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Richard Derus's Reviews > An American Tragedy
An American Tragedy
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Book Circle Reads 24
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Book Description: On one level An American Tragedy is the story of the corruption and destruction of one man, Clyde Griffiths, who forfeits his life in desperate pursuit of success. On a deeper, more profound level, however, the novels represents a massive portrayal of the society whose values both shape Clyde's tawdry ambitions and seal his fate.
Clyde Griffiths is a young man, from the poor branch of his family but with ambitions of making the big-time; and seeks a start in his rich uncle's factory. He gets a poor girl pregnant, Roberta Alden, who works with him at the factory; but then something better turns up in the form of a rich girl, offering a much better future. Meeting the rich girl at a family function at his uncle's home makes him suddenly regret getting involved with Roberta, and he feels trapped.
He takes Roberta canoeing on a lake with the intention of pushing her into the water, changes his mind at the last moment, but she falls into the lake and drowns...and he can never prove that it wasn't what he had planned. His fate is sealed, he is found guilty of murder. A dramatic story, it was based on a real life murder trial of the 1920s, and the success of Dreiser's novel saw it made into a film in the 1950s -- A Place in the Sun, which starred Montgomery Clift, Shelley Winters and Elizabeth Taylor.
My Review: Watch the movie. The "novel" is bloated and Dreiser's prose is as wooden as a plank.
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Book Description: On one level An American Tragedy is the story of the corruption and destruction of one man, Clyde Griffiths, who forfeits his life in desperate pursuit of success. On a deeper, more profound level, however, the novels represents a massive portrayal of the society whose values both shape Clyde's tawdry ambitions and seal his fate.
Clyde Griffiths is a young man, from the poor branch of his family but with ambitions of making the big-time; and seeks a start in his rich uncle's factory. He gets a poor girl pregnant, Roberta Alden, who works with him at the factory; but then something better turns up in the form of a rich girl, offering a much better future. Meeting the rich girl at a family function at his uncle's home makes him suddenly regret getting involved with Roberta, and he feels trapped.
He takes Roberta canoeing on a lake with the intention of pushing her into the water, changes his mind at the last moment, but she falls into the lake and drowns...and he can never prove that it wasn't what he had planned. His fate is sealed, he is found guilty of murder. A dramatic story, it was based on a real life murder trial of the 1920s, and the success of Dreiser's novel saw it made into a film in the 1950s -- A Place in the Sun, which starred Montgomery Clift, Shelley Winters and Elizabeth Taylor.
My Review: Watch the movie. The "novel" is bloated and Dreiser's prose is as wooden as a plank.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
March 11, 2013
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Finished Reading
March 12, 2013
– Shelved
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TK421
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Mar 12, 2013 08:15PM
Read Sister Carrie if you have not. Great novel.
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I have. Great story. Not a great novel, too clunky, but better than this one!
When people shudder at Henry James or Proust, I point them here.
Israel wrote: "I'd rather read this than Henry James, but I'm at the half-way point and understand completely. Giving me second thoughts on Sister Carrie in the near future."It should, IMO, be on your life-list because the story is an evergreen one; it's historically important because it was very early to be so forthright about S-E-X; and the characters are more fully realized than anything else of his I've read.
But don't sprain anything getting it off the shelf.
I haven't read this book, but I immediately recognized the plot summary, and the amazing book I recommend as companion reading either along with or perhaps instead of this book is A Northern Light by Jennifer Connelly. It's also based on this same true story, and its protagonist is a young girl who works at the lake resort where Roberta drowns, to whom Roberta entrusts a packet of letters on her last day of life. ETA: It's classed as "YA," and I don't normally recommend YA books to Grown Ass Adults, but even if you "don't read YA," you should make an exception and read this one. It's that good.
Amber wrote: "I haven't read this book, but I immediately recognized the plot summary, and the amazing book I recommend as companion reading either along with or perhaps instead of this book is A Northern Light ..."It is, as I've noted, a truly evergreen plot; it's got everything a creative soul longs for: snobbery, lust, social-climbing desperation! Completely enthralling stories are (almost) guaranteed!
