Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser. Born August 27, 1871 in Terre Haute, Indiana, USA - died December 28, 1945 in Hollywood, California. American writer and social activist.
Dreiser's parents - John Dreiser (Johann Paul Dreiser, a German who emigrated to the United States in 1844) and Sarah Schöneb were co-owners of a wool spinning mill. After the fire that destroyed the stocks of wool, my father worked at a construction site, where he was severely crippled. Three older sons soon died. The family moved for a long time and, in the end, settled in the provincial town of Terre Haute (Indiana). Theodore Dreiser, the ninth child in the family, was born on August 27, 1871. In 1887 he graduated from school. In 1889 he entered Indiana University at Bloomington. A year later, he stopped studying due to the fact that he could not pay for his studies. After that he worked as a clerk, a laundry van driver.
After some time, Dreiser decided to become a reporter. From 1892-1894 he was a reporter for newspapers in Pittsburgh, Toledo, Chicago, and St. Louis. In 1894 he moved to New York. His brother Paul Dresser started a music magazine, Every Month, and Dreiser began working as an editor for it. In 1897 he left the magazine. He wrote by order of the Metropolitan, Harpers, Cosmopolitan.
In November 1932, Dreiser signed a contract with Paramount to make a film based on Jenny Gerhardt. In 1944, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Dreiser an honorary gold medal for excellence in the arts and literature.
In 1930, Dreiser was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The majority of votes awarded the award to the writer Sinclair Lewis.
In May 1931, Dreiser's autobiographical book Dawn was published, where he described his childhood and youth.
In 1927, Dreiser accepted an invitation to visit the USSR and take part in the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. In early November, he arrived in the Soviet Union and on November 7 was in Red Square. During his 77-day journey, Dreiser visited Leningrad, Kyiv, Kharkov, Rostov-on-Don, Baku, Tbilisi, Odessa and other Soviet cities, met with Vladimir Mayakovsky and. After the trip, he published the book Dreiser Looks at Russia.
In the early 1930s, in the mining areas of the United States - Harlan and Belle - there were clashes between miners and the police. Together with the commission of the committee for the protection of political prisoners, Dreiser went to the scene. He was met with death threats from the mine owners and the police. A lawsuit was brought against Dreiser and it was proposed that he be withdrawn on the condition that the writer stop covering the events. However, Dreiser continued to speak in newspapers and on the radio, reporting on the state of affairs - beatings of union members and police reprisals. In 1931, he published Tragic America.
Dreiser often spoke at rallies, published in the pages of the US communist press. In 1932, he supported the American Communist Party candidate William Foster in the election campaign. In 1932 he was a member of the world anti-war congress, whose initiative committee included Henri Barbusse,.
In 1938, Dreiser was delegated to an anti-war conference in Paris, opened in connection with the bombing of Spanish cities. In the summer he visited Barcelona, where he met with the president and prime minister of the country. On the way back he visited England, where he hoped to meet with members of the British government. In the US, he managed to get a brief meeting with Roosevelt. After that, he unsuccessfully tried to organize a committee to supply food to Spain. As a result, several cargo ships with flour were sent to Spain at the direction of Roosevelt.
Theodore Dreiser is an American writer and social activist. The well-known American publicist and critic Henry Menken wrote after Dreiser's death: “He was a great artist and no other American of his generation left such a beautiful and strong mark on our history. American literature after him is as different as biology after Darwin's discovery. He was a man with a capital letter, possessed of originality, unshakable courage and deep sensuality.
Theodore Dreiser's work
The pinnacle of Theodore Dreiser's work is called the book. In it, the writer in the best possible way managed to display all his talent as a humanist and artist, looking for the truth and trying to pave a new path in literature and in life.
By nature, Dreiser is a naturalist artist. He builds all his novels based on a large amount of observational material and experience. Theodore Dreiser's books are the art of images accurate to the smallest detail, the art of things and facts.
The author masterfully depicts everyday situations in every detail, sometimes he introduces original documents into the text (letters from Roberta Alden in "An American Tragedy" are given in almost complete), quotes the press, closely follows the business transactions of his characters, explains stock exchange manipulations.
American critics have repeatedly expressed their comments about the writer's lack of his own style, without themselves understanding the nature of his naturalistic plot.
Books by Theodore Dreiser online:
Brief biography of Theodore Dreiser
Dreiser was born in 1871. The family emigrated from Germany to the United States. Parents were co-owners of a wool spinning mill, during the fire most of the yarn burned down, the writer's father was forced to go to the construction site. Hard times came, moving from one place to another, the family settled in the town of Terre-Hot, where Theodore Dreiser was born.
After graduating from a local school, the writer was enrolled at Indiana University, but after a year of study, due to financial difficulties, the young man had to drop out of school. Having tried all professions, he soon got a job as a reporter. In 1894 he moved to New York and founded his own musical newspaper there.
For three years he was a newspaper editor, then he quit and began to write for more eminent publications. In 1900, his first novel, The Carrie Sisters, was published. Critics condemned the book and subjected it to severe censorship, which plunged the writer into a protracted depression. However, things soon went up and the following works were successful.
In the 1920s, Dreiser visited the USSR. After completing the trip, the book "Dreiser looks at Russia" was published. In 1932, the writer signed a contract with Hollywood to film the novel Jenny Gerhardt. In 1938 he took part in a conference in Paris, where he opposed the bombing of Spain. In 1945 he became a member of the Communist Party in the USA. In December of the same year, Dreiser passed away.
Naturalism seeped into America from Europe in the 1890s. Formulated by the greatest theoretician of the "natural school" French writer E. Zola, the tasks of the "experimental novel" (objective, scientific coverage of facts) were solved by each of the above authors in their own way. Strictly speaking, there was no single "naturalism" in American literature, as well as "realism" or, in its time, "romanticism" - only one feature separated these different ways of seeing the world and the role of the human person in it.
The main difference between the literary movements was not the setting or theme of the works; the repulsive, unattractive aspects of life often fell into the field of view of romantics (less often, American realists), not only naturalists. This difference was not limited to the desire to tell the truth: it was claimed by writers of all directions. The difference between them lay in the degree to which the individual, portrayed by naturalists, realists, and romantics, was given the right to choose freely in life.
With rare exceptions, the romantic tradition affirmed the possibility of the triumph of the human will; the realists made it dependent on external, social conditions; naturalists reduced the freedom of personal choice to zero. Romantics almost equated man with the Creator, realists saw him as just a man, and naturalists viewed him as a physical object controlled by biological impulses and the laws of the environment, equally beyond his control.
The traditional theme for American literature of the 17th-19th centuries was the pursuit by a person of some life goal (survival, achievement of social recognition, self-improvement, etc.), the struggle with the forces of nature or adverse social conditions and his ultimate victory. Young naturalist writers have replaced the traditional hero image with a tiny figurine in a deterministic system that mockingly ignores him; the process of evolution is absolutely indifferent to the human personality, and therefore human life most often ends in tragedy ("The Boat" (1899) and "Maggie, Girl of the Streets" (1893) by Stephen Crane, "Wandover and the Beast" (1898) by Frank Norris, "Martin Eden (1909) by Jack London et al.).
Naturalism in America had a special and more important significance than its European counterpart: it was the most adequate way to reflect the inevitable and not always understandable material processes that were changing the nation before our eyes. For two decades, naturalism in its various versions dominated American literature, until European modernism began to penetrate (and also refract in its own way) into the United States, which constituted a powerful opposition to it.
The key figure in American naturalism is Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945). In his work, both the originality of naturalism in the United States and the evolution of naturalistic prose from the 19th to the 20th century were most fully manifested.
The youngest of all American naturalists (minus J. London), Dreiser came to literature when the most significant naturalistic works had already been published: the book of stories by H. Garland "Main Roads" (1891), "Maggie, the girl of the streets" (1893 ), "The Scarlet Sign of Valor" (1895) and "The Boat" (1899) by S. Crane, "Maktigue" (1899) by F. Norris. Dreiser characteristically developed the basic principles of their work.
In all his novels, there is the idea of "local color" or "veritism", set forth by H. Garland in the collection of essays "The Crash of Idols" (1894). Dreiser also responds to the call of F. Norris, author of the article "The Responsibility of the Novelist" (1903), to study "the interweaving of the forces of nature, social tendencies, racial impulses" using the example of concrete human life.
Dreiser and other naturalist writers of his and the next generation, who were called "mudrakers" in the United States, compared their work with the artistic experience of European adherents of the "natural school" (Zola, Gissing, Moore, etc.), as well as neo-romantics (Stevenson , Kipling), which made it possible for their works to intersect interest in positivism, Nietzsche's ideas and social issues.
T. Dreiser the novelist, although he pays tribute to the theme of the "curse" of the flesh, nature, sex, is not a dispassionate observer of some kind of "experiment", but a person who clearly sympathizes with his characters. All his works are based on a specific fact, and often this fact is borrowed from his personal life. Dreiser invariably sympathizes with the heroes of his novels; even when they commit a crime, the author shifts the blame on society and on the indifference to man of the cosmic forces of nature. The irresistible Americanism of his ambitious men, such as Cowperwood and Caroline Meeber, accurate details, the reporter's ability to captivate with the "pressure" of the material redeem the sometimes excessive melodrama of situations and a penchant for the "beauties" of style.
Born in the small river town of Terre Haute, Indiana, the twelfth of thirteen children of a fanatically religious and often unemployed German immigrant, Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was familiar from childhood with lack of money and rejection. From the age of fifteen, he was forced to combine his studies at school with the low-paid labor of a laborer (washing dishes in a cafe, peddler in a laundry, etc.) in Terre Haute and the surrounding area. After graduating from school, with the funds that his teacher gave him, Dreiser entered the Indiana University in Bloomington, but a year later he left him and left, like many aspiring American writers before and after him, in the world of journalism.
He contributed to many newspapers in the cities of the Midwest, and in 1892 got a job in a large "Chicago Daily Globe". "Upstart city", "butcher city", the site of the World's Fair in 1893, the city - the personification of progress, Chicago seemed to embody the naturalistic principles of the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest.
Chicago stimulated the imagination of T. Dreiser, who was enthusiastic about American urbanism and poeticized the industry and the activities of the steel magnates. He supplemented his working and journalistic "universities" with intensive reading of the books closest to him: Leo Tolstoy, Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Herbert Spencer. Since 1897, Dreiser devoted himself entirely to literary activity.
Chicago was not the only city where he drew inspiration: Dreiser was a wanderer by nature and by conviction. He lived (having no permanent home anywhere) in St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, New York, visited the Soviet Union in 1927-1928.
The fascination with urbanism and progress was paradoxically combined in Dreiser with a tragic attitude towards being. At the heart of the world, - he believed, - is the seething of blind vital energy, which is accidentally refracted into deeds, good or evil - as it happens, and only art, creative work is similar to the "motivating force of love." It is no coincidence that a number of Dreiser's works are dedicated to people of art: "Sister Kerry" (1900), "Genius" (1915), "Sunrise" (1931).
Among his most famous books are the novels "Jenny Gerhardt" (1911); The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914) and the posthumously published Stoic (1947), which made up the so-called "trilogy of desire"; famous "American Tragedy" (1925). Throughout his life, Dreiser did not stop writing journalism ("Dreiser looks at Russia", 1928; "Tragic America", 1931; "America is worth saving", 1941).
In the last years of his life, he became especially interested in politics; it is symptomatic that Dreiser almost simultaneously joined the ranks of the Communist Party of the USA and members of the Quaker community. He was a naive thinker, and his political leanings were vague. But as a writer who wrote all his life about the driving force of desire and the inevitability of defeat, Dreiser largely determined the tone of American prose of the 20th century.
Dreiser. Novel "Sister Kerry"
Sister Carrie (1900) is Theodore Dreiser's first novel. Like the rest of the writer's works, it is based on factual material: it is partially based on the biography of one of the author's sisters, Emma. The novel was initially banned. The publisher, who agreed, on the advice of F. Norris, to publish the book, considered it immoral and printed it in a tiny edition of a thousand copies, which (minus the three hundred bought out by Norris) were buried in warehouses. In a noticeably cropped form, the novel was published in 1907 (after its success in London, where it was published with the help of Norris). The original version saw the light only in the 1980s.
The protagonist of the book, a young provincial Carolina Meeber, arrives in a huge alluring Chicago, where she hopes to find her place in the sun. Like a typical American of her time, she equates happiness with material success. She is not alien to practicality and individualism. However, she is direct and responsive. The lively, complex and truly American character of the heroine is an undoubted achievement of the writer who was then beginning.
Kerry, this "little soldier of fortune", as its author calls it, at first almost an idealist, manages to succeed quickly enough at the cost of losing her ideals - at the expense of men who react to her attractiveness. As Kerry climbs the social ladder and approaches the "dream", the heroine's selfishness and prudence increase and her ability to compassion is muffled.
The first step in Carrey's rise is the traveling salesman Drouet, who embodies the sensual contentment of matter in the novel. To him, a girl who lost her job after an illness is pushed by hopelessness. "The voice of need answered for her," says Dreiser. The second step is Hurstwood, to whom Kerry is genuinely attracted. But a good kind man with a broken fate, Hurstwood embodies, in fact, a dream multiplied by spinelessness. The love triangle "Drouet-Kerry-Hurstwood" illustrates in Dreiser's theme the adaptability of the organism to the environment. The success of one character is inevitably offset by the fall of another.
According to Spencer, the process of social equilibrium is governed by chance, and in Dreiser's novel it is precisely such a case that determines the fate of Hurstwood and Kerry: the safe from which Hurstwood took the money "suddenly" slams shut, and the manager is forced to flee with his mistress towards his own poverty and death. "The case" - Kerry's frown on the stage - contributes to the rapid development of her theatrical career.
Carrey's rise to the pinnacle of success parallels Hurstwood's downward slide. Having made a stage career, Carrey leaves him to fend for himself. Having fallen out of his usual environment, Hurstwood loses his social role, and his death becomes the death of a person running away from himself. But not only Hurstwood sacrifices Kerry for the sake of fame and material well-being. She has to extinguish the "spark of God" in herself - an undoubted acting talent: an omnipotent chance makes her a variety show star, receiving huge fees, and she can only dream uselessly, sitting alone in a rocking chair, about the creative life of a dramatic actress.
The "male" version of this fate of a talented person was later shown by Jack London (1876-1916) in the novel Martin Eden (1909). What allowed the hero to get out of the bottom (ambition, Spencer's ideas about a place under the sun, love for a girl from a rich family) destroys him. Martin Eden becomes a recognized writer, but breaking away from his roots, he begins to despise the world of the rich, loses the meaning of life and commits suicide.
The finale of "Sisters Kerry" is not so tragic. The fate of the heroine is loneliness, which, according to Dreiser, is natural. Success in love and creativity are incompatible, and the latter can only be achieved at the cost of losing the former. But Kerry herself is not able to love and even just empathize with another person. Bitter irony is felt in the title of the novel. Kerry is not a sister - not Minnie, not Drouet, not Hurstwood. Kerry is the very act of life, the very immoral elements of the body's adaptation to the environment, which is emphasized by her profession as an actress.
Dreiser does not condemn the heroine, who has scratched her way to the maximum success possible for a woman in this world indifferent to man. But he regrets about her, as well as about all human beings - pitiful puppets in the hands of forces they do not understand. "Oh Kerry, Kerry! O blind inclinations of the human heart! - exclaims the author, -<...>In your rocking chair by the window you will sit alone, dreaming and yearning. In your rocking chair by the window, you will dream of happiness such as you will never know."
African American Literature. Dubois "Souls of Black People"
The turn of the 19th-20th centuries is a time when the expansion of national identity takes place, and the voices of not individual indigenous or black Americans in US literature, but the voice of emerging Indian and African American literatures as a whole, begin to sound more and more clearly.
Native American artistic creativity continued to develop, mainly in line with the "regional narrative", one of the brightest and most characteristic examples of which is the book of the Sioux Indian Charles Eastman "From the Wilderness of the Forests to Civilization" (1916). Along with such a narrative based on autobiographical material, poetry and short prose, mostly a humorous story, became more and more widespread. In the literature of Native Americans, oriented towards the "white" tradition at the turn of the century, ethnic originality was manifested only in the placement of accents (the comic "simpleton" often turned out to be a white person), as well as in the special poetry of descriptions of nature and human feelings: the Indians were not afraid to be too eloquent .
The novel, which later became the central genre, remained the least developed area of Native American literature until the First World War. Sophia Ellis Callahan (Cheroke tribe) with her novel "Winema" (1891) and Simon Pokagan (Potavatami tribe), whose "Queen of the Forest" (1899) was the first a novel about Indians and on Indian material.
Significantly more extensive and aesthetically expressive was African-American literature, which at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries made not just a step, but a powerful leap forward. It was during this period that "black" literature became an original and independent, but an integral branch of US literature. During this period, as a result of the ever-increasing Great Migration, the vast majority of black Americans became city dwellers. The main thing is that during this great "exodus", as if according to the Biblical "scenario", a whole generation managed to be born and grow up, which knew about slavery only by hearsay.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, young African American writers posed theoretically and artistically embodied the question no longer about the sad life of slaves, but about black consciousness, about the "souls of black people", about the current position of the "new Negro" in white society, about the prospects for further coexistence of races. . A kind of controversy unfolded between writers and public figures Booker Washington and William Dubois (1868-1963). It is interesting that both proceeded from the same “fresh” then discovery: black Americans “have the same feelings, thoughts and aspirations as people with white skin” / W. Dubois.
The first of these, in the remarkable book of memoirs Out of Slavery (1901), put forward the idea of a future "parallel prosperity of the two races." William Dubois, in his brilliant multi-genre book The Souls of Black Men (1903), recognized the inevitability of racial confrontation. In an effort to raise the spirits of his brethren, to straighten out what he called their "dual consciousness" (they are both Americans and blacks, that is, as if inferior), Dubois put forward the polemical slogan: "Black is beautiful!"
This slogan had a long and complex impact on the entire Negro culture of the 20th century, being perceived differently at different stages of its development: at one time (by black extremists of the 1960s) it was mistaken for a call to "beat the whites", which absolutely did not correspond to the idea of Dubois, a man intelligent and peaceful, even relying on the goodwill of the blacks and the philanthropy of the whites (the novel "Behind the Silver Fleece", 1911).
In other periods, these words were adequately perceived - as a call to be proud of the aesthetic richness of the African spiritual heritage and to develop an original African American culture (in the 1920s and 1980s-1990s). "In the minds of many Negroes, the name Dubois entered as organically as spirituals, as blues<...>. He became a factor in our culture," testified the exceptionally talented mid-20th-century African-American writer Loraine Hansberry.
At the same time, at the turn of the century, W. Dubois powerfully shook only the awakening black consciousness, breathed into it calm self-confidence (Emerson's "self-confidence"), which the race of former slaves was deprived of. The process of rapid emancipation of consciousness is very noticeable in the evolution of African American artistic creativity of that time. If Charles Chesnut in the novel "In the Grip of Tradition" (1901) described the terrible Negro pogrom perpetrated by whites after the Civil War in one of the cities of the South, then the poet and prose writer Paul Lawrence Dunbar, created only a year later with the novel "Sport of the Gods" (1902), introduced into literary practice, the image of the life of New York Harlem - the Negro ghetto, which soon became the capital of black America.
James Waldo Johnson, poet, prose writer and prominent public figure, in a psychologically subtle and technically virtuoso (stylized as a "slave's story") novel "The Autobiography of a Former Colored" (1912), for the first time in American literature, brought pictures of the life of various segments of the country's colored population: black factory workers workers and employees of the railroad, New York "colored" bohemia.
Along with the rapid development of the ethnic literatures of the United States that had already taken shape earlier, the turn of the 19th–20th centuries also saw the formation of new ones, brought to life by a significant expansion of the nation due to the influx of immigrants into the country. Some of these new literatures in the future were destined to create perhaps the brightest pages of American literature. We are talking, first of all, about the Jewish-American tradition, which then became a completely independent, although not a separate branch of US literature of the 20th century.
This tradition, based on the ancient culture of Judaism, on the Talmud and Kabbalah, widely using Jewish folklore with its specific sad humor, is distinguished mainly by the depiction of the life of Jews or Americans of Jewish origin, and most importantly, by the authors' sense of belonging to the long-suffering "chosen people", a sense of their own " Jewishness". Jewish-American literature is characterized by a special poetics, in which the motifs of "threat to the Jewish community" and "incompleteness" dominate.
The history of Jewish-American literature began in the mid-1890s, when the first massive wave of emigration from Russia, the Baltic states, and Eastern Europe brought with it many Jews. They preferred the hopeless life in the Russian Empire - the "Pale of Settlement" and Jewish pogroms - the path they commanded to search for the "Promised Land", which led to the other side of the world to America, "the abode of equals."
The first generation of Jewish-American writers is the generation of immigrants. These are Abraham Kahan, Henry Roth (the future father of Philip Roth), Daniel Fuchs, Meyer Levin, Andzia Jezerska and others. Almost all of their works are autobiographical: they tell either about the experience of immigration, like the story by A. Jezerskaya "America and I" and the novel by A. Kahan "The Rise of David Lewinsky" (1917), or about the life of Jewish immigrants in the ghetto. A. Kahan's novel "Yeckle: A History of the New York Ghetto" (1896) opens Jewish-American literature.
All these works depict the collapse of the myth of the Promised Land. The aching feeling of homelessness becomes the lot of the hero of "Yekla: The Story of the New York Ghetto". Complete hopelessness leads the hero of the novel by G. Roth "Call it a dream" to search for the Promised Land in death. David Lewinsky in the novel by A. Kahan achieves material well-being only at the cost of a conscious rejection of himself. However, having shaved off his beard and sidelocks, which for David means not just a tribute to Western fashion, but a kind of initiation ritual, he did not become an American, but remained in his soul a small-town Jew from Lithuania, and therefore financial success for him is a final moral defeat.
The release of Theodore Dreiser's first book resulted in such problems and a lot of criticism that it eventually led the author to a protracted depression.
But the subsequent fate of the novel "Sister Carrie" was happy: it was translated into many languages of the world, readers fell in love with it and continues to be a classic of world literature.
More and more new generations of book lovers are happy to immerse themselves in the study of the difficult fate of Caroline Meiber ...
Financier (1912)
The famous writer Theodore Dreiser has long occupied an important place among the classics of world literature.
Business issues, people who succeeded in it and who lost everything, excited Dreiser even in his younger years, when he worked as a reporter.
The plot of the novel "The Financier" tells about Frank Cowperwood - a successful businessman and the owner of a fabulous fortune. He had a certain magnetism, a supernatural power over people. Money for him is not an end, but a means that allowed Cowperwood to live, following the principle: "My desires come first."
Titan (1914)
We present to your attention the second novel "Titan" from the famous series "Trilogy of Desire" by Theodore Dreiser.
The cycle is based on the fate of the American millionaire C. Yerkes, who played a huge role in creating the public transport system in Chicago and the London Underground.
Cowperwood, having been released from a Philadelphia prison and having made several successful speculations during the stock market panic, which allowed him to return the wealth, decides to continue the business in Chicago. The novel tells about the period in the life of the main character after the Philadelphia events ("The Financier") and precedes the last part - the novel "The Stoic".
Genius (1915)
At the center of the narrative of the novel "Genius" is the talented artist Eugene Witla, who is in many ways similar to his creator - the famous author Theodore Dreiser. They are united not only by biographical similarities, but also by their views on aesthetics.
The path to success for Eugene was very difficult. He gains wealth and a respectable position in society at the cost of huge sacrifices.
But Eugene is a hard-to-break personality. He managed to survive a creative and mental crisis. Being a creative person, he is in an endless search and discovers a unique area for himself - "the great art of dreams" ...
American Tragedy (1925)
An American Tragedy is the most famous novel by the eminent American author Theodore Dreiser.
He liked to repeat: “No one creates tragedies - life creates them. The authors only describe them.
Dreiser was able to reflect the tragedy of Clive Griffiths so talentedly in his novel that his fate does not leave indifferent the younger generation of readers. A young man who has tasted all the charm of a rich life is so eager to get a status in their society that he is ready to commit a crime for this ...
Stoick (1947)
The Stoic is the third and final book in Theodore Dreiser's famous Trilogy of Desire, which is based on the fate of the life of American businessman C. Yerkes, who played a significant role in the emergence of the public transport system in Chicago and the London Underground.
The main character - Frank Cowperwood - decides to move his business to London, planning to start creating subway lines.
The hero, as before, is ready for anything, he is not afraid of any obstacles, because he dreams of remaining at the top of the financial Olympus until the end of his life.
Theodore Dreiser was an American writer and journalist, born in Terre Haute, Indiana, on August 27, 1871, and died in Hollywood on December 28, 1945.
Theodore Dreiser biography and personal life
Theodore was born into a very religious family, in which the father was a pious Catholic, and the mother converted to Catholicism, the girl was from Mennon farmers.
There were thirteen children in the family, Theodore was the twelfth and ninth of those who survived infancy.
From 1899 to 1890 Theodore Dreiser studied at Indiana University, in addition to studying, the young man wrote articles on various topics, and after some time became a reporter for the Chicago Globe and St. Louis Globe-Democrat. He wrote in these papers about crime, political events, and writers such as Nathaniel Horton and William Dean Howells. In addition, he interviewed public figures: Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison.
In 1898, Theodore married the beautiful Sarah White, whom he divorced in 1909.
From 1919 Dreiser began to live with his cousin Helen Richardson (1894-1955), whom he eventually married in 1944.
Theodore Dreiser, books
Dreiser is a naturalist. He builds his works on colossal material of observations and experience. His art is the art of accurate depiction to the point of scrupulousness, the art of facts and things. Dreiser conveys life in all its smallest details: he introduces documents, sometimes almost entirely taken from reality (the letters of Roberta Alden in "An American Tragedy" are given almost in full), quotes from the press, explains at length the stock exchange speculations of his heroes, carefully traces the development of their business enterprises and etc. American critics have repeatedly accused Dreiser of a lack of style, not understanding its special nature.
Based on intensive journalistic work, he took great pleasure in describing Chicago's dynamic development, extreme poverty and extreme wealth. Theodore was a pioneer of the naturalistic movement in the United States, fascinated by the novels of Zola and Balzac. He often addressed the problem of social inequality. Dreiser was a major influence on the next generation, though critics sometimes accuse him of heavy or no style and prolonged agony.
His first novel "Sister Carrie"(1900), tells the story of an 18-year-old girl who runs away from the countryside to Chicago, becomes a servant, moves with her lover to New York, and becomes a popular actress (1952 film by Wyler).
Topic "American Tragedy"- the pursuit of luck: a young boy kills a poor bride during pregnancy, when the prospect of marrying a rich girl appears.
In turn, the so-called "Trilogy of Desires" ("The Financier", "Titan" and "Stoic") is a story about the life of a Chicago financial magnate, modeled on the biography of Yerksav.
Trilogy "Desire" - "The Financier", "Titan", "Stoic"
Trilogy of Desires
In 1912, the first novel of the trilogy "Desire"- book "Financier". The work, based on the biography of the American millionaire Charles Yerkes, tells readers the life story of Frank Cowperwood.
The protagonist was born into the family of a small bank employee, who, upon reaching adulthood, gave his beloved child a job in a company in which he himself worked. Having established himself in the organization as a talented businessman, Frank after a while left to conquer Philadelphia. There, the stockbroker had a couple of successful transactions and became a millionaire. The new status allowed the young entrepreneur to get into the elite circles of the Philadelphia high society.
In the book, along with a description of the protagonist's financial fraud, a second storyline is also held, which tells about Cowperwood's personal life. Dreiser described the character of his novel without embellishment, endowing him with both positive and negative qualities. In the end, not wanting to reckon with the generally accepted principles and rules of behavior in high society, Frank's rebellious nature brings him to prison.
Actions of the next novel "Titanium" 1914 is set in Chicago. Unable to draw conclusions, Frank returns to his native environment of fraud. Now his target is gas and transport companies. The financial genius chooses the carrot and stick method for himself. He bribes some officials and intimidates others. Competitors, whose interests were inadvertently hurt by the businessman, enter into a fierce war for power with the objectionable businessman.
Frank Cowperwood loses the battle and goes into the shadows. In the same period, a black streak begins in the family life of the protagonist. The wife, having learned about the relationship of her husband with a young girl, tries to commit suicide. Frank saves the missus and persuades her to go with him to London, where, according to him, they will start a new life.
Actions of the third, final novel "Stoic"(published after the death of the writer in 1947) are set in the capital of France. There, Cowperwood is building a subway line. Despite his considerable age, the minion of fate is still trying to put all the money in the world into his pocket. This time, kidney disease interferes with his plans. After another aggravation, the man, whose ambitions did not allow him to live a happy and peaceful life, dies, having managed to confess his sins to his wife and mistress before his death.
Dreiser himself had to deal with censorship(some books published in England) and financial difficulties - early books did not sell well despite criticism, so he continued to write for the press, he was also an editor in various magazines, including the prestigious women's magazine Delineator in New York (1907 -ten). In 1911-25 he published 14 books, overcoming a writer's block caused by problems with the release of Sister Carrie.
In 1944, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Dreiser honorary gold medal "for outstanding achievements in the field of art and literature."
December 28, 1945 Theodore Dreiser died of heart failure in Hollywood, California, USA.
