Customer Reviews

Penrod (The Best Sellers of 1914)

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"Penrod" is the humorous story of a twelve-year-old boy, Penrod Schofield, growing up in pre-World War I mid-west. He, with his dog Duke and his friends Sam Williams and the black brothers Herman and Vernon, are constantly getting into scrapes with adults. This is a celebration of the joys of boyhood. But, one wonders what counselors and behavioral psychologists and certain physicians would do today if Penrod Schofield got into their clutches! They might even put him on medication. For just being a boy!!....."They were upon their great theme: 'When I get to be a man!' Being human, though boys, they consider their present estate too commonplace to be dwelt upon. So, when the old men gather, they say: "When I was a boy!" It really is the land of nowadays that we never discover."

The Penrod series of novels is one of the most effective evocations of the experience of being a child ever written. They deal with the daily life and trials of a boy of eleven and twelve in turn of the century (1900) Indiana. The humor is found in the petty hypocrisies of the adults and the naivete of the children and how those two things intertwine. If you have ever day-dreamed in school or yearned for the favor of the prettiest girl in your class, you will appreciate these stories. NB. They are period pieces of the purest kind, so you should expect terms and attitudes to reflect the age from which they come.

"Penrod" is a great novel -- interesting, enlightening, profound, grandiloquent and one of the most hilarious books ever written.

Aspects of the subject matter, however, while generally accepted in the early 1900s and treated kindly herein by the author, would simply not fly under today's political-correctness coercion. As far as popular literature is concerned, it is effectively a banned book. Consequently, "Penrod" eventually will fade from general literary consciousness, and linger only in the memories of those who truly appreciate a fine novel.

Eleven-year-old Penrod Schofield isn't really a bad kid. But circumstances and timing conspire in such a way that he manages to leave a trail of destruction everywhere he goes. This book chronicles Penrod's adventures with his buddy, Sam, his dog, Duke, and his new neighbors, brothers Herman and Verman. It's a hilarious, madcap romp that quickly covers a lot of ground and frequently leaves Penrod's backside smarting at the hand of his exasperated father.

If you enjoyed Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn, then do yourself a favor and read Penrod. It's a page-turner, laugh-out-loud funny, and a classic in its own right. For decades, Penrod was very popular novel. But it fails today's litmus test of political correctness, so it is probably doomed to be forgotten. And that's a real tragedy. Penrod is beautifully written. It is filled with love, wit, and charm. And ninety years after it was written, most of what it has to say about people still rings true. Whenever I need a dose of innocence, humor, and insightful commentary on the human condition, I know I can rely on Tarkington to deliver the goods. It's a cliche, but they don't write them like this anymore. Too bad for us.

In Penrod, Booth Tarkington tells the story of 11-year-old Penrod Scofield in early 20th Century America. Some things about the book are certainly dated, such as stereotypes about and the language used to refer African Americans, but others are timeless.

Penrod tries to spend his entire life having what he thinks is harmless fun with his friends and neighbors and learning about the amazing world in which he is living. Unfortunately, everything he does gets him in trouble with the adults around him--teachers, parents, parents of neighbors. And Penrod is always bewildered about the fact that he is in trouble, bewildered by the fact that he takes a beating at punishment, and equally bewildered by the times he escapes punishment.

Of course, as a preteen, he is also bewildered by girls. He has a crush on a girl living in his neighborhood, but is completely unaware of how to get him to like her. She refers to him as the worst boy in town, and demands that he never speak to her. Interestingly she angers him even more by calling him a "little gentleman" than she does by ignoring him and calling him the worst boy in town. Of course, all this leads to Penrod falling deeper in love.

You will certainly enjoy this gentle book about the life of a charming and smart boy.

Penrod is a warm and humorous depiction of a young boy (around 12) and his life with his friends and family. He has a tendency to get into trouble which he never seems to see coming. While set in pre-World War I America, it is as pertinent today as it ever was.

This printing is an outrage! From the first page, you see that the pages of this book are missing large parts of many sentences. And it is not like you can guess at the missing words - no one could. It is ridiculous!!!! The version I got is the sand colored one with Bold face PENROD in black at the top.

In the days before a book like "Penrod" would be frowned upon by the mainstream media and stand almost no chance of getting published, there lived a man named Booth Tarkington. He was a wise observer of human nature who mastered the psychology of human interactions, especially those pertaining to pre-adolescent boys.

Yes, Tarkington knew boys. He knew how they acted, why they acted, what they wanted, what they feared, and he wrote a series of books using this knowledge--"Penrod," "Penrod and Sam," and "Penrod Jashber," all centering around the misadventures of an exuberant, character-filled, eleven-year old named, you guessed it, Penrod Schofield.

With the lyricism and observational skills of a poet, Booth Tarkington chronicles carefree days in the young life of Penrod with innocent beauty. He takes us on a joyful romp through a boy's life in a time when boys were much freer to be just that--boys. Akin to Mark Twain's (in)famous Tom Sawyer, Penrod is a rascal, a rapscallion, getting into constant trouble at school, with his family, and with neighborhood boys, yet he is also a clever and creative young lad whom the confines of school and family and boring routine just cannot keep dormant. He is constantly coming up with new ideas that adults just shake their heads at but his fellow exuberant boys understand. And he's a romantic; he is unabashedly in love with the beautiful Marjorie Jones, and their turbulent attraction is a witty embodiment of the immortal bad boy-good girl romance. Penrod is the essence of boyhood.

Booth Tarkington's "Penrod" is absolutely alive with nothing but pure spirit, almost as much as the boy himself. Today spirit like that would be misunderstood in young males and stifled by the world at large, but as for this beautiful work by Booth Tarkington, it will always be just Penrod, his dog, and his friend Sam, living life day by day in a simpler America.

I grew up in the late 1940s and early 50s, so none of the accounts of the life of a twelve-year-old boy growing up in middle America recounted in this volume are firsthand for this reader (they were for my father, however, and he absolutely loved the book). But when stumbling across "Penrod, His Complete Story" at around the age of 30, my first thought was, "Where has this book been all my life?" During my initial reading, I digested dozens of passages two and three times in order to wring out of them every last hoot and holler of laughter, a fact which caused my family often to wonder if I had lost it. It is the only book I have ever read eight times. Writing with remarkable prose, Booth Tarkington weaves the kind of tale that would cause any middle-age spread to jiggle with the laughter it evokes. A caveat, however; no, make that two: (1) One must be literate in order to understand this book, preferably with a mid-twentieth century or earlier education; and (2) Check any politically correct baggage and all tender sensibilities at the door. It has now been ten years since my last reading. Time to pull "Penrod" from the shelf once again.

Penrod Schofield has enough good intentions to pave a Super Highway straight to Hell, but his ways and works are encompassed all about with temptations too powerful to ignore. The hapless Penrod is one of the funniest characters American literature produced, and it's a damn shame that he has been allowed to languish for so long in darkness.

It is unfortunate, but America has been muzzled by the forces of Political Correctness, which may be why this book has been swept under the carpet for so long. For Boothe Tarkington wasn't at all acceptable by the standards of our modern self appointed High Priests of PC. But hey, that's all the more reason you should read this hilarious story! Go on, buy this book and defy the Thought Police to tell you what you are and are not allowed to laugh about anymore! We used to have Free Speech, you know, before we were Balkanized by people determined to find something to be offended over at any (ahem!) niggling cost. Wouldn't it be great if we all relaxed and agreed to try that experiment again?