American Tragedy

"Dreiser is famous for indulging in gassy philosophical posturings, repetitions, wordiness and all kinds of gaucheries that are perhaps not as gauche as they appear; but beneath the seeming awkwardness he was, in his way, a writer of extreme discipline. The efficiency consisted of piling up tiny physical details and noting every possible petty motive and impulse in order to show that human events are driven by irresistible material forces--sometimes by the pressures of social class, sometimes by 'chemisms' from within the individual personality. The tiny details and physical urges grow denser and denser, the protagonist of AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY, Clyde Griffiths, moves ever closer to the half-fumbled murder of his girlfriend and then toward his own execution, and you, the reader, sink ever deeper into your armchair of anxiety and dread. It is because everything seems so horribly unavoidable."Dreiser, Theodore is the author of 'American Tragedy', published 2000 under ISBN 9780451527707 and ISBN 0451527704.