3. Is Dreiser a good psychologist? Do his characters’ motives, their responses to their situations, their thoughts, seem plausible or insightful?

For Further Reading

Biographies

Dreiser, Theodore. Dawn: An Autobiography of Early Youth. 1931. Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1998.

———. Theodore Dreiser: Interviews. Edited by Frederic E. Rusch and Donald Pizer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.

Eastman, Yvette Szekely. Dearest Wilding: A Memoir, with Love Letters from Theodore Dreiser. Edited by Thomas P. Riggio. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.

Lingeman, Richard. Theodore Dreiser: At the Gates of the City (1871-1907). New York: Putnam, 1986.

Loving, Jerome. The Last Titan: A Life of Theodore Dreiser. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

Matthiessen, F. O. Theodore Dreiser. New York: Sloane, 1951.

Swanberg, W. A. Dreiser. New York: Scribner, 1965.

Criticisms

Fisher, Philip. Hard Facts: Setting and Form in the American Novel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Kazin, Alfred. On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1995.

Kazin, Alfred, and Charles Shapiro, eds. The Stature of Theodore Dreiser. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1958.

Moers, Ellen. Two Dreisers: The Man and the Novelist as Revealed in His Two Most Important Books: Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy. New York: Viking, 1969.

Pizer, Donald. The Novels of Theodore Dreiser: A Critical Study. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976.

Warren, Robert Penn. Homage to Theodore Dreiser. New York: Random House, 1971.

Books About the Times

Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull-House. 1910. New York: Signet Classics, 1961.

Beer, Thomas. The Mauve Decade. 1926. New York: Carroll and Graf, 1997.

Carnegie, Andrew. 1900. The Gospel of Wealth, and Other Timely Essays. Edited by Edward C. Kirkland. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962.

Veblen, Thorstein. 1899. Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Penguin, 1994.

Ziff, Larzer. The American 1890s: Life and Times of a Lost Generation. New York: Viking, 1966.

a

City north of Chicago noted for its opulent resorts and healing spring waters.

b

Working-class street on Chicago’s near West Side.

c

By 1890 Chicago’s population had soared to more than 1 million; in 1880 it had been 503,000.

d

Theater on Halstead and Madison Streets on Chicago’s West Side.

e

Dreiser situates Fitzgerald and Moy in the bustling center of downtown Chicago.

f

Joseph Jefferson was a star actor admired for his portrayal of Rip Van Winkle in a play Hurstwood disparages (see p. 102).

g

Popular 1887 farce by Charles H. Hoyt.

h

An elegant restaurant Drouet liked to frequent.

i

Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1885 operetta, a smash hit in its first New York run, was wildly popular throughout the entire country.

j

Card game in which each player gets five cards, and the player who trumps must win three tricks to win a hand. The verb “euchre” means to deceive or trick somebody.

k

The term sec designates a dry white wine or champagne.

l

Resort northwest of Chicago.

m

A patent medicine.

n

The leading theater in Chicago during the 1880s and 1890s.

o

Kinsley’s was a restaurant on Adams Street, and the Tremont was a venerable hotel on Lake and Dearborn.

p

Town west of Chicago that is now a suburb of the city.

q

“Over the Hills to the Poorhouse” is a maudlin poem written in 1873 by Will Carleton, Michigan’s poet laureate.

r

John L. Sullivan (1858—1918) won the last bare-knuckles heavyweight championship in 1889; he was idolized for his boxing prowess and swaggering personality.

s

Chicago’s most luxurious and prestigious hotel in the 1880s, and the first to have elevators, electricity, and telephones.

t

The principal venue for light musical entertainments—vaudeville and revues featuring chorus girls, dances, dance classes, concerts, banquets, wrestling, and illustrated lectures.

u

A popular 1886 comedy by actor and playwright Denman Thompson that poked fun at rustic characters; it ran for more than twenty years and was made into a film in 1915.

v

Dreiser’s misspelling; the store’s name was Sea & Co.

w

Pinkerton and Mooney and Boland were the two largest and best-known detective agencies in the country. The two firms were often hired by corporations as strike breakers; they often resorted to violence to achieve their goal.

x

Fashionable and pricey hotel in the theater district.

y

According to the 1890 census, New York’s population numbered 1.5 million; the steady stream of immigrants meant the city would grow for decades.

z

Because the wholesale food district was located in Lower Manhattan, a tavern located there could expect a reasonably lucrative trade.

aa

This song by Harry Dillon and Nat Mann was published in 1895.

ab

B. Altman’s and Lord & Taylor’s were expensive clothing stores that catered to a wealthy clientele.

ac

E. H. Sothern (1859-1933) was a much-lionized actor who won plaudits for his work in such plays as Lord Chumley. This is the kind of flimsy theatrical fare the public devoured and Dreiser/Ames debunked.

ad

Sentimental romance by Linn Boyd Porter, published in 1891, that sold more than 500,000 copies in three years.

ae

The Panic of 1893 matched the Great Depression of the 1930s in violent labor unrest and widespread misery. Unemployment stayed above 10 percent for more than five years.

af

Fanny Davenport (1850-1898) was a leading lady of Augustin Daly’s company before she formed her own. He managed the Fifth Avenue Theatre and in 1879 opened Daly’s Theater, whose high-quality productions were an oasis in the overall dramatic desert.

ag

Manhattan’s wholesale food district near the Hudson River just below Fourteenth Street. While a number of meat-packing companies still operate along its cobble-stone streets, chic shops and galleries and trendy clubs and restaurants have transformed it into a fashionable neighborhood.

ah

The fame of this beloved French actress (1844-1923), one of the few women to play the lead in Hamlet, was international; she regularly toured America.

ai

The New York Clipper, a trade newspaper of the 1890s, covered the theatrical world.

aj

Augustin Daly’s business manager Richard Dorney served as a “gatekeeper” who protected his boss’s time and privacy.

ak

The premier theater for musicals, located in Times Square. Lillian Russell starred there.

al

The heroine of the Abbe Prevost’s novel Manon Lescaut (1731) was an innocent country girl who foregoes her true love for material comforts; she ends up as a classy prostitute in Paris. Massenet and Puccini wrote operas based on the novel.

am

Large theater that produced musicals.

an

The most prominent theatrical photographer of his day, Napolean Sarony launched a studio on Broadway in 1866.

ao

Bellevue Hospital, on First Avenue and Twenty-sixth Street, has provided medical care for the poor and homeless since its founding in 1736.

ap

The strings of electric lights gave Broadway its famous nickname: the “Great White Way.”

aq

Fleischmann’s Vienna Model Bakery was a well-known Broadway cafe of the 1890s owned by Louis Fleischmann, a champion of the unemployed who created the first “bread line.”