Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.

Today's book is Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons.

This story is set in a fictionalized version of Indianapolis.

We'll trace the growth of the U.S. through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family between the end of the civil war and the early part of the 20th century.

With my guests, Bill Firstenberger.

Welcome.

Welcome to you.

Thank you for having me.

Good to have you back.

This is our fifth book.

You were telling me.

Yes, absolutely.

Hoosier authors.

So we have a state that has a rich heritage of great authors and great writers, and we want to showcase that here on dinner in a book.

Exactly.

And I just want to say that this is a story of America.

It is set in, as I said, the fictionalized version of Indianapolis.

Booth Tarkington was from Indianapolis.

And so it is it was a very interesting time and period in the United States.

Let's set the scene here.

We have a very wealthy family and do they earn their money?

Well, that's, you know, remains to be seen.

You never really know exactly how the Amberson family comes about with their money.

We know that Major Amberson coming back from the Civil War, he becomes very wealthy very quickly.

And you almost wonder, is that one of those insider trading bits that.

He doesn't really talk about?

And then he was able to amass wealth very quickly through maybe investments.

But we don't really know how he came upon his money.

But we do know that they built huge, enormous mansion in 1873.

And that started the whole trend for The Magnificent Amberson's.

And so much of this money, was it inherited from generation to generation, however.

And well we're talking about the major, the major was famous for always having.

Major reason for being here,.

Three glasses of champagne at every Sunday dinner.

So I'm going to start while you continue on what you're saying.

Well, you know, we were just talking about the fact that that as the the one.

You have the generations you have generations of money and many of them in at that point in time in Indiana, people were not full of the entrepreneurial spirit, yet they were just barely staying alive.

Some of them.

But once they did get money, they kept it.

And it wasn't it really inherited because it was the grandfather that started all of this.

And I get to have this.

I don't know if I can follow grandfather's steps.

We have to pace ourselves.

Oh, do we ever three?

Oh, I don't think so.

But you may feel free to imbibe and celebrate with the good old captain of industry.

We have our characters.

We have this family.

We better have a little toast.

To as the grandson said, being is more important than doing.

Right.

Think that's very, very Amberson.

And that was the Ambersons.

You know, we don't work for our money.

And that did become sort of a mantra for the aristocrats.

It was amazing that he's courting this young lady, Lucy Morgan, and she's quizzing him like you're in college right now, George.

What are you going to become with him?

I don't want to be anything.

What's the use of being a lawyer or a doctor?

And she finally says, nails him down.

What is it that you want to be a yachtsman?

Yes.

And and he was very spoiled.

His mother his mother saw him as a perfect specimen of a son.

Everybody else in the town was waiting for him to do himself in, you know, to get his comeuppance because he was nasty.

He would tear the town.

Spoiled brat child.

Yes.

Worse than a spoiled brat.

Just just picture it.

Scattering the kids, almost running into people and enjoying and laughing at.

My favorite one is he picks a fight with the son of the town preacher city preacher.

And not only are they rolling around fighting each other in the yard, but then the preacher comes out, splits them up, and George continues to wail on the preacher and cusses them out.

I mean, can you imagine?

And so the scandal was that everybody in the city knew who George Minafer Amberson was.

Minafer was his father's last name, and they hated him.

They really did.

And they kept waiting for something to happen.

And we've all known people like that maybe and we we can't imagine how they keep going.

Oh, but, you know, this part of the of our country, you have he doesn't write about this in this book, but we know that war is we get involved in the First World War class system will start to slowly change, pretty soon, it's the bright ones who become entrepreneurial.

That's the magic word in the Midwest and elsewhere.

You're not any more considered to the manor born.

You must be entrepreneurial and come up with new things.

Right.

So the automobile, the automobile plays the critical role in The Magnificent Ambersons in many ways.

And interestingly, Booth Tarkington, the author, he was rather vocal about his distrust of the automobile in American society.

He thought that it would it would ruin American society.

And you see that played out in George because young George, who loves to run around the town with his horse and carriage and his racer and run people down, he was always yelling out to people who were in an automobile, get on a horse, get a horse.

But you see, the thing is,.

Cheers to George for "get a horse."

But I also want to say that you have you have some things going on that aren't really spoken out with the family.

For example, his mother, Isabel, really is kind of has fallen in love with Lucy Morgan's father.

And Lucy is the one that George likes.

But he doesn't like the father because he's the one that's inventing these cars.

And but but George doesn't realize that his mother has a fondness for Minafer, not Minafer.

Well, he didn't know that his mother and Morgan used to be engaged.

And and so but the the common sense.

Willbur Minafer won her over.

When what did Morgan do?

He was serenading Isabel and.

He had he was playing his double bass.

He had drunk too much.

And he stepped into the bass watch out, double bass player.

And they they didn't consider it funny.

They just decided, well, he's not for us.

But she always loved him.

She really did.

And it broke her heart that Georgie was always, you know, kind of making fun of you.

You know what?

We're having so much fun.

We're not talking about pur food.

I'm going to make a salad for the family.

Actually, one of the characters is Fanny, who is related.

And she is a worrywart.

She's she's not married.

That's fine.

I can understand that.

But she makes a mountain out of a molehill and then she decides it's very important to say that.

And she says things that she shouldn't say.

And actually, she makes a little lunch for Georgie someday and it's going to be a salmon salad.

And we're going to chop up some vegetables and we're going to mix it with some pasta that I've already cooked and then we will carry on.

And while you're doing that, what I'm doing any time that I come on dinner and a book, Gail is so kind to let me do the simplest things possible in life.

And I've had a couple of the viewer say to me, they say, you know, I like watching your episodes at dinner in a book because I know that when I watch one of your episodes, I'll be able to do that afterwards.

Oh, oh, that good.

Have you do such great dishes with your other guests.

But when first comes on, let's just put it this way.

It's all about presentation rather than it is about cooking.

Presentation is extremely important.

Now we were kind of waiting and I'm going to add a little liquid to this pasta.

The recipe calls for an elbow macaroni.

And I'm not I don't really like elbow macaroni, so I have something else here.

But I've got to add a little a little liquid, which I already got.

But it has run and hidden from me.

We will put in some chopped tomatoes and pickles, dill pickles.

Those were used in salads in the good old days.

And I've got a little tomatoes that I've chopped up and we have the spring onions.

And to that we will add mayonnaise.

Can you imagine, of course, people were using Italian dressing and, you know, all these fancy dressings that we buy in jars now, you made it from scratch and you're going to make a salad later on.

Making a salad little bit later.

Right now, again, I am just rolling together and placing a charcuterie board, which is a fancy French word that means cured meats and cheese.

And so I'm going to go to town on that and put that together.

And again, it's all about the presentation.

You can take the simplest foods that you want, but if you present it nicely, then.

You know, all is forgiven,.

But simple, simple.

We have good ingredients and simple and presentation, there's nothing better.

You don't have to camouflage food.

I'm all in favor of it.

And I think what you're doing is heroic.

Now, you're a heroic guest, so you can tell them I'm heroic.

But, you know, we don't want to cook at home with all these steps that we have to do this and that we want to have good simple foods and simple to make, particularly if you're a busy person.

So I'm going to add I will add the.

What do I have here, my mayonnaise?

We'll add some salt and pepper and we'll keep on cooking here.

We're going to take a little break and tell me how you're doing.

I'm I'm almost done with you.

Have a very nice presentation plater there.

And the secret to putting this together is make the pieces of meats and cheeses, nice large chunks, figure out some creative shapes that you can put in and display them, you know, with some sort of sense of esthetic style, I guess.

But I also have some olives, olives with unpitted.

We'll talk about more on that in the next segment.

What I want to say is that people today, I think people still use pure mayonnaise in salads, but there's all this whole business about low, you know, low calorie mayonnaise and this sort of thing.

Well, I've got the full tilt here because that's what they would have done then.

And any excuse to use mayonnaise, I will, because at home I don't use it.

And we will fiddle and tinker with our food.

Take a little break.

And we do want you to have a picture of Booth Tarkington.

Remember, he went to school in the east.

You probably didn't know that.

And he was a Hoosier, but he was an Eastern too.

And so we'll be right back.

And then we'll carry on with our cutting and chopping and musing.

We'll be right back.

And Bill, Firstenberger and I are discussing the fate of The Magnificent Ambersons in Indianapolis or a town it's supposed to be Indianapolis.

And we want to talk a little bit about how these family fates changed and does Georgie ever get his comeuppance.

So what happens in this period of time when Lucy Morgan and Isabel, former lover, not well lover, I should say, she wanted to marry a.

Romantic interest.

Yeah, that's a good word.

That's a good word for the period.

A romantic interest.

And they they what happens to these two Families?

My goodness.

We're closing in on the captain here.

I think well for this part of the story gets a little sad.

So we might need to drown our sorrows just a bit with another round.

The the Ambersons investments don't treat them kindly.

First hint of some problems is that George's father, Wilbur Minafer, makes a very bad investment with some rolling mills.

And the next thing you know, he becomes very ill because he worries so much about how much money he's lost and he dies.

And then Isabel is left a widow.

And they think she's going to have a lot of money and the family's going to have money.

And it doesn't turn out that way.

No, not really.

And everybody is still counting on the major, the grandfather who made all that money.

And he's starting to give some hints to that.

You know, the the this new wave of the future, these new businesses.

I don't quite understand how these work, you know, and so you start to wonder, is the Amberson fortune going away?

And it turns out it's going away very quickly.

Captain of the ship cannot really adjust to the times, but guess who does it is.

Eugene Morgan.

And his automobile.

That's right.

He's an inventor and innovator and a businessman.

And he creates a new automobile factory in the town and it takes over like gangbusters.

And then another factory opens up, too.

And the major says, aren't you worried about the competition?

And he's like, no, that means I'll just have to build more roads for more automobiles.

And it was a shift, a big shift in thinking.

And you've got to shift your thinking to your salad.

You're going to make you're going to make it sort of, oh, let's say a salad with just lettuce.

So early on in the book, there is a discussion about The Ambersons and what they're eating.

And this is earlier like the 1880s.

And it talks about the fact that they just got back from Europe and they serve their salads scandalously as a course all to themselves, not part of the rest.

And I have friends now that do that.

And you will be doing it now too Bill.

That's right.

And and not only that but they don't cut the the lettuce up into bite size pieces.

It stays very, very large.

And so what I'm going to do is take a nice head of romaine lettuce and I'm going to arrange it on this large plate, kind of like I'm just putting shingles on a roof and that from the outside in every angle, leaving everything very large as I as I go along the way.

So again, really demanding cuisine cook stuff here by Bill Firstenberger.

I can make one cut, I could make two cuts in and I can arrange on a plate.

That's about the extent.

Your first European or international salad and you know they still do this.

They say it can be of course served between the fish course and in the next course.

And it it is a nice I sometimes just do the salad is the first course when you have a group over for sort of a fun time.

But then one thing I don't like is the hopping up and down.

You know, my help is not there to pick up the dishes.

No, we don't.

But look at you here and sometimes the big lettuce is a good one to to use.

Yes, and both of these.

Very nice.

So here we have the the wealthy family just drops out.

I mean, even Fanny is broken hearted and she doesn't know how she may have paid into this or played into this demise because she was a woman that loved to gossip enough to go.

And I better.

Yes, love to gossip.

And I better tell you that I'm putting the salmon in here.

This would be a very easy way to.

Have a salad, just put, you know, if you will.

Another thing is, Bill.

If I were broiling or oven roasting a piece of salmon today, you you would serve it.

You could serve it right across the top of this salad.

And you could also not fry.

But, you know, you could fry or you could poach a few eggs and put it on your salad in the salad becomes like a course.

Like a meal in itself.

Yeah.

But instead of like we think of salads a lot of times today, like, you know, get it chopped up into pieces, toss it in a bowl and then eat.

People either serve themselves out of that that tossed bowl or maybe serve it into bowls individually for them.

And this is more about the presentation so that it looks pretty on the plate because look at the size of these.

You're not going to what are you going to do with that when you go to eat it?

But you have to have you have to have a knife there.

You got to be ready for that.

So I've I've finished my greenery and now I'm going to move on to throwing a little bit of feta cheese around.

You're adding a Greek touch.

It is a Greek touch.

Nobody there's unbreaking maybe a few rules here.

We're not calling this any one particular background.

And I like raspberries, so I'm going to throw in some.

Oh, that's wonderful.

Look how pretty that is.

And very nice.

Come on.

Get out there, guys.

And then we're going to get to the part that I really want to talk about, and that is the whole unpitted.

Olive and you and I were talking about this before the show.

In many European countries, it's perfectly OK to just olive out there.

They like their olives with the pits in.

But but in America, we kind of tend to get away from.

We don't like to work.

So so there's a there's a trick here.

And I'm going to show you what you can you can easily put an olive in a couple of different ways.

The first way you just put it flat on your board, carefully put knife edge away from me and you mash it.

You hear the little crack.

Now, here's the thing.

I can easily get the pit out of there.

All right?

But this thing looks like roadkill.

Oh.

What do you want to look that way?

I don't Oh, so what are you going to do, put it back together?

No.

I'm going to give you that as your one example.

You'll find this 90 percent of the time on the Internet.

This is how you put it out.

Well, that's not good enough for Firstenberger.

So what I like to do is I score it all the way around three different ways.

Try to do this and not cut my fingers,.

Kind of labor-intensive I'm glad your doing it.

Now I do the same thing.

I smash it.

OK, now hang on.

These are going to come off into a nice little triangular pieces.

Yeah, it's nicer.

It is nicer.

So I'm going to continue to do a few of these and I'm going to sprinkle these.

You just keep.

Yeah.

Let's let's talk about the resolution here.

There's no finger wagging.

This was going on all over the country.

The new waves were coming in the old ways.

It happened in farming.

It happened in the in manufacturing, new waves coming in.

And the automobile did work.

And and and the old ways died with the Tarkington.

So now that the Tarkington, the Ambersons.

Yeah, we've just got a few moments here.

How is he considered as an author today, as I read not exactly the top ten, but very.

Surprisingly so, because when you think of it, he is one of only four authors in history who has won two Pulitzer Prizes for it.

But it was way back in the time.

I hear you.

But but that's still in pretty impressive.

I think it is.

Vonnegut would probably trump him in some way.

But you and I just we differ on.

Look, Vonnegut, I hear you.

I think that he's regarded as being very much a soft writer.

Yes.

And not an edgy writer.

A traditional he took a traditional view of the topics that he addressed in his novels.

And so that alone history hasn't necessarily been super kind to Booth Tarkington in that regard.

But, you know, we're going to say that we have to stop and we're going to set the table up and invite you.

We're going to talk about the movies that were produced based on this book.

And they were considered some of the best movies ever to be produced.

We'll be right back.

But in the meantime, we want to show you a list of some of Booth Tarkington books.

Be right back.

Today, we've enjoyed Booth, Tarkingtons, The Magnificent Ambersons, and we've enjoyed Bill Firstenberger too.

Thank you.

Good to have you.

Tell me what you're holding here with your white glove.

That's right.

So I have a first edition copy of The Magnificent Ambersons.

You know how I like to read my historic novels.

With gloves?

Well, with authentic copies of the piece, I encourage people to to look those up on eBay and see if you don't feel differently when you're reading a book like that.

I know I do.

So let's talk about the food we made today.

We tried to replicate a little lunch that Fannie would have made for George and Isabel.

Tell us what you have made today.

So I have my charcuterie board there with different meats and cheeses and some some whole olives.

We have the a large leaf salad with the green olives cut nicely Firstenberger style.

And the red raspberries.

And what did you make?

Oh well, I made a salmon salad and it had some, you know, accouterments in it, like chopped pickles and onions and that sort of thing.

And then I did have my maid go to the pastry shop and buy some peach cake.

You know, we like The Ambersons might have done.

I don't, but I don't make cake.

So there you go.

I enjoyed the book in spite of the fact that I thought it was going to be long and kind of trudging, I got into it.

Well, you have to take it for the times.

And it is a reflection of its times.

And so I think in the end, we need to give one final toast.

To the captain or to the family.

To the Major.

Oh, I think this can happen anyway.

George gets his comeuppance.

Isabel, unfortunately, is very ill. And it doesn't all it's not always all's well that ends well for them.

No, but there's is a little bit of a happy twist, which we'll have to leave it hanging so that people will read the read the book.

And of course, we'll be back with some more Indiana writers.

Bill has a list of them.

I was thinking about bass players.

How many more years you do this?

I don't know.

And we'll see.

But he's got lots of good ideas.

We're glad you joined us.

And, Bill, thank you for joining me.

I always enjoy having you.

Thank you, Gail.

Always love to be here.

And for you.

Thank you for joining us.

Remember, good food, good friends, good books.

Make for a very good life.

We'll see you next time.

This WNIT local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice A.. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.