Many of us take it for granted today that Booth Tarkington has become an obscure footnote to literary history. Aside from mentions in connection with The Magnificent Ambersons, it’s as if he’s dropped off our culture’s radar entirely. Every time I meet someone from Indianapolis, in fact, I excitedly ask, “Are you familiar with Booth Tarkington?” I keep hoping to find a Hoosier who’s seen Tarkington’s house or visited his grave. Instead, all I get is blank stares… even from English Lit majors.

So it’s kind of fun to run across indicators that, at one time, Tarkington was just about a household name.

As part of a development campaign, The Municipal Art Society of New York recently resurrected a 1940 New Yorker article about the opening of a new subway underpass in Manhattan. From their excerpt:

At the south end, once you’re through the turnstile, you will be able to wander on indefinitely underground: through territory of the BMT, the Hudson & Manhattan terminal, Saks-Thirty-fourth Street, Gimbel’s, the Pennsylvania Station – a whole world in itself. We set off through the tunnel with the blessing of the Board of Transportation; Mr. Herman Birman, a guide supplied by that body (who is tired of having Booth Tarkington fans kid him about his name); and a flashlight. Mr. Birman led us into the tunnel by way of an unfinished entrance to the Forty-second Street station.

Ah, Penrod.