer the sledgehammer.  For
instance, where a GILDED AGE character might be based on a single real person,
Adams will cleverly interweave traits from half a dozen.  His President, "Old
Granny," is mostly Genl. Grant, but with liberal doses of Hayes and of  a
cornball Indiana governor named "Blue Jeans" Williams thrown in, plus little
dashes of Lincoln, Zachary Taylor, etc., etc.

Another instance:  The trick of making his major villain, Ratcliffe, a Senator
'of New England background' from Illinois is extremely clever.  Ratcliffe's
major model is the disgusting James G. Blaine ("the Continental Liar from the
State of Maine"); but making him Midwestern as well as Eastern opens all kinds
of lovely doors for Adams.

--There are wonderful moments in DEMOCRACY.  I especially admire the long scene
in which Carrington (as much "the hero" as the book has one) takes Sybil (the
heroine's fluff-brained younger sister) riding to Arlington.  They visit the
Lee Mansion  and the cemetery.   We watch Sybil--who is too young to remember
the war--begin to realize the carnage as human experience, and to grasp
Carrington, a Virginian,  as a man who fought and suffered.  Then, as they talk,
in a very few wonderful pages Adams twists our view of Sybil 180 degrees.  We
see and understand the core of common sense and integrity beneath the froth.

There are several other such very well handled scenes, and there's some good
characterization of the major figures.  Even so, Henry Adams doesn't strike me
as a natural story teller.  He is not as good a yarn-spinner as Warner, and of
course he's miles behind Mark Twain.  As but one example, "corruption" is a word
much bandied about in DEMOCRACY.  Yet we very rarely FEEL corruption as we do in
THE GILDED AGE.  Ideas are too often developed intellectually rather than
dramatized.  There's nothing in Adams' novel to compare, say, with the wonderful
scene in THE GILDED AGE (Chapter 28) where a lobbyist itemizes  all the costs of
getting a bill through Congress--explaining that "high moral Senators" cost more
to bribe; but you need several, because they add such tone to a bill.

--Adams knew Washington far better than did Warner and Twain.  DEMOCRACY is a
very "insider" novel.  More important, nearly every scene is set in or around
Washington, and the book is permeated with the claustrophobia and near insanity
of a capital far too detached from the nation it is meant to serve.  We never
see "the people" whose trust and dollars are being abused.   By contrast, Twain
and Warner constantly play Washington against the larger nation--we SEE the
idiotic railroads being built with swollen government subsidies, etc.   Each
approach has its great merits; but the difference gives the novels very
different flavors.  Even if THE GILDED AGE were shorter and more tightly
organized, it would feel much more spacious than DEMOCRACY.

Last thought:  It's scary to realize how much slime Twain and Warner were able
to turn up in a novel published in 1873.  As we see it today, Grant's first term
was little more than antipasto.  Most of the truly infamous outrages occurred
(or were uncovered) later.  For instance, Adams does great, savage things with
the Hayes/Tilden election scandals of 1876...years after THE GILDED AGE went to
press.

I do hope several other Forum members  will respond to  some of this endless
babble.  I would far rather be slammed for my stupidity than left to feel that
I've been talking to myself.

Mark Coburn
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