An American Tragedy
A poor preacher's son wants a better life so badly that he talks himself into murder.
Clyde Griffiths, raised by street preachers and desperate for a life like the ones he sees from the outside, gets a factory girl pregnant just as a wealthy young woman takes an interest in him. Dreiser based it on a real 1906 murder and spends 800 unhurried pages on the social machinery that delivers Clyde to the boat, the trial and the chair. The indictment is of the aspiration itself.
Recommended by 1 Person
Keith McNally
Clyde Griffiths, the son of impoverished street preachers, has blistering aspirations that spiral tragically out of control. The book is an intensely detailed and closely observed novel of greed and ambition in early 20th-century America.
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