An American Tragedy

I’ve been slow lately. I’ve been slow in reading and slow in reviewing. There are many reasons for this. Obviously, as I’ve said many times, I have a 6-month old. Along with my regular job and all the other duties of life, I just don’t have that much time. I don’t know if I’m going to get through the Modern Library list this year, but I’m going to do my best and not worry about it.


Now onto An American Tragedy.

In general, I don’t read exciting books. I don’t think about this too often, but every now and then I come across a book that actually is exciting – or, you know, has a real plot, a real climax that the whole novel is working towards – and I realize that I don’t read page turners. Personally, excitement isn’t a quality that I require for a novel to be good or enjoyable, and (for the most part) I wouldn’t say the books that I enjoy that are also lacking in excitement are boring. They just aren’t exciting. An American Tragedy is exciting, and it did make me think – briefly – that perhaps I should pick up some John Grisham novels or something. But then I look at the Calvino books on my shelf and rethink that.

An American Tragedy started out at a slow pace. We first encounter Clyde Griffith as a teenager with his family, who are street preachers in Kansas City. He hates this. He hates the poverty of his family, and the humiliation he feels at having to stand on the corner and sing hymns. Clyde gets a job at a hotel as a bell hop, makes friends with the other bell hops, visits a prostitute and meets Hortense. I described her briefly here. She’s a low-rung gold digger. Clyde is head-over-heals with her, but she couldn’t care less about him – she likes the money he spends on her in his attempts to get her to sleep with him. Hortense keeps leading him on, making him believe that if he just buys her this one item more, she’ll go to bed with him. But she never does.

In the crescendo of their relationship, Hortense asks Clyde to buy her an expensive fur coat. She – again – leads him to believe that if he purchases the coat for her, she will definitely, finally sleep with him. It’s more than he can afford, but he intends to buy it for her anyway.

Up until this point, we know that Clyde is a moron for fawning over Hortense in this manner. You just want to yell at Clyde to give it up. (1) She doesn’t like you; (2) she only wants you to buy her things; (3) she is not going to have sex with you; (4) You are aware of all of this. Find someone who is (1) cheaper; and (2) easier. But no, he is her pathetic lap dog. But it’s at this point that Clyde’s real personality starts to come out. Clyde’s sister, Esta, (who he seemed to have genuine affection for) had run away with a traveling actor who left her (pregnant) in Pittsburgh. Clyde had been giving his mother some money out of his earnings and part of that money had been going to Esta, and Clyde knew this – though his mother thought it was a secret. Esta was about to give birth, and his mother needed $50. As his mother is asking for this, Clyde HAS THE $50 IN HIS POCKET, that he was going to use as a down payment on Hortense’s coat. And what does Clyde do? He lies to his mother – he doesn’t have $50 and he couldn’t get it for her.

I understand that Clyde’s a teenager, and he’s having his first love affair – of sorts – and wants to have a good time. And maybe my perception of this situation is colored by the fact that I now have a son, and can better see the point of view of his mother. She is embarrassed that she has to ask her son for money in the first place. And he knows that the money is going to support his destitute and very-pregnant sister who again he seemed to have real affection for. And he lies flat out about not having the money, and he intends to use this money to buy that whore Hortense a friggin’ fur coat.

A little while later, Clyde and some of his friends go for a ride with a car that does not belong to them – one of the boys “borrowed” it from the owner, and intended to return it before the man knew it was gone. Nothing good could ever come of this scenario. They get late returning and in their haste run over a little girl, then try to escape from the pursuing police and crash the car. Clyde escapes and skips town before the police arrive on the accident scene.

Clyde wanders around a bit and ends up in Chicago, working again as a bell hop in a hotel. One day, he encounters his uncle, whom he never met. Uncle Samuel Griffith owns a successful collar manufacturing business in New York. Clyde approaches Samuel, who ends up offering him a job. Clyde is then on his way to New York.

The Lygurgus Griffiths consist of Mr. and Mrs. Griffith, the privileged, jerky son Gilbert, and a few daughters (I don’t remember if there were two or three – or maybe one – it doesn’t matter). Gilbert essentially runs the factory and is resentful of Clyde from the start. The Gilberts give Clyde the lowest level job they can and then ignore him. Eventually they feel enough duty towards him to invite him to dinner, where he meets some of the Lycurgus young set, including Sondra Finchley, the daughter of another factory owner. The Griffiths promote Clyde, putting him in charge of a sub-department, and soon thereafter meets one of his workers, Roberta. After encountering her one day at a park, they quickly strike up together.

Roberta and Clyde have to keep everything a secret because of a policy against department heads dating employees, but also Clyde is worried that one of the Griffiths will see him with Roberta, just a working class girl, and think twice about him, both socially and professionally. It isn’t long before Clyde starts pressuring Roberta to take the relationship to the next level. When she expresses that she doesn’t want to do that – despite being working class, she is “respectable” in that sense – Clyde becomes a royal ass until Roberta finally gives in.

All is well and good (in a sense), until Sondra Finchley decides – mostly as a joke against Gilbert Griffith – to start inviting Clyde to parties and dinners. Clyde falls head over heals for Sondra – mostly because of her position in Lycurgus society and what a pass into that society would mean for him. Not that he doesn’t like Sondra personally – I just think a lot of his feelings are wrapped up in her social position.

Of course, Clyde starts to be mean to Roberta – cancelling dates with her, ignoring her mostly, except when he wants from her what he couldn’t get from Hortense. He lets Roberta know he’s going out socially with the Griffith crowd, but leaves Sondra out of it. Roberta starts to get down about it and frustrated. Clyde, because he clearly is a sociopath or clinical narcissist gets mad at Roberta for this, believing that she should be happy that he is being adopted, so to speak, by the upper crust.

And then Roberta becomes pregnant. This is when the plot really picks up the pace. Clyde tries to find a way to end the pregnancy. He seeks some drugs to cause her to miscarry, which fail, and he tries to find a doctor to perform an abortion, but fails at that too. Roberta was fine with all of this. But when everything failed, she started to let Clyde know that she expected him to marry her, as he had led her to believe he would do one day anyway.

Clyde DOES NOT want to marry Roberta, because his position with Sondra is pretty good and he expects to be able to marry her within a year. Obviously he cannot have this scandal, or go away or anything. Around this time, he comes across a newspaper article that describes an accident scene: two people (unidentified man and woman) take a boat out onto a lake. The boat overturns, the woman is found drowned, but no trace of the man. Clyde begins to hatch a plot: kill Roberta by drowning her in a lake and then escaping.

I won’t go into all the details now, because they get really intricate. But I probably needn’t tell you that Clyde absolutely botches the whole thing. Like most clinical narcissists (I say “clinical” to distinguish narcissistic personality disorder from the popular terms narcissism meaning people who like to look at themselves in the mirror), he believes he is SOOOO smart in setting this whole thing up, which the local sheriff takes apart in a matter of a hours. Dreiser throws in one other interesting – yet small – twist. In the moment, Clyde cannot act. And then something happens – one of those physical things which leads to an accident that afterwards you cannot quite recall the details of how exactly it happened – and he hits Roberta with his camera. Not deliberately, but not entirely accidentally. And she falls, tipping the boat over, and Clyde with it. She cannot swim, and he decidedly doesn’t try to help. It didn’t happen as he had planned – which was to actively kill her. It was more of an accident – he plotted to kill her, and then it all sort of happens by accident. He is responsible for her death, but not in the exact way he had intended to be.

The whole trial and denouement with the minister was anti-climactic, and made up more than 100 pages. But of course we had to know all that information. Which is something that I thought about throughout the entire novel: it is SO detailed, so intricately plotted. I kept wondering if Dreiser could have left any of it out and still had the novel, and I don’t know what the answer to that question is. Perhaps a more *technically skilled* novelist could have done something different with it, been more nontraditional with it, but if you are going from point A in Clyde’s life to the very end of it, yes – all of it had to be included. Because as with “real” life, every detail matters.

One thing that bothered me was about Roberta and nobody seemed to be able to tell that she was pregnant. She was obviously slight of frame (when they pulled her body out of the water they said she weighed about 100 lbs.) so it should have been obvious – to the dress maker and to the police at least. But it wasn’t until the coroner thought to check that anyone realized she was. I know everyone is different, but I am only a little bit bigger than Roberta’s size (<10 lbs), and by 5 months (how far along Roberta was when she was murdered), it was getting fairly obvious that I had a decent size bump. I didn’t expect everyone to know, but like I said, some people should have guessed by then (like when the pulled her wet body from the lake). What was surprising to me was the nonchalantness with which abortion was approached. We as a culture would be shocked to be told of someone who treated abortion with such flippancy, and yet here it is, almost 100 years ago.

Dreiser’s works, which really are bleak pictures of American life, wouldn’t really be the stuff of scandal – or at least you wouldn’t think so. They seem so “conventional.” But Dreiser was constantly having to make his works suitable for the public, dialing it down to something we could stand. After the publication of An American Tradegy, a publisher – Donald Friede, set up a censorship case, which he lost. He appealed and lost again. From Time Magazine, 1929:

Obscene: Publisher Donald Friede, president of Covici-Friede Corp., formerly of the late Boni & Liveright, was convicted in Boston last week for violation of the Massachusetts statute forbidding distribution of objectionable literature. The book: Author Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. The book's theme: how U. S. conventions and his own limitations caused a young man to murder his sweetheart.

Not Obscene: Publisher Friede (see above) rushed from Boston to Manhattan to appear before a Court of Special Sessions. There his company's novel, The Well of Loneliness by Authoress Radclyffe Hall of England, was being attacked by the Society for the Suppression of Vice. Three judges decided this book was not obscene. The book's theme: Lesbianism.

The confusion inherent in this is humorous. I wonder what the outcome would be today? Which is worse: how US conventions and personal limitations caused a young man to murder his girlfriend, or lesbianism. I think the answer might be lesbianism. Especially the Well of Loneliness kind….you know, not the Tila Tequila kind.

Dreiser also has a reputation of being rather clumsy with his prose, and that definitely shone through much more in this novel than in Sister Carrie, which I read two years ago. I ran across an article by Garrison Keiler about that other novel in which he asked why everyone had gotten so upset about a novel that was so bad. His writing is clunky. Time Magazine called it “a pipe fitter's approach to writing” but in the end, he is able to weave a story together unlike what most of his contemporaries were doing. And though it’s almost laughable that it would be censored, there is still stuff there to surprise, and to shock, and to disturb.

I see a pattern with Dreiser. His characters are often amoral – and though their actions are their “fault,” they are all also the product of their environment. They are the victims as well as the victimizer. He is part Dostoevsky, part Of Human Bondage, part Balzac. Somewhere I read that they are the flip side of the American Dream. Don’t come to Dreiser expecting a happy ending. Even when their characters get everything they want, they are still lacking. But if you want an American Dostoevskian view of the world, Dreiser beckons to you.

An American Tragedy and More Holdups

The goal of finishing the Modern Library is within sight. There are less than 20 left. But of course, life has been intervening. I’m in the middle of a crisis, which doesn’t seem to be the End of the World, which it seemed like last week. But it’s still affecting me and it’s so frustrating.

But in the last day or so, I have been completely in to Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. I know he doesn’t have a reputation as the best writer from a technical perspective, but this plot is excellent. Right now, I DO NOT want to put this book down. I’m about half way through – nine days behind schedule – but I wanted to put down a few thoughts here to tide everyone over until I can post a complete review.

I don’t want to dislike Clyde. We are all products of our environment, for better or for worse, and at first I tried to sympathize with him, particularly in the Hortense situation and the idea that he had to some extent help out his family when, as a teenage boy, he really just wanted to help himself out. I kept thinking back to “Of Human Bondage” and poor Philip in relation to Mildred and I was seeing Clyde in that context – through my “Poor Philip” glasses. All of that began to change when his mother asked him to loan her $50 to help out his sister, whom he dearly loved. He had the $50 in his pocket, which he intended to use to buy Hortense a fur coat. And he lied to his mother and told her he didn’t have the money.

Hortense is obviously a bitch, and sort of a gold digger. She only shows attention to Clyde in order to get material goods out of him, but on the other hand he only gives her material goods because he thinks he’ll get laid. But he doesn’t. He guesses that this is what Hortense is doing, but he persists. In this situation, I almost feel like they are meant for each other. But then there is the accident (nothing good ever comes from teenagers riding in cars together, especially when the car belongs to someone else – Saved By the Bell, anyone?) and Clyde runs away to Chicago where he meets his rich uncle who offers him a job back in Lycurgus, NY.

Now, we think, Clyde is going to turn his life around and make something of himself. He is going to realize how stupid he was in the Hortense situation and watch himself. And at first he does. But once he gets put in charge of a department (really, a sub-department), he soon thereafter picks up with one of his workers. Now, in general, I don’t have problems with that. And it appears at first that Clyde has genuine affections for Roberta, and it felt as if it weren’t for how his relatives would view this relationship, both because (a) she works under Clyde, which is expressly forbidden; and (b) she is clearly just a factory girl, and beneath the station to which Clyde aspires, I would guess that Roberta and Clyde would live happily ever after. But I have come to realize that with Dreiser, nobody lives happily ever after.

Everything is going ok with Clyde and Roberta, in general. But Clyde is a jerk, really. He pressures Roberta – who at heart really appears to be a good girl – into taking their relationship further than she wants, at least without a promise of marriage. And then he discovers Sondra Finchley. Sondra is of the Griffith’s upper crust, and meets Clyde at the one dinner his uncle invites him to. A few months later she sees him walking and picks him up in her car and drives him home. Sondra and some of her friends scheme to invite Clyde to some of their social functions, mostly to get at Gilbert, Clyde’s cousin, who is a jerk too. And of course, Clyde completely falls for Sondra and begins to neglect Roberta in a jerky way. He cancels dates at the last minute, or just doesn’t show up, and then lies about where he was, why he was there, and who he was with. Dreiser shows us Clyde’s inner thoughts about Roberta, which are essentially that she should be happy for him that he’s now got all these great friends and prospects, and who is she to have any claims over him.

Clyde – I really was “rooting” for you, here, but you keep screwing it up!

Roberta: Poor Roberta. She is perhaps a good match for Clyde – or would have been if he didn’t have his eye on being considered a “Griffith.” She perhaps would have been a good match if Clyde deserved anyone decent, which I’m not sure about. He pressures her into deeper relations, and while never actually promising to marry her, he hinted in such a way that Roberta obviously assumed that was what he meant. And he knew that is what she assumed, but let it go. I say that she appears to be a good girl, though sometimes I have paused about this, as Dreiser hints that she believes Clyde is more connected to the Griffiths than he actually is. How much of that belief was tied in with her feelings for him?

And now – Roberta is pregnant.

I know what is going to happen, vaguely – because I know the basic story on which Dreiser based this book. I know where this is going. My natural tendency would be to look up the details on wiki or some such site, but I don’t want to. For once, I am enjoying the suspense.

Sister Carrie

I finished Sister Carrie today. Though it wasn’t a great book, it wasn’t bad either. It was bleak and dreary, from its depictions of turn-of-the-century industrial Chicago to New York’s Bowery and ‘skid row’, and I like bleak and dreary.

Here’s a summary: Carrie is riding a train from her hometown in Wisconsin to live with her sister in Chicago. On the train, she meets Charlie Drouet. Drouet notices that she is pretty and innocent, so he starts talking to her, because he likes women. Carrie, being naïve like she is, likes him because he pays attention to her and looks nice. They exchange addresses. Carrie obviously came to Chicago with “big city dreams,” not realizing how hard she would have to work to earn her keep. Carrie’s sister (Minnie) and her husband (Sven) charge Carrie a not-very-fair amount for her room and board, and I got the impression that they were going to use the extra money to pay off another house that they had somewhere. Carrie has trouble finding work, and gets a backbreaking job in a shoe factory. Carrie’s dreams of living it up are obviously dashed. Then one day she runs into Drouet. He loans her some money, and eventually tells her that he’ll get her an apartment and furnish her with whatever she needs (clothes, food, etc). She agrees and secretly moves out of her sister’s house. Drouet and her pretend to be husband and wife when they can, and he continuously promises Carrie that he’ll marry her, but she increasingly grows disillusioned with him. In the meantime, Carrie meets Drouet’s friend, Hurstwood. Hurstwood is an old wealthy man who is the manager of a restaurant/bar. Carrie becomes infatuated with Hurstwood, probably entirely due to his money and the life that he lives. Hurstwood falls in love with Carrie, but fails to tell her that he’s married. He and Carrie start talking about running away together, and he promises to marry her if she goes with him. They set a date to go.

In the meantime, Hurstwood’s wife finds out that he’s been gallivanting about with Carrie, and is going to sue him for divorce. The date that he is to run away with Carrie arrives and passes, but she never shows up to meet him – because she found out from Drouet that he is married. In light of this news, Drouet discovers what was between the two of them, and gets mad that she was going to leave him, “after all he did for her” and moves out. One night, Hurstwood shows up and tells Carrie that Drouet was injured and that she was to come with him. She believes him and goes. They get on a train, and head to Montreal. On the way, Carrie realizes that there was no injury…Hurstwood just used it as an excuse to get her away. Hurstwood has stolen thousands of dollars from the safe at his work, and is fleeing, but Carrie doesn’t know all that. From Montreal, they are going to New York. Carrie has big dreams of New York now, and isn’t so upset that Hurstwood has essentially kidnapped her. In order to avoid being persecuted, Hurstwood decides to give back most of the money that he stole. So, now he and Carrie are in New York, neither have jobs, etc. After a failed business venture and some unsuccessful attempts to find a new job, Hurstwood gives up bothering (except for a two day stint as a street-car scab in Brooklyn). Their situation becomes more and more dire, when Carrie finally decides to try getting a job as an actress. Because she is pretty, she gets some lucky breaks. Her talent is discovered, and she starts to bring in the money. Now Hurstwood is the dependent one, and eventually Carrie’s salary can no longer support them both. She moves out, and moves up in the world, becoming a very successful and wealthy actress, while Hurstwood is driven further down the social ladder, ending up a bum and killing himself in a flophouse. In the end, we see that even though Carrie has achieved everything she ever wanted, she still isn’t happy.

Most, if not all of the characters in this book were unlikeable. First of all, Minnie and Sven: they were clearly taking advantage of Carrie for their own gain, and didn’t exactly enquire after her when she disappeared with Drouet. Drouet: this ladies man kind of strings Carrie along on promises that he will marry her…though she isn’t exactly pitching a fit about their arrangement. Then she falls for Hurstwood because he’s richer than Drouet. And he deceives her too, first with promises of marriage, then he kidnaps her, fakes a marriage with her that he knows isn’t legal but she thinks is, and doesn’t seem real enthusiastic about taking care of her in New York. Granted, however, again it isn’t that she really complains of the situation until they start to run short on money, at which time it is pretty much justifiable to complain about the situation. So what does Carrie do? She gets a damn job. Good for her. Of course it’s mostly on the pretext that she’s pretty, but she rises in the acting world fairly quickly, and decides not to let Hurstwood mooch off her anymore. I don’t blame her, because it really is his own fault about his situation, mainly due to his theft of the money. So, I kind of feel sympathetic for Carrie in a way, because everyone around her is deceiving her. But on the other hand, until she decides to get a job, she is kind of just swept along with the desires of the men in her life.

I know that this book has a reputation for being poorly written, but to be honest, it’s a lot better written than a lot of books that are being published today. And we see that even more than 100 years ago, Dresier understood that materialism and consumerism are not going to make you happy. We haven’t learned very much.