In Round Rock, TX during the early spring of 2012, a good baker's
dozen people read the 866-page book, An
American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser! This is a piece of history! And at
least 13 liked the book! I'll bet no other group in RR read this many pages
this past month! This was one of the more ambitious books our club has chosen.
It was intense, dense, and time-consuming for a month's read. As a long-time
reader and librarian, I have enjoyed books of all kinds, many during a variety
of school experiences, many more quietly alone, and a few with my family. Nevertheless,
I find our book club endlessly refreshing and inspiring with its many dedicated
readers and insightful, interesting discussions! It impresses me when the group
voluntarily reads a long or otherwise daunting book, and I am duly inspired to
skip my cryptograms and YouTube for a few weeks to complete the book. There are
so many aspects of our world that are abridged! The group gives me (and I hope
"us") the incentive to read and thus receive the gifts offered by the
books read. Book clubs are popular, and I can see why!
An
American Tragedy is divided into "Books" 1, 2, and 3. Using some
insights from our discussion, I would characterize these parts briefly in this
way: Book 1 - In which we meet Clyde and lose respect for him when he refuses
to help his sister. Book 2 - In which Roberta:Clyde:Sondra and the crime is
committed. Book 3 - The trial. Patty used these divisions to keep our
discussion on track. Having not taken the time to research the book or author,
I thought the author's talents were even more amazing than they really were. I
thought that not only was he an excellent writer with an outstanding vocabulary
but that he was particularly erudite in his creation of the legal details of
the trial. Learning that Dreiser based the book on a real crime and trial, I
must guess that he used a lot of the details and trial characteristics from the
real trial. With no stone left unturned (who knows where a suit might be
hidden?) and no loose ends, the book's rendition of the trial is too amazing to
be manufactured by anyone without detailed knowledge of a similar case.
The group addressed the question as to why the book was banned in
1925 when it was published. Here is the list of possible reasons we suggested:
the bellhops go to a brothel, sex is mentioned 2 or 3 times in the book and
sexual undertones abound, the efforts to create or get an abortion are detailed
and could be considered almost instructive, the word "pregnant" is
used approximately twice, the extramarital relations is a theme of the story to
the point of being considered almost incriminating even if Clyde were to be declared
innocent of the crime, and it is possible that the upper social class who had
the power to ban the book found the depiction of the shallowness of the upper
social class in the book distasteful.
Jay observed that except for some of the language and a few
details, this book could have been written today. This says a lot for Dreiser
as an author as well as opening a new topic of discussion. Another topic we did
not get to was the question as to whether the book was a steppingstone toward
social reform. This long book merits much more discussion! How novel would it
be to nominate the book again soon and discuss more of its sides?
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