It seems I just post about books...
Sister Carrie was written by Theodore Dreiser (of German descent) in 1900. There was a first edition which was highly cropped by his wife and his, um, manager, to make it more readable. And then, there's the one I've read, which involves a certain patience on the part of the reader, since it's the uncut version of the novel (I would say even draft). It's 500+ pages, but, trust me, it felt like it had 500 more.
Because of the title, I thought this was going to be about a nun. I couldn't have been more wrong. The plot is a very simple one: Carrie, an innocent girl, leaves her home town to find work in a big city, Chicago. We follow her since her first impressions about this city until she doesn't even wonder at New York. And yes, we get to know every thought and every dress and every piece of furniture Carrie touches on her way to maturity and success. We have just another interesting character in the whole novel: Hurstwood. A man lulled into adultery by Carrie's apparent innocent and contradicting malice. This novel is so much about Carrie's way upward as Hurstwood's way downward. I liked the boldness and sense of survival Carrie shows throughout the novel, and the inactivity, gloom and sense of impending doom inherent to Hurstwood. These characters act without much thought, which leads them to what at first looked like seemingly impossible situations. Sister Carrie would have been great at exposing the causes of such events and the train of thoughts of the characters during them if Dreiser would have let them walk alone. Instead, they feel so thinly fleshed even though they are by no means one-dimensional, that it's impossible to stand this novel. The reader cannot separate Dreiser from his novel, and the narrator keeps on appearing to regulate the story and explain it to the reader. Still, I liked that Dreiser was so united to Carrie as to let her have a good ending. I mean, an unvirtuous female character survives decently to a nineteenth century novel! Sister Carrie should be read, even if it's just for this anomaly, but I think it shouldn't be that worshipped. I'm sure later novels by Dreiser must be better written and that there are other (better?) writers who epitomize American realism/naturalism in their writing.
Because of the title, I thought this was going to be about a nun. I couldn't have been more wrong. The plot is a very simple one: Carrie, an innocent girl, leaves her home town to find work in a big city, Chicago. We follow her since her first impressions about this city until she doesn't even wonder at New York. And yes, we get to know every thought and every dress and every piece of furniture Carrie touches on her way to maturity and success. We have just another interesting character in the whole novel: Hurstwood. A man lulled into adultery by Carrie's apparent innocent and contradicting malice. This novel is so much about Carrie's way upward as Hurstwood's way downward. I liked the boldness and sense of survival Carrie shows throughout the novel, and the inactivity, gloom and sense of impending doom inherent to Hurstwood. These characters act without much thought, which leads them to what at first looked like seemingly impossible situations. Sister Carrie would have been great at exposing the causes of such events and the train of thoughts of the characters during them if Dreiser would have let them walk alone. Instead, they feel so thinly fleshed even though they are by no means one-dimensional, that it's impossible to stand this novel. The reader cannot separate Dreiser from his novel, and the narrator keeps on appearing to regulate the story and explain it to the reader. Still, I liked that Dreiser was so united to Carrie as to let her have a good ending. I mean, an unvirtuous female character survives decently to a nineteenth century novel! Sister Carrie should be read, even if it's just for this anomaly, but I think it shouldn't be that worshipped. I'm sure later novels by Dreiser must be better written and that there are other (better?) writers who epitomize American realism/naturalism in their writing.