Theodore Dreiser: A Mystery Writer Of Sorts

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

For every reader there comes a book which, though not the best one you've ever read, or you'd bypass instantly in picking that certain something for a long stay in a desert island that nonetheless surprised you during the process of reading. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (published in 1900) was that sort of book.

Let me give you one part of the plot only. The beginning. Carrie of the title is a young woman who moves from small town America to Chicago.

Now the point is this. you as the reader is led to a certain mindset. And you go along with it, until something happens which makes you wonder whether you've approached the book correctly. But, and this is the skill, Dreiser does not as you go through the book say that you're wrong. Oh no what he says is that you might be wrong.

And that, I'd suggest is the sign of a writer who knows how to handle the plot. Because you as the reader has to continue reading to find out.

Not just plot mind you. Character as well. Your loyalties as a reader ebb and flow and ebb again. I would challenge anybody reading this book to honestly say that their view of any person is consistent from when they started to when it finished.

Relationships too. For the time they are written they are a mixture of their time or surprisingly modern to 2018 readers. As for his views of men and women whilst I wouldn't call him a feminist the position of men and women are not as clear as they first appear.

And like the plot itself the mystery is knowing whether or not you're initial judgement was right.

The novel was from a collection. The next one in that collection was Jennie Gerhardt. A book published in 1911.It has to be said that if you read Young Carrie then then there are less shocks here. But it's not without surprises.

So the next book in the collection is The Financier  a 1912 novel. We'll see if Dreiser is still a mystery at the end of it.

Until the next time.