An American Tragedy

Also by Dreiser, An American Tragedy, 1925, is the slow-moving and heavy-handed but steadily engrossing and ultimately overwhelming account of a poor boy so bewitched by a beautiful rich girl that he commits literal murder and loses his own life in his struggle to have her.

Like many people, I find Dreiser an interesting case. He was a terrible stylist who still managed to produce remarkably powerful novels. His 1925 bestseller, An American Tragedy, is a perfect example: often clumsily written but gripping from beginning to end. It’s a fictionalized version of a sensational real-life case: the 1906 death of Grace Brown, a factory girl drowned during a vacation with her lover, Chester Gillette, who had reportedly become infatuated with a well-to-do beauty. Dreiser’s version of Gillette is Clyde Griffiths, a poor boy in pursuit of the self-indulgence he identifies with the American Dream. Employed… show more.