> Zed Book Club / Marilyn Lightstone Reads The Age of Innocence
Photos: Book Cover, Penguin Random House; The great staircase at the Opéra, 1875. Photo: DEA/G. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images; Marilyn Lightstone, Courtesy of Marilyn Lightstone
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Marilyn Lightstone Reads The Age of Innocence
The podcast host gives a dramatic reading of the Pulitzer Prize-winning American classic / BY Athena McKenzie / May 3rd, 2021
1The Age of InnocenceOne hundred years ago Edith Wharton became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Age of Innocence, which was originally marketed as a nostalgic tale of New York high society in the 1870s. The Pulitzer’s goal in 1921 was to celebrate “the American novel published during the year which shall best present the wholesome atmosphere of American life, and the highest standard of American manners and manhood.”
Wharton, however, did not revel in the victory. For one, author Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street was the jury’s original choice, but its small-town satire was considered offensive.
“When I discovered that I was being rewarded – by one of our leading Universities – for uplifting American morals, I confess I did despair,” Wharton wrote in a letter to Lewis. “Subsequently, when I found the prize [should] really have been yours, but was withdrawn because your book (I quote from memory) had ‘offended a number of prominent persons in the Middle West,’ disgust was added to despair.”
Some of Wharton’s despair may have come from the mischaracterization of The Age of Innocence as a diverting costume drama. The tale of aristocratic lawyer Newland Archer, and his struggle to choose between a life with his suitably matched fiancée May Welland or her scandal-plagued and worldly cousin Ellen Olenska, is a timeless exploration of societal intolerance, collusion and cynicism.
Many readers and cinephiles were surprised when legendary director Martin Scorsese adapted the novel for the screen in 1993, with Daniel Day-Lewis as Newland, Winona Ryder as May and Michelle Pfeiffer as Ellen, the alluring Countess Olenska. But as The Guardian newspaper argued last year, Wharton’s story is as brutal as any of Scorsese’s iconic gang movies. “Most obviously, it’s about gangs: their unspoken rules, their codes of honour, and their structures of power. Wharton’s society … is as tough as they come.”
Hear Lightstone bring this classic to life on her podcast Marilyn Lightstone Reads.
One hundred years ago Edith Wharton became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Age of Innocence, which was originally marketed as a nostalgic tale of New York high society in the 1870s. The Pulitzer’s goal in 1921 was to celebrate “the American novel published during the year which shall best present the wholesome atmosphere of American life, and the highest standard of American manners and manhood.”
Wharton, however, did not revel in the victory. For one, author Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street was the jury’s original choice, but its small-town satire was considered offensive.
“When I discovered that I was being rewarded – by one of our leading Universities – for uplifting American morals, I confess I did despair,” Wharton wrote in a letter to Lewis. “Subsequently, when I found the prize [should] really have been yours, but was withdrawn because your book (I quote from memory) had ‘offended a number of prominent persons in the Middle West,’ disgust was added to despair.”
Some of Wharton’s despair may have come from the mischaracterization of The Age of Innocence as a diverting costume drama. The tale of aristocratic lawyer Newland Archer, and his struggle to choose between a life with his suitably matched fiancée May Welland or her scandal-plagued and worldly cousin Ellen Olenska, is a timeless exploration of societal intolerance, collusion and cynicism.
Many readers and cinephiles were surprised when legendary director Martin Scorsese adapted the novel for the screen in 1993, with Daniel Day-Lewis as Newland, Winona Ryder as May and Michelle Pfeiffer as Ellen, the alluring Countess Olenska. But as The Guardian newspaper argued last year, Wharton’s story is as brutal as any of Scorsese’s iconic gang movies. “Most obviously, it’s about gangs: their unspoken rules, their codes of honour, and their structures of power. Wharton’s society … is as tough as they come.”
Hear Lightstone bring this classic to life on her podcast Marilyn Lightstone Reads.