This image is the cover for the book American Tragedy

American Tragedy

This epic of class, ambition, and murder in the early twentieth century is “[a] masterpiece…America’s Crime and Punishment” (Kirkus Reviews).

Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy is the story of a weak-willed young man who is both a villain and a victim of the valueless, materialistic society around him. Inspired by the true story of an early twentieth-century murder and adapted into a classic film under the title A Place in the Sun, An American Tragedy follows Clyde Griffiths as he is drawn into a circle of wealthy friends despite his own poverty-stricken background. Leaving the needs of his family behind as he buys expensive presents to impress a rich girl, Clyde finds that his new life leads him into a tragedy born of recklessness. Yet he continues to yearn ambitiously for money and status—a desire that will be his downfall.

“Dreiser is widely regarded as the strongest of the novelists who have written about America as a business civilization. No one else confronted so directly the sheer intractability of American social life and institutions.”—The New Yorker 

Theodore Dreiser

The Indiana-born Dreiser (1871-1945) has never cut a dashing or romantic swath through American literature. He has no Pulitzer or Nobel Prize to signify his importance. Yet he remains for myriad reasons: his novels are often larger than life, rugged, and defy the norms of conventional morality and organized religion. They are unapologetic in their sexual candor--in fact, outrightly frank--and challenge even modern readers. The brooding force of Dreiser’ s writing casts a dark shadow across American letters. Here in<i>An American Tragedy</i>, Dreiser shows us the flip side of The American Dream in a gathering storm that echoes with all of the power and force of Dostoevsky’ s <i>Crime and Punishment</i>. Inspired by the writings of Balzac and the ideas of Spenser and Freud, Dreiser went on to become one of America’ s best naturalist writers. <i>An American Tragedy</i> is testimony to the strength of Dreiser’ s work: it retains all of its original intensity and force.

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