Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945)

Theodore Dreiser was an accomplished journalist and it shows in the brisk, detailed style of this, his first novel. It is a novel with a theme: we are doomed to lead empty lives because all of our striving gets us no where. All of the characters are flawed, but some lead more successful lives than others. Carrie and Drouet achieve their dreams, but still feel empty. Hurstwood sinks into poverty, but that is more by chance than any moral failing on his part. You cannot read this book thinking show more that the good person will win in the end. There is no thing as justice. Hurstwood performs a criminal act, but he gives the money back and still he seems to be punished. Carrie is very lucky, but her good luck doesn't make her happy.
No one can win in Dreiser's world because we are doomed to sit in our rocking chairs, moving back and forth but going no where. Trying to be a better person, like Ames does, is a good thing, but it won't make any difference to the outcome of your life. show less

Reading this book is like eating pre-chewed food. Every part -- every scene, character, motivation, action, expectation, or thought -- has been pre-masticated for your pleasure. Don't worry about analyzing the book, because Theodore Dreiser has already explained all the ramifications for you!

The plot follows Clyde Griffiths, a poor young man with lofty aspirations, as he tries to achieve success in the grinding capitalist machine of the United States prior to the Great Depression. When a show more rich girl falls in love with him, he thinks he finally has a chance -- if only he didn't have an inconveniently pregnant factory-girl insisting on immediate marriage. Unable to return to a life of futile deprivation, Clyde drowns his pregnant millstone. Unfortunately, he's an inept murderer, and it's not long before the police come knocking...

With that as the basic plot, it would be easy to construct a suspenseful, interesting story. Apparently, Dreiser thought differently. Or maybe he just thought, "Suspense? Tension? Dramatic escalation? Pah! I'm a social naturalist! I spit on your petty narrative tricks! I'm going to tell this story in the most boring way possible." show less

7.0/10

UNCLE!

While I am claiming a DNF on this round, I am still claiming my gold stars rating because I have already read it once. (As if once wasn't enough, she sighed.)

This book was really swell, boys and girls. Really it was. I mean, it was swingin'. It had all the home-grown-gee-whiz about it that everyone wants from the great american novel. Lots of dancin' and jivin' and rootin-toot-toot-tin' fun. Man, you really get to know your onions 'bout life in the bowery, guys and gals.

Well, show more that's my limit of 1920s slang. I mean, I could go on -- and on -- much as Dreiser does, but I ain't in the mood, ya know. And besides, I still want to have friends when I finally leave this behind.

I realized half way through this rich plum pudding of Americana, dense as it is, and dripping with Dreiser's peculiar brand of rum sauce, that Dreiser had a perfect (contemporaneous) counterpart in Cecil B. DeMille. In fact, I'd go out on a limb, dancin' and jivin' all the way, to say he was the literary DeMille. There is that same obsessive quality to overperform and overcomplicate; to over-describe and over-compensate. Dreiser doesn't see a room but he has to describe all the furniture in it, right down to the dust motes in the flea's eye.

Like DeMille, he has great stories to tell and is an absolute genius for detail, which is what make the stories rich and memorable. But where DeMille had a grand canvas and knew just when to pull back the camera, Dreiser continues drilling into the center of the mote.

He is able to capture the pathos of an entire generation with a simple, throw-away action like eyelashes fluttering for the wrong boy, at the wrong time; for within that innocuous flutter shared between the "wrong people" an entire life can come to ruin. He is a genius at depicting the unravelling, between the flutter and the fall -- and one would be hard pressed to find anyone who could do it better for it would be difficult indeed to find someone with such an exacting mind and formidable imagination.

He is unflagging in his pursuit for truth at all costs -- for he has moved, in this novel, far beyond the yawning gape holes of Sister Carrie -- and into a world where truth is the prime, and only, mover. Despite all costs, despite all pending tragedy, each character moves in a trajectory as if on a conveyor belt to ultimate damnation.

The true cost here, however, is wielded with a double-edged sword because while Dreiser sticks to the truth of a story, a character, he realizes there are as many truths as there are situations in a person's life; and the ultimate complication is that he tries to address each truth from different points of view. It -- truly -- redefines the meaning of omniscient narrator.

If only Dreiser had learned to pull back the camera a bit, like deMille, for the sake of the story, the tale would hang so much better. I can forgive Dreiser much, including his abominable style, his exhaustive descriptions, his tortured prose, but the final hiccup comes when I am bidden to understand everything for everyone without being given sufficient reason.

Still, I am very glad I read this -- at least once; and made a valiant attempt the second time 'round.

When one wades through the prose style of possibly the worst writer in history, there is much to like, and ponder, and empathize with what happens between the flutter and the fall. show less

When we first meet Carrie (Meeber/Wheeler/Madenda), she isn't terribly likeable. There are shades of a Pretty Woman storyline, and the pace is rather slow. Stick with it--there's a lot here. The innocent Carrie, treated by the men in her life like an orphan without agency, quickly learns how to forge her own path, and this will include learning to play her own games. The story itself is quite miserly--definitely a tale of fortune's wheel. Dreiser has a gift for revealing the twists and turns show more of the darker bits of our souls, but in such a way that it is in fact part of our mundane existence, rather than dramatic depravity. The narration is exceedingly clever--sometimes sympathetic, sometimes sardonic commentary. The descriptions of city life and class structure are rich and dimensional and we come to feel a refreshing ambiguity about our heroine at the end. show less