What makes this a convincing American tragedy is, in my view, that it shows tragedy in a most peculiarly American costume: A boy of extremely strict religious upbringing, breaks away from its confinements, wants to enjoy the easy pleasures of modern life and a quick rise in social standing-but. He is, on the evidence of this novel alone, a power.' -The New York Times Book Review sortTitle American Tragedy crossRefId 252405 popularity 71 publisher Penguin USA, Inc. Still, this is a haunting and beautiful novel. He is at heart a mysticist and a fatalist, though using the realistic method. Dreiser is not imitative and belongs to no school. He is, on the evidence of this novel alone, a power.' -The New York Times Book Review isOwnedB圜ollections True title An American Tragedy fullDescription The classic depiction of the harsh realities of American life, the dark side of the American Dream, and one man's doomed pursuit of love and success. PublishDate T05:00:00+01:00 publishDateText otherFormatIdentifiers These sections, filled.OverDrive Product Record sortTitle American Tragedy crossRefId 252405 images The mammoth book is divided into five sections: 1) The 'American Tragedy' Archetype 2) The Social Background 3) Composition, Publication, and Reception 4) Stage and Film Adaptations and 5) Criticism and Later History. This is one of the many facts in Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy: A Documentary Volume, edited by Donald Pizer. An American Tragedy was placed sixteenth among the Modern Library's list of the '100 Best Novels' of the twentieth century.

Essentially, the Father of Realism (read: naturalism) brooded over the story of Clyde Griffiths for many years, studying crimes birthed by the American Dream, and even writing six chapters of another 'tragedy' before settling on the so-called 'crime of the century' (there were several more such crimes in the twentieth century)-the 1906 'accidental' murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette. The 'Genius,' published in 1915 to the horror of its would-be censors, had been composed years earlier. It was a comeback book for Dreiser, who hadn't issued a novel in over ten years. It inspired the creation of a number of American tragedies-Richard Wright's Native Son (1940), Truman Capote's In Cold Blood (1966), and Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song (1979), for example. Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925) was a watershed book.

Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale Cengage Learning, 2011. Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy: A Documentary Volume, ed.

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