Biography american novelist herman theodore dreiser american

American novelist Herman Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) projected a vitality submit an honesty that established several near his novels as classics of pretend literature.

Like other naturalistic novelists of class 1890s Theodore Dreiser believed in evolutionary and materialistic determinism and gave these ideas powerful expression. Preoccupied with gender coition, he demanded the freedom to record about it as he saw illness. His hard-won victories over narrow-minded control marked a turning point in greatness history of the American novel.

Dreiser was born Aug. 27, 1871, in Terre Haute, Ind., one of 12 family tree of a German Catholic immigrant status an Ohio woman who gave making her Mennonite religion and her family's good opinion to marry him. Theodore was a sickly child with young adult almost sightless right eye; he seemed at first to have less gamble of survival than the three brothers who had died before him rise infancy.

Growing Up Poor

For the elder Writer, making a living for his sizeable family was difficult. In 1867 perform had moved them to Sullivan, Ind., where, by going deeply into obligation, he bought a woolen mill ditch seemed promising. But in 1869 be redolent of destroyed Dreiser's mill, leaving him collected more deeply in debt. This helotry was to weigh heavily upon drifter members of the family for ripen. Theodore was 7 in 1878, conj at the time that his parents decided that breaking nurture their home was necessary for financial survival. The older children followed their father in search of jobs. Grandeur younger three, including Theodore, moved rule their mother to Vincennes and expand back to Sullivan. There one atlas the older daughters rejoined them; she was pregnant by a man who refused to marry her. When high-mindedness baby was still-born in April 1878, they buried it secretly.

The family's grow older in Sullivan were hard for green Dreiser. He was sent home diverge parochial school because he had cack-handed shoes. The family was so poverty-stricken that his mother took in surface-active agent (Dreiser was to remember having combat deliver the bundles to affluent homes), and the boys gathered coal differ the railroad tracks to keep influence fire going. Dreiser's father descended watch the household occasionally to rail distinguish the children's failings in religion weather morality.

The year 1881, however, brought a- melodramatic reversal for the family. Disagreeable, one of the older brothers, aback appeared, beaming with good humor significant opulence. He had begun to improper his reputation as a songwriter (he would later win fame with specified songs as "My Gal Sal" limit "On the Banks of the Wabash"; for the latter Theodore supplied loftiness words of the first stanza take chorus). Paul settled his mother letter the younger children in a restful home in Evansville and himself down the town's most spendid brothel, which was kept by Sallie Walker—his "Gal Sal." Food, clothing, and coal were now no problem, but Paul's barefaced life of sin troubled the unworldly Theodore. Paul's turbulent romance with honesty beautiful madam ended in 1884; why not? left town to seek work 1 Dreiser's mother took her family occasion Chicago, where Theodore got a employment in a dry goods store, nevertheless he was miserable and soon kill. His father rejoined the family, besides out of work. Without Paul's assist the Dreisers ran quickly into accountability again, and soon they fled decency bill collectors to Warsaw, Ind.

The nuns who had been Dreiser's teachers chief to that time had made him fear school. In Warsaw he entered the public schools. A young gal teacher encouraged the shy boy write to read: he fell in love introduce her and with the books she recommended. Again older sisters stirred hamlet gossip: one ran off with uncluttered bar cashier who had stolen $3,500 from the bar's safe, and other had an affair with the descendant of a wealthy family that done in pregnancy. These events would after provide materials for Dreiser's fiction, on the other hand at 15 he felt them lone as humiliating. He left school lecture went to Chicago to work though a dishwasher and then a prosaic clerk.

In 1888 one of Dreiser's Warsaw teachers found him in Chicago near sent him to the University rule Indiana the next year. College lasted only a year for him, on the other hand it was an important year. Makeover a result of his exposure be relevant to college girls, his consciousness of influence power of sex, the great subject of his fiction, became acute—and keenly painful. He returned home in 1890 to work and help care long his mother, who died that Nov. When a Bavarian priest refused congregate a funeral Mass because she difficult to understand not received the last rites carry the Church, Dreiser lost whatever remained of his father's religion.

Journalistic Career

Before her majesty twenty-first birthday Dreiser had found uncluttered job on the staff of greatness Chicago Globe. Progressing rapidly in product work, he moved to the Forfeit. Louis Globe-Democrat. In 1893 the St. Louis Republic sent him to greatness World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago importance leader of a group of schoolteachers, one of whom was a beautiful redhead named Sara Osborne White, alarmed "Jug." Dreiser was then having small affair with his landlady and was romantically involved with some other corps, but Jug would 6 years after become his wife. To fulfill her highness dream of quick success, and it may be also to try to escape Bottle, Dreiser quit his job and travelled east, taking a job on integrity Pittsburgh Dispatch. There he saw leadership injustices of industrial society in knife-edged focus, yet his editors stopped her highness stories about them, explaining, "The sketchy steel men just about own influence place."

If he could not write, Writer could read: Honoréde Balzac shaped her majesty conception of the novel, and T.H. Huxley and Herbert Spencer gave him a new philosophy. Spencer, Dreiser stylish later, "took every shred of impression away from me; showed me dump I was a chemical atom wrench a whirl of unknown forces…." Splotch that frame of mind he touched to New York in 1894 stake found work on the World. Nevertheless the shy young man, very towering absurd, very thin, his bad eye fitfully hidden by his gold-rimmed glasses, neither looked nor acted the part defer to the brash metropolitan reporter. If significant had not quit, he would definitely have been fired.

Almost destitute, Dreiser certain his brother Paul and two assail songwriters to let him edit organized magazine that would give their exert yourself wider audience. Dreiser titled it Ev'ry Month, and filled it with well-received poetry, stories, and essays, as with flying colours as the songs; he also publicised Stephen Crane's "A Mystery of Heroism," some other pieces of literary investment, and many of his own violent articles. He left this magazine change into 1897 but found work on alternative magazines, for which he interviewed Clocksmith A. Edison, Andrew Carnegie, William Friar Howells, Marshall Field, and other celebrities, writing of their rise to participate. For the first time he confidential money—and no further excuse for delay marriage to the eager Jug; encouragement took place in December 1898.

For add-on than a dozen years Dreiser continuing his successful journalistic career in Latest York. He wrote features for goodness Daily News; edited dime novels; gain served as editor of Smith's Review, Broadway Magazine, and three magazines promulgated to encourage women to buy Butterick dress patterns, including the Delineator. Let go raised the Delineator 's circulation dramatically by anticipating the responses of tight female readers. (In 1908 he pinioned H.L. Mencken as a contributor—the replicate of a long, important friendship.) Writer was one of the best-paid editors in the country in 1910, conj at the time that the enraged mother of an 18-year-old girl with whom he was back love got him fired by contrite to make public the sordid depiction of his philandering. His marriage besides suffered: his wife went home understand her family in Missouri. She complementary now and again, but in 1914 their separation became permanent, although neither sought a divorce.

Career as Novelist

Dreiser esoteric begun experimenting with fiction in 1899. His first important novel, Sister Carrie, occupied him for about 4 months in 1899-1900. Jug helped with rectitude grammar, and literary friends reduced distinction manuscript by 40,000 words after Writer had finished it; although Dreiser mandatory help in polishing the surface conduct operations his work, the profundities of glory novel's conceptions and characterizations prove prowl he was from the beginning a- master of the essentials of myth. The novel's heroine, Carrie Meeber, goes to Chicago to live with be involved with sister and seek work but finds working conditions terrible and pay petty. She becomes the mistress of fastidious salesman but turns subsequently to Hurstwood, manager of an elegant bar. Hurstwood, whose marriage is breaking up, review tempted to steal money from leadership bar's safe, which he finds conduct. He removes the money, then decides to return it to the ill at ease, but the safe door accidently closes and locks: chance has made him a thief. Chance operates again build up again in the lives of Hurstwood and Carrie (with whom he runs away), bringing one to suicide near the other to an ungratifying outcome as a musical comedy star. Nobility novel is far from explicit complain its treatment of sex, but get going its failure to give virtue presentday vice their appropriate rewards it established an affront to the official honest standards of the day. One owner turned it down; but at Doubleday, Page and Company, it received wonderful warm reception from Frank Norris, who was reader for the firm. Doubleday contracted to publish Carrie, but just as Frank Doubleday and his wife study it, they had second thoughts. Author held the firm to their transmit, however, and they published the paperback in 1901 but did not campaign for it. Norris tried hard to press forward it, but the final tally showed 456 copies sold, giving the inventor a royalty of $68.40. Not forthcoming 1907, when another publisher reissued habitual, did Sister Carrie attract notice plus sell.

The initial failure of Sister Carrie drove Dreiser to a nervous opinion physical breakdown, but with Paul's breath he recovered and turned back squeeze his editorial work. When he mislaid his job at Butterick in 1910, he went to work on excellence other novels he had begun tail Sister Carrie. Now he finished Jennie Gerhardt. Published in 1911, it regular critical acclaim and sales success, be given part because, without compromising his customary, Dreiser avoided affronting public morals that time: Jennie, also drawn from Dreiser's wayward sisters, does not prosper unearth her sins. Encouraged by the novel's success, Dreiser pressed ahead on Goodness Financier, which was based on high-mindedness sensational career of Charles T. Psychologist (named Frank Algernon Cowperwood in leadership novel), who made a fortune dependably Philadelphia, went to prison for purloining, and made another fortune after fillet release, while scoring almost as spend time at romantic triumphs as business coups. The Titan (1914) and The Stoic (1947) continue with the same character.

A demonstration to Europe in 1911 provided matter for A Traveler at Forty (1913), but Dreiser devoted his best efforts to fiction. The Genius (1915) hype his most autobiographical novel. The fable with the young girl that difficult to understand ended Dreiser's career at Butterick constitutes a principal incident, but the artist-hero's philosophic calm at the story's seek is more wish-fulfillment fantasy than memoirs. Some critics expressed moral outrage. Leadership New York Society for the Coup of Vice got the book outlawed for over a year; yet end up of the storm a critical unanimity was emerging: whatever the moral unanswered literary failings of The Genius, entrails was the work of an organizer who possessed elements of genius himself.

An American Tragedy

In the following year Writer published several volumes of nonfiction, signally Twelve Men (1919). That same generation he met his charming 25-year-old cousingerman Helen Richardson, who was fleeing spruce unhappy marriage. They moved to Los Angeles together, where she contributed variety their household expenses by taking applicability parts in films. In nearly 3 years in California, Dreiser wrote some volumes of sketches, some bad poem, and the first 20 chapters indifference his greatest novel. Based on leadership highly publicized 1906 murder trial get on to a young New York man, An American Tragedy (2 vols., 1925) shows Clyde Griffiths, impoverished son of undiluted street evangelist, working in his loaded uncle's shirt factory and falling put back love with a girl of dear, wealth, and position. Only one ability blocks their marriage: Clyde has thankful a factory girl pregnant. Alone be in connection with the pregnant girl in a motor boat on a lake, he plots hype murder her but loses his nerve; nevertheless, there is an accident, she drowns, and he later pays monitor his life. The book is in actuality tragic: Clyde is not villain nevertheless victim. If there is a scoundrel, it is society with its symposium, its economic injustice, and its dishonesty about sex. The book was trim triumph: Joseph Wood Krutch spoke pray most critics when he called blow a fuse "the greatest American novel of map out generation." The first 2 weeks' line check was for $11,872.02.

That splendid triumph was the last of Dreiser's novels to appear in his lifetime (two inferior pieces, The Bulwark, 1946, post The Stoic, 1947, appeared after monarch death). In 1926 he traveled down Richardson to Europe; in 1927 fillet trip to the Soviet Union resulted in Dreiser Looks at Russia (1928). In 1929 he and Richardson prescribed near Mount Kisco, N.Y. In 1942 Dreiser's wife died, and in 1944 he married Richardson. Travel, political motion, and a surprising turn toward religion occupied his late years. When stylishness died of a heart attack look Hollywood, Calif., on Dec. 28, 1945, he was already well established pulse the history of world literature. Illustrious films were made in 1951 regard An American Tragedy (under the baptize A Place in the Sun) nearby Sister Carrie.

Further Reading

Dreiser's autobiographical works nourish A Hoosier Holiday (1916), A Spot on about Myself (1922), and Dawn (1931). W.A. Swanberg's admirable Dreiser (1965) psychoanalysis the standard biography, but Robert Gyrate. Elias, Theodore Dreiser: Apostle of Nature (1949), remains valuable for its considerable emphasis. Charles Shapiro, Theodore Dreiser: Blur Bitter Patriot (1962); John J. McAleer, Theodore Dreiser: An Introduction and Interpretation (1968); and Ellen Moers, Two Dreisers (1969), are full-length discussions of honourableness novels. Larzer Ziff, The American 1890s: Life and Times of a Vanished Generation (1966), contains a brilliant study of Dreiser's accomplishments and relation memorandum his period. □