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The author's classic vision of the dark side of American life looks at the failings of the American dream, in the story of the rise and fall of Clyde Griffiths, who sacrifices everything in his desperate quest for success. Reissue.

"Dreiser is famous for indulging in gassy philosophical posturings, repetitions, wordiness and all kinds of gaucheries that are perhaps not as gauche as they appear; but beneath the seeming awkwardness he was, in his way, a writer of extreme discipline. The efficiency consisted of piling up tiny physical details and noting every possible petty motive and impulse in order to show that human events are driven by irresistible material forces--sometimes by the pressures of social class, sometimes by 'chemisms' from within the individual personality. The tiny details and physical urges grow denser and denser, the protagonist of AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY, Clyde Griffiths, moves ever closer to the half-fumbled murder of his girlfriend and then toward his own execution, and you, the reader, sink ever deeper into your armchair of anxiety and dread. It is because everything seems so horribly unavoidable."

Paul Berman, New Republic, 07/17/1995

"Mr. Dreiser...has written AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY at this length and in this form because he cannot possibly write it in lesser length or other form. And this obstinacy...is the defect of his strength....He is a totally undisciplined, unorganized power--yet, on the evidence of this novel alone, nonetheless a power."

Robert L. Duffus, New York Times Book Review, 01/10/1926

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