The Last Titan: A Life of Theodore Dreiser. by Jerome Loving. (Berkley: University of California Press, 2005. xvi, 480 pp. $34.95, ISBN 0-520-23481-2.)

Alternative Title

Review of The Last Titan: A Life of Theodore Dreiser. By Jerome Loving.

Abstract

Theodore Dreiser, sometimes called the “Father of American Realism” (p. 140), has long occupied a contested position in American literary studies. Damaging accusations of plagiarism and anti-Semitism have diminished his reputation, yet as the author of Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925), two of the most highly regarded naturalistic novels in the American literary canon, Dreiser cannot be so easily dismissed.

Enter The Last Titan, Jerome Loving's sweeping and meticulously researched biography of the man he calls “the last major American writer of the nineteenth century” (p. 164). The Last Titan differs from previous Dreiser bi-ographies—notably W. A. Swanberg's Dreiser (1965) and Richard Lingeman's two-volume Theodore Dreiser (1986, 1990)—in that Loving organizes the book around his subject's prodigious literary output. Countless readers are familiar with Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy, but Dreiser also produced six other novels,...

Department(s)

English and Technical Communication

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

0021-8723

Electronic OCLC #

35782298

Print OCLC #

1782332

Document Type

Review - Book

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2006 Organization of American Historians, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2006

Link to Full Text

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