Theodore Dreiser

Born Aug. 27, 1871, in Terre Haute, Ind.; died Dec. 28, 1945, in Hollywood, Calif. American writer and public figure.

Dreiser was the son of an economically ruined small entrepreneur, who was an immigrant from Germany. From his youth, he changed professions many times. He studied at the University of Indiana in Bloomington from 1889 to 1890 and began his literary career in 1892 as a reporter for the Chicago newspaper the Daily News. In 1897 his first stories and essays appeared in magazines.

In 1900, Dreiser published the novel Sister Carrie, in which the fate of a girl from a worker’s family was drawn against a broad social background. The novel opened a new page in the history of American literature. Like H. B. Fuller, S. Crane, H. Garland, and F. Norris, Dreiser rebelled against the literature of the so-called genteel tradition, creating a broad social canvas. In 1911 he published the novel Jennie Gerhardt, returning to the theme of the fate of a working-class girl. However, unlike Carrie, Jennie is the victim of bourgeois society and the embodiment of the best qualities inherent in ordinary toiling people.

The subsequent development of Dreiser’s realistic method was connected with his novels The Financier (1912) and The Titan (1914), the first two parts of the Trilogy of Desire (the Yerkes trilogy). The typical features of the American capitalist-plunderer are reproduced in the character of Frank Cowperwood. Dreiser devoted the novel The Genius (1915) to the fate of an artist ruined by the capitalist system.

Dreiser welcomed the October Revolution in Russia. In the book Hey, Rub-a-dub-dub (1920), consisting of 17 articles and three plays, Dreiser opposed anti-Soviet intervention. He attained the summit of realistic mastery in the novel An American Tragedy (1925). Depicting the path of moral corruption of Clyde Griffith, Dreiser exposed the destructive effects of American bourgeois society on the individual. The novel brought Dreiser world fame and became the banner for realistic US literature of the 1920’s.

In November 1927, Dreiser visited the USSR on the invitation of the Soviet government. He set forth his impressions in the book Dreiser Looks at Russia (1928). On the basis of materials from his journey to the USSR, Dreiser wrote the story “Ernita,” which was included in the collection Gallery of Women and presented the first positive Communist hero in American literature. Dreiser was one of the organizers of the Amsterdam Congress in Defense of Peace and Culture (1932). In the journalistic book Tragic America (1931) he adopted the standpoint of socialist realism. He actively engaged in antifascist work and visited republican Spain. During World War II (1939-45), Dreiser passionately supported the heroic struggle of the Soviet people and unmasked Hitlerism and its accomplices in Great Britain and the USA. He joined the Communist Party of the USA in July 1945. Dreiser’s novels The Bulwark (1946) and The Stoic (1947, the unfinished third part of the Trilogy of Desire) were published posthumously.