Theodore Dreiser's "first novel since 1915" is genuinely a great American novel of the 1920s and inevitably invites comparison with
The Great Gatsby, published the same year. At something like five times the size, Dreiser's novel is certainly the most imposing. In a comparison of language, perhaps, is where Dreiser's nagging reputation as a poor writer may find some origins. Not only is Fitzgerald's lustrous language one of the fine points about
Gatsby, but also
An American Tragedy does have some remarkably deplorable passages—I had always wondered why Dreiser had the reputation, and now I think I know. Most of the last third seems to refrain from direct verbs altogether, preferring to use the gerund form, which begins to feel like moving through pitch—the judge deciding, the lawyer presuming, the gallery gasping, the defendant worrying, the investigator scheming. I think it might be the worst I've ever seen, at least within the bounds of formal literature. Still, it does not diminish the blunt force with which Dreiser imagines and moves his characters about. Clyde Griffiths, at the precipice of a career that could have shot to the skies like Jay Gatsby's, is instead felled, by his circumstances—the inferiority of his upbringing in the naturalist fashion, at which Dreiser has never been better—and equally by his choices. Together they sketch Clyde's character, unique yet of an unmistakably 20th-century American stamp, indeed archetype.
An American Tragedy is a big fat tome, with clunky writing, but it is a pulpy, breezy, gripping read, as all the forces of the narrative are brought to bear. All of Clyde's decisions, good and bad, are arrived at transparently. The predicament in which he finds himself is aching and relentless. At some point, likely, readers depart from Clyde's choices and begin to disapprove—strongly. But the route to that place is so lullingly banal that it's really hard to say that moment is going to be the same for everyone. The second of the book's three sweeping movements was most interesting to me, a novel of manners that studies American class distinctions closely. The crime and courtroom drama are fine, but increasingly wordy. Still, obviously, this is one not to miss if you care anything about Dreiser and/or 20th-century American lit.
In case it's not at the library.
