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 [log in to unmask]