Outstanding Read - But Do Not Read About the Plot In Advance!

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	• An American Tragedy (Signet Classics) Theodore Dreiser Signet Classics, 2000 - 880 pages average customer review:based on 102 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Outstanding Read - But Do Not Read About the Plot In Advance!

This is a good book, very entertaining, but I would advise anyone thinking of reading the book not to read any review that outlines the plot. Part of the fun in reading this book is the unfolding drama of the story. The story is set in the mid-west and upstate New York. The less you know in advance, other than those facts, the better you will enjoy the book.

Dreiser is considered an important writer in the development of realism in American fiction: sex and violence in the period 1900 to 1925. He continually faced opposition to his dozen novels, and had to tone them down. In retrospect they seem pretty tame. His most famous novel is probably his first book "Sister Carrie" which is 475 pages, about 400 pages shorter than the present "epic."

The present novel is his last major work taking him 5 years to complete. He was from Indiana originally, but lived in Chicago and Greenwich Village, NY, where some thought of him as a bit of a radical in terms of his life style. While still married he left New York for Hollywood with a married woman and started An American Tragedy as another book title and plot. He never finished that book. Instead, he learned of the present real life drama that took place in New York State; he returned to New York, did research for this book, and then finished the present book in 1924-25 with the present title.

One could call this book Dreiser's epic because it is long and has a varied cast of characters. The story cuts across many levels of American society. The characters reflect the emotional drives of most people: love, lust, greed, kindness, moral strengths, etc. Similarly, it exposes the weaknesses of the people and the society.

The book is a compelling read, and I covered the near 900 pages in four evenings of reading. Dreiser as an author has been admired by many, including Saul Bellow. "The Reader's Companion to World Literature" lists him as an important fiction writer while the "Good Reading Guide" - which contains over 375 authors, and selects the best novel by each author, does not list Dreiser among the top 375, but ranks him as a secondary author.

In any case, this book is probably not what one would call a masterpiece but it is outstanding fiction that has touches of F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is a compelling 5 star read.

Related recommended reading:

"Sister Carrie" by Theodore Dreiser
"Humbolt's Gift" by Saul Bellow

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Coming from a fan of tragedy...

Coming from a fan of tragedy I hope those who read this review will complacently accept my words when saying that this novel is rich in emotion, and character. Dreiser does a great job at keeping the descriptions to the bare minimum...only the details necessary to paint the picture needed to tell the story which is often a relaxing break after reading works such as Ayn Rand's, or Upton Sinclair's. I still havn't seen the film "A Place in the Sun", so naturally the book left me at the tip of my seat in surprise and excitement. This book is worth your attention for its emotional potency, moral advocating, brilliantly written scenarios and characters with believable emotions, and much more. You should read this....

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Hang in there, and you'll be amply rewarded.

For many of the 900 tiny-print pages I felt exasperated, irritated, impatient. Dreiser seems to spell out every thought and feeling, only to return to it and spell it out once more. At times the writing feels like a mediocre college sophomore's "essay out of hell," verbose, artless, didactic, full of dated diction and wasteful overstatement. But each of the three sections ends with a powerful surge that lifts the reader like a tidal wave, and when I came to the novel's third section, with the defense attorneys devising and leading Clyde through his "story," followed by the withering cross-examination by the prosecution, and then the "count-down" to execution, I found myself inextricably engaged with Clyde and Dreiser's representation of his consciousness.

Where does the author himself stand with relation to Clyde? This protagonist's guilt is far more apparent than that of George Eastman in "A Place in the Sun." Yet the author is most likely sympathetic, even though those sympathies must be severely tested by the blistering onslaught of evidence and rhetoric that Dreiser allows his prosecuting attorney to present (an amazing performance on the part of the author, who in effect has the task of taking his own creation apart limb by limb). But the most important question for the reader as well as for Clyde and quite possibly the author himself is this: is Clyde "really" innocent or guilty? Dreiser's narrator simply doesn't for a moment allow Clyde or the reader to cling to a set position: he follows every statement of a position with a qualifying "yet," "but," or question mark, thus leaving the matter open and indeterminate.

The last 75 pages of this novel are enough to tear your heart out. Finally, Clyde is fighting for more than his life: he desperately wants to know the truth. He simply doesn't know whether he's innocent or guilty (and won't), and he would give anything to learn the "truth" about his own crime. Each of the "authorities" he confronts--from his attorneys to his Puritannical mother to an eloquent, sympathetic minister to the words of the Bible itself--are inconclusive. Moreover, Dreiser allows us to see that those who apparently love Clyde--his mother and the minister, for example--would have difficulty finding Clyde "morally" innocent even if he were "legally" so because, after all, he had committed the sin of fornication by sleeping with a woman outside the sacred bounds of matrimony! As a result, the minister, when in the presence of a new Governor, cannot bring himself to express the words that would stay Clyde's execution if not lead to a legal verdict of innocense. And "yet," as Dreiser would no doubt provide as a follow-up, does he deserve to be found innocent? (As explicit as Dreiser can be in his criticism of American society, he simply doesn't tip his hand on the most crucial point. The best guess a reader might be able to hazard based on the evidence is that Dreiser would accept a verdict of "innocent"--even if wrong--as an alternative to the death penalty.)

Modern literary criticism has long held that "tragedy" as understood in the classic sense is no longer possible, because there no longer are the "absolutes" against which to measure and judge the tragic hero's actions. Certainly "An American Tragedy" allows no easy answers or firm conclusions. Despite its often melodramatic, fully "played out" style, Dreiser's narrative leaves the most vital question continually in play--in the narrative and ultimately in the reader's consciousness, making him revaluate previous beliefs and the path and purpose of life itself. It's a consciousness and life-altering experience.

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