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The Rise of Silas Lapham (Penguin Classics)

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I've had William Dean Howells' "A Modern Instance" and "The Rise of Silas Lapham," like many, many other books on my bookshelf for a long time. A recent meeting of a reading group of mine finally allowed me to make the time to read Howells' 1885 work, "Silas Lapham". I am extraordinarily glad I did. From the start of the novel, we are drawn into the world of late 19th century Boston, post-Reconstruction America, where newly rich industrialists attempt to enter the society life of old money. Howells crafts an extraordinarily realistic look at the American Dream gone awry.

"The Rise of Silas Lapham" begins with an interview that a local newspaperman is doing of Colonel Silas Lapham, a mineral paint tycoon. Lapham's account of his rise from the backwoods of Vermont to his marriage, to service in the Civil War, to his propagation of a successful mineral paint business is chronicled and gives us a taste of the effort and perseverance necessary for his rise, as well indicating the possibility of some potential failings, especially with regard to his one-time partner, Milton Rogers. We soon learn that Mrs. Persis Lapham aided a society woman in distress the year before, and the return of her son, Tom Corey, from Texas, signals another sort of ambition on the part of the Lapham daughters, Irene and her older sister Penelope. The rest of the novel plays out the ways in which the Laphams try to parley their financial success into social status - and how the Laphams are affected by the gambit.

Howells explores a number of significant cultural issues in "Silas Lapham": isolationism, social adaptability, economic solvency among all classes, personal integrity and familial ties, and the relationship between literature and life. The fact that the story is set about 20 or so years after the end of the American Civil War sets an important and subtle context that runs throughout the novel and inflects all of the thematic elements. The ways that the characters interact, the way that the society functions, even though the majority of the novel takes place in Boston, is importantly affected by the fact that Reconstruction is drawing to a close, Manifest Destiny is in full swing, and ultimately, America was at a point of still putting itself together and trying to view itself as the "United" States.

Howells' treatment of the social interactions between the industrially rich Laphams and the old moneyed Coreys underscores the difficulty in creating and maintaining a national identity, especially when the people even in one northern city seem so essentially different. The romance story involving the Laphams and Tom Corey is obviously an important element of the story, and Howells does an amazing job of not allowing the romance plot to become as overblown and ludicrously sentimental as the works of fiction he critiques in discussions of novels throughout his own work. "The Rise of Silas Lapham" questions the nature of relationships, how they begin, how they endure - the contrast between the married lives of the Coreys and the Laphams is worth noting, as is the family dynamic in both instances.

I'm very pleased to have gotten a chance to read this novel. Generally when I say an author or a work has been neglected, I mean that it's been neglected primarily by me. Having turned an eye now to Howells, I am very impressed with the depth of his characterization, the ways he puts scenery and backdrop to work for him, the scope of his literary allusions, and his historical consciousness. This is certainly a great American novel that more people should read. It may not be exciting, but it is involving, and that is always an excellent recommendation.

William Dean Howells's "The Rise of Silas Lapham" is one of the earliest American novels about a businessman, and that qualification alone makes it a literary curiosity, but what is most remarkable about it is what its title character is not, rather than what he is. Silas Lapham is not a ruthless, villainously greedy tycoon who bullies his employees and relishes destroying the careers of his competitors and enemies, but a conscientious, likeable man to whom misfortune happens because of his gullibility and sense of guilt rather than hubris.

Lapham is a human emblem of the new American industrial economy of the 1870s. A self-made millionaire in the paint business, he is now one of the richest men in Boston and is radiantly proud of the fact that he has earned every dollar. Having grown up poor and undereducated in Vermont, he still speaks in a rustic vernacular and has yet to understand the rationale behind the rules of high society, let alone assimilate them. A simple, practical man with a sense of duty, he even put aside his business to serve in the Civil War, in which he was seriously wounded and achieved the rank of colonel. He can be boastful and garrulous, but he is not arrogant or overbearing.

Lapham is dearly devoted to his wife Persis, who in turn has supported him through thick and thin, and his two daughters. Penelope, the older girl, is relatively plain but witty and sardonic and, at least in the first half of the novel, never seems to take anything seriously; her sister Irene is the more beautiful but vapid and superficial. Irene falls for Tom Corey, the young man who comes to work for her father as a foreign sales representative, but Tom and Penelope have a mutual attraction that, Penelope fears, could break Irene's heart. This romantic subplot allows Howells to contrast Tom's family, part of the old Boston aristocracy, with the even wealthier but socially crude Laphams with whose daughter Tom's mother has snobbish doubts about his possible union.

The novel has almost the air of Greek tragedy in that Lapham is a man of stature who has fatal flaws that threaten to destroy him. He is a teetotaller, and when he does take the liberty of trying some wine at a dinner party, he embarrasses himself and his family by talking too much. He abstains from gambling, but, instigated by his former business partner and current gadfly Milton Rogers, he gets into financial trouble when he stakes money on bad property and bad stocks. And, to compensate for a traumatic event in his past, he is charitable almost to a fault to a pretty girl whom he employs as a typist in his office.

The style of "The Rise of Silas Lapham" is a dramatic realism similar to that found in the novels of Howells's contemporaries Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser; the structure is straightforward, and the dialogue cuts to the core in laying bare the characters' sentiments and unfolding the plot. It may fall short of being a "great" novel, but for its candid portrayal of a specimen of the nouveau riche, it can be considered a minor monument of nineteenth century American literature.

These days Howells is usually overlooked in favor of the more overtly urbane Henry James or the grittier Stephen Crane or Theodore Dreiser. That's a shame, since Howells at his best is a more varied and thought-provoking author than any of them. The Rise of Silas Lapham is Howells at his best. The title is quite ironic, of course, but ultimately spot-on, as Howells' nouveau-riche bumpkin is redeemed only in losing it all. Lapham is keenly drawn, alternately frustrating in his bluster and affected pompousness and endearing in his genuine (if sometimes poorly expressed) love for his family. Other characters are not so fortunate; one of his daughters remains mostly a cipher, and both Mrs. Lapham and Bromfield Corey, the rich scion of society whose favor Lapham so earnestly covets, are dangerously close to stock characters. Howells excels at elaborate descriptive prose focused on intricate detail, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. Some elements of the plot may seem quaint to modern readers, but Howells does not treat them with condescension. The Rise of Silas Lapham is definitely a book of its time. Perhaps it is so rewarding because his time and ours are not necessarily so different as we think.

The photographs of Alfred Stieglitz still look modern and talented today, but it's nearly impossible to imagine how they would have looked to viewers in the 1890s, when they were taken. They were revolutionary, amazing, radically avant-garde. In a similar vein, the first novel about an American industrialist---a novel first printed in 1885---cannot seem so new, so fresh to our 21st century eyes. This theme startles nobody anymore. But in tracing the ups and downs of Silas Lapham, late of a Vermont village, a Civil War veteran, and founder of a fortune in 1870s Boston, Howells produced a highly original novel for his day. Lapham, his plain-spoken wife Persis, and two daughters live in luxury, thanks to the successful paint manufacturing business whose ubiquitous ads disfigured large portions of the New England countryside. Puffed up with success and not averse to considerable bragging, Lapham decides to build a sumptuous mansion on the water side of Beacon Street in the then-new district of Back Bay. At the same time, the Laphams come into contact with a family from the old Boston Brahmin elite, a family whose son falls in love with a Lapham daughter. The reaction of both families to this potential liaison, the love affair itself, and the fate of the Lapham fortune form the subject of this solid novel.

William Dean Howells was and is known as one of the early American "realists", as opposed to the more romantic style that dominated most of 19th century English language literature. Not being a person well-versed in the "accepted wisdom" of literary criticism and history, I can only say that compared to later writers, for example, Crane, Norris, Dreiser, and Sinclair, to be followed later by Anderson and Lewis, I find that Howells' work still retains plenty of the more romantic elements even while he does portray the life and business of a paint tycoon with considerable accuracy and empathy. No snobbish repudiator of nouveaux riches gaucheries, Howells. This book is not a sarcastic look at the "ridiculous efforts of a bourgeois to climb above his station". Lapham may have his faults, but he is essentially a good, likeable man. If you have an interest in Boston history or in knowing what Boston life was like in the 1870s, I believe you will certainly enjoy reading THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM. The story is a little artificial, the language a bit outdated, I felt, though in comparison to the horrors and perversities that throng some modern works, the novel might fill a few winter afternoons with a quiet pleasure. Certain stylistic oddities surprised me, such as the sudden appearance of a narrative "I" after over 200 pages ! Howells has been quite neglected in recent times: for sure, he may not be a Dostoevsky, Balzac, or Faulkner, but don't brush him off.

William Dean Howells is an unjustly neglected American Renaissance author; his prose is more readable today than Clemmens, Hawthorne or Melville. His background as a journalist no doubt helps. The Lapham family is a delight to spend a couple of hundred pages with, as they interact and ultimately fall prey to Boston brahmin society. Silas Lapham is a self-made man who scores a killing in paint from his dad's farm; he becomes a self-unmade man. You get absorbed in the world Howells describes. Especially good reading on a plane.

This book blew my mind! I found it absolutely engaging and the character of Silas Lapham was endearing to the point of surprise. This book says a lot about a class conscious America and even more about how "mom and pop" capitalism gets pushed aside to make way for impersonal mega corporations.
Silas Lapham is a good-hearted, yet rugged individualist who pulled himself up by the bootstraps to make a giant fortune. Once he succeeds however, there is a whole group of people at the top of the ladder ready to push him onto his face, along with his whole "wretched family." No matter what he does to fit in with the "old money" he just can't seem to fit in and the more he works to fit the millionaire mold, the more he compromises his own values.
What's best though is that we see him and his family through good times as well as through the downward spiral after his business crashes, and while it is sad, we see that they return willingly to what once was without coming out any worse.
This book made me smile because the characters, especially Silas Lapham, are realistically flawed and human. I recommend this highly.

To the page, this book is symmetrical in its structure. It opens with a public confession (to a reporter) and ends with a private one (to a priest). In the exact center comes Lapham's moment of realization when he is drunk at a party. There is more to the structure, but that should be enough to get you going.

A reviewer below calls Lapham a 'mogul with a conscience' which is accurate. The true core of this book is the way Howells carefully built it, though. Considering it comes from an age before modernism, it certainly feels quite modern. Give it a shot.

Well, I can not say that W.D. Howells was another Nathaniel Hawthorne. But what I can say is that his "The Rise of Silas Lapham" is A LOT better than some books that were made famous (probably for political reasons). Do not expect the superb images and construction of Hawthorne. But what we CAN expect is a timeless message about society. At first Silas is a rich money grubbing monster. (Just think of Dickens' Scrooge.) He finds ways to cut his friends out of deals, alienates his family with the want of more money, and even gets his wife upset. Ah, but later things go bad, and he starts losing money. This is when the human side of him begins to show and he becomes a very sympathetic character. In my opinion, to enjoy this even more, you must assume that before the book opens, he WAS a good and decent man. Once he ran into immense wealth, he grew detestable. So while, this is not exactly a masterpiece, the degeneration of Silas and his return to humanity is ample material to carry this book and place it in the American Museum of Literature.

This is a must read book and provides a glimpse of business morals in the nineteenth century. Read first, Mark Twain's "The Gilded Age" and Charles Dickens' "Martin Chuzzlewit". Silas' 'rise' is not ironic unless accumulation of wealth is your only value. While his monetary assets may shrink, his family 'prospers' in many ways. Clearly, Howells makes the point that honest work can bridge the gap of old rich and new. Commerce is not inherently bad, but it does ask the question, how far should one go in disclosure and protecting others from their potential investment folly.

You might be able to take a man of humble beginnings and make him a rich man, but can he ever cross the line into Society? Silas Lapham becomes rich from paint that he sells, but fails totally in his attempt to become an accepted member of the upper class. The book also concerns a misunderstood love interest by one of Lapham's daughters: the young man is actually in love with his other daughter. Lapham's business fails at the end, but he doesn't sacrifice his integrity. Which is why it is only the "rise" of Silas Lapham and not the "rise and fall." This is among Howells's best novels.