Contents Plan of the Series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxii Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii
A Brief Life of Theodore Dreiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 An American Tragedy Chronology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 1. The “American Tragedy” Archetype. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 The Horatio Alger Myth of Success. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 “The Alger Hero”—John G. Cawelti Sidebar: Alger’s “Emphasis on Luck”—Richard Weiss Sidebar: “A Watch and a New Suit”—Gary Scharnhorst Dreiser and the Alger Myth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 “A Petty and Wholly Material Viewpoint”: Excerpts from Three Memoirs—Theodore Dreiser, Dawn, A Book About Myself, and A Hoosier Holiday Sidebar: “A World Such as He Had Never Known”: Clyde Embraces the Alger Myth—from An American Tragedy, Book Two, Chapters III and X Plot as Parody: Dreiser’s Attack on the Alger Theme in An American Tragedy—Paul A. Orlov The “Miss Rich/Miss Poor” Type of Crime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 “A Typically American Tragedy”—Dreiser interview, Denver Post, 28 November 1926 “Clyde’s Malady”—Dreiser interview, Philadelphia Public Ledger, 3 July 1927 I Find the Real American Tragedy—Dreiser, Mystery Magazine, February 1935 Facsimile: First page of Dreiser’s unpublished essay “American Tragedies” Sidebar: “The American National Heart”—Dreiser, “American Tragedies” Dreiser’s Real American Tragedy—Kathryn M. Plank Sidebar: “A Young Dealer in Perfumes”—Dreiser, “American Tragedies” Sidebar: “His True American Ideal”—Dreiser, “American Tragedies” Early Attempts to Write about “Miss Poor” and “Miss Rich” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Gardiner’s Terrible Arraignment of Molineux—unidentified newspaper clipping Introduction to The “Rake”—Plank Facsimile: The first manuscript page of The “Rake” xiii
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The “Rake”—Dreiser Sidebar: “A Truly Pathetic Tragedy”—Dreiser, “American Tragedies” Murder in the North Woods: The Chester Gillette-Grace Brown Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 The Tragedy of the “North Woods”—Eleanor W. Franz Sidebar: The Murder Case and the Novel The New York World as a Source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 An Eye Witness of the Murder of Grace Brown—New York World, 18 November 1904 Sidebar: “All the Data I Could Find”—Dreiser to W. Randall Whitman, 23 August 1930 “Mason’s Opening Charge”: Excerpt from An American Tragedy—Book Three, Chapter XX Gillette Tells His Story; Says Girl Was Suicide—New York World, 29 November 1906 “Clyde, Pointer in Hand”: Excerpt from An American Tragedy—Book Three, Chapter XXIV Admitting Guilt, Gillette Calmly Goes to Chair—New York World, 31 March 1908 “Before Governor Waltham”: Excerpt from An American Tragedy—Book Three, Chapter XXXIV The Love Letters of Grace Brown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Grace Brown to Chester Gillette, 11 April 1906 Sidebar: “Peanuts!” “Popcorn!”—excerpt from An American Tragedy, Book Three, Chapter XIX Roberta Alden to Clyde Griffiths, 10 June: Excerpt from An American Tragedy—Book Two, Chapter XLII Grace Brown to Chester Gillette, 20 June 1906 Roberta Alden to Clyde Griffiths, 14 June: Excerpt from An American Tragedy—Book Two, Chapter XLIV Roberta Alden to Clyde Griffiths, 30 June: Excerpt from An American Tragedy—Book Two, Chapter XLV A Trip to Upstate New York . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 “A First-Hand Look”—Craig Brandon Sidebar: Cortland at the Turn of the Century—James M. Milne Sidebar: Dreiser’s Lycurgus—An American Tragedy, Book Two, Chapter V Dreiser’s Use of the Gillette-Brown Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 “More Imagination Than History”—Brandon “The Shapelessness of Fact and the Form of Fiction”: Dreiser’s Transformation of the Gillette Case—Donald Pizer Sidebar: The Gillette Skirt Company—Milne Sidebar: “Lonely and Bare”—An American Tragedy, Book Two, Chapter XL “A Fresh Look at Aspects of American Life”—Shelley Fisher Fishkin Sidebar: “The Lock-Lock of His Own Oars”—An American Tragedy, Book Two, Chapter XLVII Sidebar: “Rough and Strange Faces”—An American Tragedy, Book Three, Chapter XIX 2. The Social Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 The Traditional Conservative Base . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Americans Are Still Interested in Ten Commandments.—For the Other Fellow, Says Dreiser—New York Call, 13 March 1921 xiv
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“Still a Long Way from The Enlightenment”—H. L. Mencken “Conklin and His Wife”—Dreiser, Dawn “The Sheer Force of Her Youth”—Helen Dreiser, My Life with Dreiser Sidebar: “Wrapped Up in the Notion of Evangelizing the World”—An American Tragedy, Book One, Chapter II “Many Young Girls Like You”—Dreiser, Dawn Sidebar: “Even Taboo as a Subject”—Dreiser, Birth Control Review, 2 April 1921 The Crime of Abortion—Leslie J. Reagan Sidebar: “Found Herself Pregnant”—An American Tragedy, Book Two, Chapter XXXIII “I Must Get Out of It”: Excerpt from An American Tragedy—Book Two, Chapter XXXVII The Factory and Town as Conservative Social Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 “One Had to Have Castes”: Excerpt from An American Tragedy, Book Two, Chapter IV Sidebar: The Coolidge Years—Ronald Allen Goldberg From Low Cost Detachable Collars to American High Culture: Dreiser’s Rhetoric of Cloth—Roark Mulligan “Employees, First, Last and All the Time”: Excerpt from An American Tragedy, Book Two, Chapter XI “A ‘Good-Bad’ Girl Syndrome”—Richard Lingeman “Local Taboos and Restrictions”: Excerpt from An American Tragedy—Book Two, Chapter XIV “A City Seducer and Betrayer”: Excerpts from An American Tragedy—Book Three, Chapter IV Youth, Class, and Consumerism in Dreiser’s An American Tragedy—Michael Spindler “In a Double Bind”: Representations of Grace Brown—Nancy M. Donovan Press and Prison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 “Yellow Ideas and Features”—Frank L. Mott “A Crime Sensation”: Excerpt from An American Tragedy—Book Three, Chapter XII “That Dreadful, Ghastly Chair”: Excerpt from An American Tragedy—Book Three, Chapter XXVI Sidebar: “The Grandest Success of the Age”—Scott Christianson “Indefinable Terrors and Despairs”: Excerpt from An American Tragedy—Book Three, Chapter XXIX The New Twenties Ethos: Automobiles, Flappers, and Resorts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 “A Central Factor in the Everyday Lives of Ordinary Americans”—David E. Kyvig Sidebar: Dreiser and the Automobile—Douglas Brinkley “Conflicts between Parents and Children”—James J. Flink “Frankness and Freedom”: The “Flapper-on-the-Loose Effect”—J. C. Furnas “Everybody Dances These Days”: Excerpts from An American Tragedy—Book One, Chapter XI; Book Two, Chapter XVIII; and Book Two, Chapter XXVI “The Magnificence of a Palace”: Excerpt from Jennie Gerhardt—Chapter I “Through the Gates of Paradise”: Excerpts from An American Tragedy—Book One, Chapters IV, VI, and IX “The Cave of Wonders”—Ellen Moers “The First Full Revelation of Heaven”—Paul A. Orlov “All That He Had Dreamed Of”: Excerpt from An American Tragedy—Book Two, Chapter XLIII Sidebar: “The American Summer Resort Scene”—Dreiser, A Hoosier Holiday and Dawn xv
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Mechanism and Freudianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 “The Root of Our Ethics”—Jacques Loeb “Every Waan Ave Us”—Dreiser, The Hand of the Potter Sidebar: “I Read Your Book”—Dreiser to Jacques Loeb, 29 May 1919 It—Dreiser Sidebar: “It Has Been Shown Experimentally”—Dreiser, Sister Carrie, Chapter XXXIII Sidebar: “The Appeal of Great Tragedy”—Dreiser to A. A. Brill, 20 January 1919 “A Strong, Revealing Light”—Dreiser, Psychoanalytical Review, July 1931 “To Explain Life by Physico-Chemical Laws”—Moers “Between Loeb and Brill”—Moers “The Impulses of the Id”—Louis J. Zanine “The Efrit Emerging”: Excerpts from An American Tragedy—Book Two, Chapters XLIV, XLV, and XLVII 3. Composition, Publication, and Reception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Sidebar: A Day in L.A.—25 January 1921 A Los Angeles Beginning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Facsimile: The first two pages of Dreiser’s initial draft of An American Tragedy Sidebar: The Kubitz Typescript—An American Tragedy, Book One, Chapter I Facsimile: The opening paragraphs of the Kubitz typescript Facsimile: Passage describing Clyde Griffiths in the Kubitz typescript New York, 1923–1925 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 “Steady Progress” and “Constant Backtracking”: The Composition of An American Tragedy—Donald Pizer Sidebar: A Day in New York—6 April 1924 Sidebar: “A Deal of Labor Ahead”—Dreiser to Louise Campbell, 2 May 1924 Sidebar: “I Write and Rewrite”—Dreiser to Helen, 18 June 1924 Sidebar: “A Prolific and Voluminous Writer”—John W. Reynolds Facsimile: Revised typescript pages for a passage intended for Book Two Facsimile: Revised typescript pages for the passage describing Roberta’s death at Big Bittern Lake “Roberta’s Cries Still in His Ears”: Excerpt from An American Tragedy—Book Two, Chapter XLVII Facsimile: Opening of a deleted chapter initially concluding Book One Facsimile: Ending of the deleted chapter Facsimile: Omitted section initially intended for Book Three Publication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 “The Big Novel”: The Publication of An American Tragedy—Walker Gilmore “Banned in Boston”—Gilmore Early Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 Mr. Dreiser in Tragic Realism—Stuart P. Sherman, New York Herald-Tribune Books, 3 January 1926 Theodore Dreiser Writes Another Novel—E. F. Edgett, Boston Evening Transcript, 9 January 1926 xvi
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Sidebar: “Demands Attention”—Robert Duffus, The New York Times Book Review, 10 January 1926 “An Unforgettable Experience”—Donald Davidson, Nashville Tennessean, 31 January 1926 A Second Wave of Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 Crime and Punishment—Joseph Wood Krutch, The Nation, 10 February 1926 Dreiser in 840 Pages—H. L. Mencken, The American Mercury, March 1926 “A Kind of Greatness”—T. K. Whipple, The New Republic, 17 March 1926 Beyond Good or Evil—Carl Van Doren, The Century, April 1926 “A Colossal Derelict on the Ocean of Literature”—William Lyon Phelps, Scribner’s Magazine, April 1926 “Spawned of a Vast Industrialism”—E. M. Kayden, Sewanee Review, October 1926 English Reviews. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 “A Very Great and Very Portentous Novel”—The Spectator, 9 October 1926 “One of the Most Remarkable Writers of Our Time”—Edwin Muir, The Nation and Athenaeum, 16 October 1926
4. Stage and Film Adaptations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 Sidebar: “With a Signed Contract in Hand”: The Negotiation for the Film Rights of An American Tragedy—Tom Dardis The 1926 Kearney Stage Production. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 “An American Tragedy” Scores a Triumph—The New York Times, 12 October 1926 Facsimile: Cast list for the Kearney play Facsimile: Synopsis of scenes Facsimile: Script for the prologue “An American Tragedy” Evokes Ovation at First Performance—C. R. Davis, New York Herald-Tribune, 12 October 1926 “A Great Adventure”—Jack Lait, Variety (New York), 13 October 1926 Dreiser Squeezes In—Frank Vreeland, New York Telegram, 15 October 1926 “The Shadow of Its Deeper Source”—Stark Young, The New Republic, 3 November 1926 Sidebar: “Technical Difficulties”—The New York Times, 5 December 1926, and Dreiser to Mr. Kohl, 8 February 1927 The 1936 Piscator Stage Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 “A Complex History”—X. Theodore Barber Sidebar: “Counter to Some of My Economic and Sociologic Principles”—Dreiser to Lena Goldschmidt, 25 August 1930 “The Staging of Case of Clyde Griffiths”—X. Theodore Barber Facsimile: Erwin Piscator’s foreword to An American Tragedy Facsimile: Prelude for the 1935 production of An American Tragedy “Clyde Griffiths” vs. Expressionism—Burns Mantle, New York Daily News, 14 March 1936 Sidebar: “A Boy of Cheap and Sniveling Character”—Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times, 14 March 1936 Sidebar: “What the Germans Made Out of It”—Robert Benchley, The New Yorker, 21 March 1936 “Giving Point to the Story”—Stanley Burnshaw, “Case of Clyde Griffiths,” New Masses, 31 March 1936 xvii
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Dreiser Simplified—Joseph Wood Krutch, The Nation, 1 April 1936 Dreiser versus Melodrama—John W. Gassner, New Theatre, April 1936 The 1930 Eisenstein Scenario for Paramount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 “Eisenstein and Paramount’s Internal Battle”—Oksana Bulgakowa “Collisions with American Realities”: The “Inner Monologue” Technique—Sergei Eisenstein “The Surface of Big Bittern Lake”: A Sequence from Eisenstein’s An American Tragedy—Eisenstein and Ivor Montagu “Cinematic Appeal”: Eisenstein’s Reading of An American Tragedy—Keith Cohen “A Legitimate Interpretation”—Lawrence E. Hussman The 1931 Paramount Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 Dreiser to Jesse L. Lasky, 10 March 1931 Dreiser to Harrison Smith, 25 April 1931 Dreiser’s Attorneys to Paramount, 26 June 1931 Facsimile: Opening and closing of Dreiser’s attorneys’ 26 June 1931 letter to Paramount Court Refuses Dreiser’s Suit against Film—New York Herald, 2 August 1931 Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy” Ponderous as Film Attraction—Regina Crewe, New York American, 6 August 1931 Sidebar: “Summed Up in an Eleven-Reel Picture”—Mordaunt Hall, The New York Times, 6 August 1931 Dreiser, Reluctant, in the Films—Matthew Josephson, The New Republic, 19 August 1931 “Not a ‘Whodunit’ but a ‘Hedunit’”—Hussman The 1951 George Stevens Production. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 “An Honest Job of Picture-Making”—G. A., New York Herald-Tribune, 29 August 1951 Facsimile: Opening pages of the screenplay for A Place in the Sun Sidebar: “Rich and Rewarding”—A. H. Weiler, The New York Times, 19 August 1951 Dreiser’s Place on the Screen—George Barbarow, Hudson Review, Summer 1952 Sidebar: “Insight without Inventories”—Time, 10 September 1951 “Diminishes Its Source”—Hussman 5. Criticism and Later History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333 “A Profoundly Tragic Sense of Man’s Fate”—F. O. Matthiessen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333 Sidebar: American and Foreign Editions of An American Tragedy “A Difference of Emphasis:” Dreiser’s Socialism and An American Tragedy—Charles C. Walcutt . . . . . . . . . . . 338 “The Poetry of Destiny:” Dreiser’s Creation of Clyde’s Story—Robert Penn Warren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 Theodore Dreiser and the Tragedy of the Twenties—Robert H. Elias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348 “New Territory of the Self”—Philip Fisher. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353 Crime and Punishment in Dreiser’s An American Tragedy: The Legal Debate—Donald Pizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 Works by Theodore Dreiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 Works about Theodore Dreiser and An American Tragedy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377 Cumulative Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 xviii
