The storylines involving social competition and violent death feel like a reworking, from a young female perspective, of Theodore
Dreiser's classic 1925 melodrama An American Tragedy.
In the case of A Place in the Sun the curiosity arises from the fact that the film is an updated adaptation of Theodore
Dreiser's 1925 novel, the bluntly named An American Tragedy.
The story unfolded here principally involves two well-known writers from the early-twentieth century, Theodore
Dreiser and Edith Wharton, and three others whom few today read, Robert Grant (1852-1940), Robert Herrick (1868-1938), and Booth Tarkington (1869-1946).
Walking through the show, I was reminded of Theodore
Dreiser's Sister Carrie (1900), whose titular protagonist, a showgirl in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century, rises over the course of the novel from obscure penury to fame and riches through a series of decisions both cunning and lucky.
Eliot, William Faulkner, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, Willa Cather, Theodore
Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Langston Hughes, and John Steinbeck.
CONSIDERING HOW OFTEN THE WORD "TRAGEDY" APPEARS IN THEODORE
Dreiser's writing, there has been little serious scholarly attention paid to its role in his impressive body of work.
The first of these books, Theodore
Dreiser's Chicago novel Sister Carrie (1900), captures the on-coming consumption culture and the rapid urban growth of the 19th century, as well as the city's alluring glow that hides a well of despair.
Eby analyzes Theodore
Dreiser's 1915 novel The "Genius," a fictionalization of his marriage to Sara White
Dreiser that famously rejected the institution, in relation to a 1911 version titled The Genius.
Showcasing 35 particularly influential men and women ranging from Henry David Thoreau; Theodore
Dreiser; Sylvia Beach; and Gertrude Stein; to Ralph Ellison, Jack Kerouac; Simone de Beauvoir; and Hunter S.
The young Saul, then called Solomon or Shloimke, spent his free days at the public library reading Theodore
Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson.
Lennon discussed, comparatively, Theodore
Dreiser's An American Tragedy
"The Game as it is Played": Essays on Theodore
Dreiser
Dreiser - United States novelist (1871-1945)