Word: dreiser
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Chicago, Farrell chose to escape spiritual poverty by writing about it. At 28, he published Young Lonigan, the first of three novels tracing his anti-hero Studs from boyhood through boozy dissipation to early death. Though Farrell's unvarnished naturalism won him raves as "the new Theodore Dreiser," his unblinking approach to sex and scurrility provoked critics throughout his career. After the Lonigan cycle, he published 50 books, but none of them won the praise and popularity of his first...
...this slender tale, which pointedly recalls Theodore Dreiser's novels of the period, Malick constructs a complex web of moral ambiguities. He invites us to sympathize with the criminal Bill and Abby, who have a right to revolt against poverty. But he also arouses our affection for the privileged farmer, a kind and sickly man whose riches pay off only in loneliness and boredom. To Malick, all these people are victims of their innocent faith in a warped American dream. Their tragedy is that they blame themselves, rather than their false ideals, for the misery of their lives. Though...
...Anne is the fixture as before. Its five tales are confined to the standard Farrell inventory: lives with insufficient love, the sorrows of gin, childhood wounds carried for a lifetime. Yet the stories cannot be easily dismissed or forgotten. Farrell's approach, like that of his mentor Theodore Dreiser, consists not only of primitive human drama but also of profound human sympathy. In this, his 51st book, the drama is crude but the sympathy incalculable...
Still, in nearly 50 years in publishing, Cerf never fell afoul of an author as severely as did his first boss in publishing, Horace Liveright. Just as he was about to leave for California in the '20s, Liveright persuaded Theodore Dreiser to let him try to sell An American Tragedy to the movies - with Liveright to get the agent's commission. Dreiser, who was convinced that no one would nibble, readily agreed...
When he returned, Liveright invited Dreiser to lunch and announced his triumph - a movie deal for the sum of $85,000. Dreiser was delighted at the unexpected windfall, but considerably less delighted when he was reminded of Liveright's commission. "Do you mean you're going to take my money?" he asked. "Just at this moment, the waiter brought the coffee in," writes Cerf, the ever faithful reporter. "Suddenly Dreiser seized his cup and threw the steaming coffee in Liveright's face. [He] got up from the table without a word and marched out of the restaurant...