Penrod Jashber

Penrod Jashber is the third in a series of collections of sketches by Booth Tarkington about the adventures of Penrod Schofield, an 11-year-old middle-class boy in a small city in the pre-World War I Midwestern United States. Published in 1929, it was preceded by Penrod in 1914 and Penrod and Sam in 1916. The three books were published together as one volume, Penrod: His Complete Story, in 1931.

Plot summary

Penrod Jashber is more novelistic in form than the preceding books; rather than each chapter standing as a separate story, the bulk of this book has one story arc, of Penrod’s pretending to be detective George B. Jashber. Otherwise it is similar: it is written in the same style and takes place at the same time.

Penrod Jashber begins when Penrod’s best friend Sam Williams acquires a new pup. The boys squabble about his name, the pup and Penrod’s dog Duke rampage through Penrod’s house, and as punishment Penrod’s parents force him to wear a smelly asafetida^[1] bag. Penrod copes with this humiliation by telling tall tales of his exploits to his future girlfriend, lovely Marjorie Jones.

The detective story arc begins when Penrod further immerses himself in fantasy by penning a hilarious bandit epic starring George B. Jashber, the "notted detective." Penrod decides to become a detective; imitating his movie heroes, he squints his eyes and talks out of the side of his mouth. He paints an office sign in the (empty) stable and acquires an official-looking badge from the cook’s nephew. To practice, he shadows his school teacher in the evenings.

Now adequately experienced, Penrod enlists Sam and the two Negro boys who live across the alley, Herman and Verman, as assistants. Needing a scoundrel to shadow, Penrod overhears his parents jocularly referring to the polished manners of a suitor of his late-teens sister Margaret, a Mr. Herbert Hamilton Dade, as being appropriate to a horse thief. The rest of the book concerns the increasingly desperate but futile efforts of Penrod and his gang to prove to themselves that Mr. Dade really does steal horses.

Their efforts are supported by Sam’s older brother, Robert, a rival for Margaret’s affections; this support proves embarrassing when the boys’ increasingly effective harassment of Mr. Dade finally brings the children’s world of fantasy into fatal collision with the dull reality of the adult world. Distressed by the exposure of his fantasy world, Penrod discards the now alien persona of Jashber and dissolves the agency, and he and the other boys return to their childish occupations.

Footnotes