An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (i can read book club .TXT) ๐
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Clyde Griffithโs parents are poor street-preachers, but Clyde doesnโt โbelieve,โ and finds their work demeaning. At fifteen he gets a job and starts to ease out of their lives, eventually landing in some trouble that causes him to flee the town where they live. Two years later, Clyde meets his well-off uncle, who owns a large factory in upstate New York. Clyde talks his way into a job at the factory, and soon finds himself supervising a roomful of women. All alone, generally shunned by his uncleโs family, and starved for companionship, he breaks the factoryโs rules and begins a relationship with a young woman who works for him. But Clyde has visions of marrying a high-society woman, and fortune smiles on him in the form of the daughter of one of his uncleโs neighbors. Soon Clyde finds himself in a love triangle of his own making, and one from which he seems incapable of extracting himself.
A newspaperman before he became a novelist, Theodore Dreiser collected crime stories for years of young men in relationships with young women of poorer means, where the young men found a richer, prettier girl who would go with him, and often took extreme measures to escape from the first girl. An American Tragedy, based on one of the most infamous of those real-life stories, is a study in lazy ambition, the very real class system in America, and how easy it is to drift into evil. It is populated with poor people who desire nothing more than to be rich, rich people whose only concern is to keep up with their neighbors and not be associated with the โwrong element,โ and elements of both who care far more about appearances than reality. It offers further evidence that the world may be very different from 100 years ago, but the people in it are very much the same.
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- Author: Theodore Dreiser
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โHere he comes now,โ replied the youth, looking up and examining Clyde with keen, gray eyes.
Clyde gazed in the direction indicated, and saw approaching a brisk and dapper and decidedly sophisticated-looking person of perhaps twenty-nine or thirty years of age. He was so very slender, keen, hatchet-faced and well-dressed that Clyde was not only impressed but overawed at onceโ โa very shrewd and cunning-looking person. His nose was so long and thin, his eyes so sharp, his lips thin, and chin pointed.
โDid you see that tall, gray-haired man with the Scotch plaid shawl who went through here just now?โ he paused to say to his assistant at the desk. The assistant nodded. โWell, they tell me thatโs the Earl of Landreil. He just came in this morning with fourteen trunks and four servants. Can you beat it! Heโs somebody in Scotland. That isnโt the name he travels under, though, I hear. Heโs registered as Mr. Blunt. Can you beat that English stuff? They can certainly lay on the class, eh?โ
โYou said it!โ replied his assistant deferentially.
He turned for the first time, glimpsing Clyde, but paying no attention to him. His assistant came to Clydeโs aid.
โThat young fella there is waiting to see you,โ he explained.
โYou want to see me?โ queried the captain of the bellhops, turning to Clyde, and observing his none-too-good clothes, at the same time making a comprehensive study of him.
โThe gentleman in the drug store,โ began Clyde, who did not quite like the looks of the man before him, but was determined to present himself as agreeably as possible, โwas sayingโ โthat is, he said that I might ask you if there was any chance here for me as a bellboy. Iโm working now at Klinkleโs drug store at 7th and Brooklyn, as a helper, but Iโd like to get out of that and he said you mightโ โthat isโ โhe thought you had a place open now.โ Clyde was so flustered and disturbed by the cool, examining eyes of the man before him that he could scarcely get his breath properly, and swallowed hard.
For the first time in his life, it occurred to him that if he wanted to get on he ought to insinuate himself into the good graces of peopleโ โdo or say something that would make them like him. So now he contrived an eager, ingratiating smile, which he bestowed on Mr. Squires, and added: โIf youโd like to give me a chance, Iโd try very hard and Iโd be very willing.โ
The man before him merely looked at him coldly, but being the soul of craft and self-acquisitiveness in a petty way, and rather liking anybody who had the skill and the will to be diplomatic, he now put aside an impulse to shake his head negatively, and observed: โBut you havenโt had any training in this work.โ
โNo, sir, but couldnโt I pick it up pretty quick if I tried hard?โ
โWell, let me see,โ observed the head of the bellhops, scratching his head dubiously. โI havenโt any time to talk to you now. Come around Monday afternoon. Iโll see you then.โ He turned on his heel and walked away.
Clyde, left alone in this fashion, and not knowing just what it meant, stared, wondering. Was it really true that he had been invited to come back on Monday? Could it be possible thatโ โHe turned and hurried out, thrilling from head to toe. The idea! He had asked this man for a place in the very finest hotel in Kansas City and he had asked him to come back and see him on Monday. Gee! what would that mean? Could it be possible that he would be admitted to such a grand world as thisโ โand that so speedily? Could it really be?
VThe imaginative flights of Clyde in connection with all thisโ โhis dreams of what it might mean for him to be connected with so glorious an institutionโ โcan only be suggested. For his ideas of luxury were in the main so extreme and mistaken and gaucheโ โmere wanderings of a repressed and unsatisfied fancy, which as yet had had nothing but imaginings to feed it.
He went back to his old duties at the drugstoreโ โto his home after hours in order to eat and sleepโ โbut now for the balance of this Friday and Saturday and Sunday and Monday until late in the day, he walked on air, really. His mind was not on what he was doing, and several times his superior at the drugstore had to remind him to โwake-up.โ And after hours, instead of going directly home, he walked north to the corner of 14th and Baltimore, where stood this great hotel, and looked at it. There, at midnight even, before each of the three principal entrancesโ โone facing each of three streetsโ โwas a doorman in a long maroon coat with many buttons and a high-rimmed and long-visored maroon cap. And inside, behind looped and fluted French silk curtains, were the still blazing lights, the ร la carte dining-room and the American grill in the basement near one corner still open. And about them were many taxis and cars. And there was music alwaysโ โfrom somewhere.
After surveying it all this Friday night and again on Saturday and Sunday morning, he returned on Monday afternoon at the suggestion of Mr. Squires and was greeted by that individual rather crustily, for by then he had all but forgotten him. But seeing that at the moment he was actually in need of help, and being satisfied that Clyde might be of service, he led him into his small office under the stair, where, with a very superior manner and much actual indifference, he proceeded to question him as to his parentage, where he lived, at what he had worked before and where, what his father did for a livingโ โa poser that for
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