Dreiser Delphi Complete Works of Theodore Dreiser (Illustrated)

1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-78656-079-7
Verlag: Delphi Classics Ltd
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, Band 25, 6167 Seiten

Reihe: Delphi Series Eight

An American writer of the naturalist school, Theodore Dreiser produced controversial novels, often featuring protagonists that succeeded at their objectives in spite of their lack of morality. Celebrated novels such as 'Sister Carrie' and 'An American Tragedy' led to Dreiser's nomination for the Nobel Prize in Literature, establishing his name as an American master. This comprehensive eBook presents Dreiser's complete fictional works, with numerous illustrations, rare texts appearing in digital print for the first time, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1)
* Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Dreiser's life and works
* Concise introductions to the novels and other texts
* All 8 novels, with individual contents tables
* Features rare novels often missed out of collections, including 'The Bulwark' and 'The Stoic'
* Special 'The Trilogy of Desire' contents table for navigating the series
* Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts
* Excellent formatting of the texts
* The rare short story collection 'Chains: Lesser Novels and Stories', available in no other collection
* Includes Dreiser's plays
* The rare poetry collection 'Moods Cadenced and Declaimed', first time in digital print
* A selection of Dreiser's non-fiction
* Special 'Contextual Pieces' section, with reviews, letters and essays evaluating Dreiser's contribution to literature
* Features Dreiser's two autobiographies - discover the author's personal and literary life
* Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres
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CONTENTS:
The Trilogy of Desire
The Novels
Sister Carrie
Jennie Gerhardt
The Financier
The Titan
The 'Genius'
An American Tragedy
The Bulwark
The Stoic
The Shorter Fiction
Free and Other Stories
Chains: Lesser Novels and Stories
Fine Furniture
The Short Stories
List of Short Stories in Chronological Order
List of Short Stories in Alphabetical Order
The Plays
Plays of the Natural and Supernatural
The Hand of the Potter
The Poetry
Moods Cadenced and Declaimed
The Non-Fiction
A Traveler at Forty
A Hoosier Holiday
Twelve Men
Hey Rub-A-Dub-Dub
The Color of a Great City
The Contextual Pieces
Contextual Articles, Essays and Reviews
The Autobiographies
A Book About Myself
Dawn
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Autoren/Hrsg.

Dreiser, Theodore

Leseproben

CHAPTER I
THE MAGNET ATTRACTING: A WAIF AMID FORCES When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister’s address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterised her thoughts, it was certainly not for advantages now being given up. A gush of tears at her mother’s farewell kiss, a touch in her throat when the cars clacked by the flour mill where her father worked by the day, a pathetic sigh as the familiar green environs of the village passed in review, and the threads which bound her so lightly to girlhood and home were irretrievably broken. To be sure there was always the next station, where one might descend and return. There was the great city, bound more closely by these very trains which came up daily. Columbia City was not so very far away, even once she was in Chicago. What, pray, is a few hours — a few hundred miles? She looked at the little slip bearing her sister’s address and wondered. She gazed at the green landscape, now passing in swift review, until her swifter thoughts replaced its impression with vague conjectures of what Chicago might be. When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an intermediate balance, under the circumstances, there is no possibility. The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human tempter. There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a wooing and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of sound, a roar of life, a vast array of human hives, appeal to the astonished senses in equivocal terms. Without a counsellor at hand to whisper cautious interpretations, what falsehoods may not these things breathe into the unguarded ear! Unrecognised for what they are, their beauty, like music, too often relaxes, then weakens, then perverts the simpler human perceptions. Caroline, or Sister Carrie, as she had been half affectionately termed by the family, was possessed of a mind rudimentary in its power of observation and analysis. Self-interest with her was high, but not strong. It was, nevertheless, her guiding characteristic. Warm with the fancies of youth, pretty with the insipid prettiness of the formative period, possessed of a figure promising eventual shapeliness and an eye alight with certain native intelligence, she was a fair example of the middle American class — two generations removed from the emigrant. Books were beyond her interest — knowledge a sealed book. In the intuitive graces she was still crude. She could scarcely toss her head gracefully. Her hands were almost ineffectual. The feet, though small, were set flatly. And yet she was interested in her charms, quick to understand the keener pleasures of life, ambitious to gain in material things. A half-equipped little knight she was, venturing to reconnoitre the mysterious city and dreaming wild dreams of some vague, far-off supremacy, which should make it prey and subject — the proper penitent, grovelling at a woman’s slipper. “That,” said a voice in her ear, “is one of the prettiest little resorts in Wisconsin.” “Is it?” she answered nervously. The train was just pulling out of Waukesha. For some time she had been conscious of a man behind. She felt him observing her mass of hair. He had been fidgetting, and with natural intuition she felt a certain interest growing in that quarter. Her maidenly reserve, and a certain sense of what was conventional under the circumstances, called her to forestall and deny this familiarity, but the daring and magnetism of the individual, born of past experiences and triumphs, prevailed. She answered. He leaned forward to put his elbows upon the back of her seat and proceeded to make himself volubly agreeable. “Yes, that is a great resort for Chicago people. The hotels are swell. You are not familiar with this part of the country, are you?” “Oh, yes, I am,” answered Carrie. “That is, I live at Columbia City. I have never been through here, though.” “And so this is your first visit to Chicago,” he observed. All the time she was conscious of certain features out of the side of her eye. Flush, colourful cheeks, a light moustache, a grey fedora hat. She now turned and looked upon him in full, the instincts of self-protection and coquetry mingling confusedly in her brain. “I didn’t say that,” she said. “Oh,” he answered, in a very pleasing way and with an assumed air of mistake, “I thought you did.” Here was a type of the travelling canvasser for a manufacturing house — a class which at that time was first being dubbed by the slang of the day “drummers.” He came within the meaning of a still newer term, which had sprung into general use among Americans in 1880, and which concisely expressed the thought of one whose dress or manners are calculated to elicit the admiration of susceptible young women — a “masher.” His suit was of a striped and crossed pattern of brown wool, new at that time, but since become familiar as a business suit. The low crotch of the vest revealed a stiff shirt bosom of white and pink stripes. From his coat sleeves protruded a pair of linen cuffs of the same pattern, fastened with large, gold plate buttons, set with the common yellow agates known as “cat’s-eyes.” His fingers bore several rings — one, the ever-enduring heavy seal — and from his vest dangled a neat gold watch chain, from which was suspended the secret insignia of the Order of Elks. The whole suit was rather tight-fitting, and was finished off with heavy-soled tan shoes, highly polished, and the grey fedora hat. He was, for the order of intellect represented, attractive, and whatever he had to recommend him, you may be sure was not lost upon Carrie, in this, her first glance. Lest this order of individual should permanently pass, let me put down some of the most striking characteristics of his most successful manner and method. Good clothes, of course, were the first essential, the things without which he was nothing. A strong physical nature, actuated by a keen desire for the feminine, was the next. A mind free of any consideration of the problems or forces of the world and actuated not by greed, but an insatiable love of variable pleasure. His method was always simple. Its principal element was daring, backed, of course, by an intense desire and admiration for the sex. Let him meet with a young woman twice and he would straighten her necktie for her and perhaps address her by her first name. In the great department stores he was at his ease. If he caught the attention of some young woman while waiting for the cash boy to come back with his change, he would find out her name, her favourite flower, where a note would reach her, and perhaps pursue the delicate task of friendship until it proved unpromising, when it would be relinquished. He would do very well with more pretentious women, though the burden of expense was a slight deterrent. Upon entering a parlour car, for instance, he would select a chair next to the most promising bit of femininity and soon enquire if she cared to have the shade lowered. Before the train cleared the yards he would have the porter bring her a footstool. At the next lull in his conversational progress he would find her something to read, and from then on, by dint of compliment gently insinuated, personal narrative, exaggeration and service, he would win her tolerance, and, mayhap, regard. A woman should some day write the complete philosophy of clothes. No matter how young, it is one of the things she wholly comprehends. There is an indescribably faint line in the matter of man’s apparel which somehow divides for her those who are worth glancing at and those who are not. Once an individual has passed this faint line on the way downward he will get no glance from her. There is another line at which the dress of a man will cause her to study her own. This line the individual at her elbow now marked for Carrie. She became conscious of an inequality. Her own plain blue dress, with its black cotton tape trimmings, now seemed to her shabby. She felt the worn state of her shoes. “Let’s see,” he went on, “I know quite a number of people in your town. Morgenroth the clothier and Gibson the dry goods man.” “Oh, do you?” she interrupted, aroused by memories of longings their show windows had cost her. At last he had a clew to her interest, and followed it deftly. In a few minutes he had come about into her seat. He talked of sales of clothing, his travels, Chicago, and the amusements of that city. “If you are going there, you will enjoy it immensely. Have you relatives?” “I am going to visit my sister,” she explained. “You want to see Lincoln Park,” he said, “and Michigan Boulevard. They are putting up great buildings there....