Tag: Nineteenth-Century
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Sister Carrie (1900), Theodore Dreiser
Sister Carrie is a bizarre book, obsessed with fashion, offering a clash between form and content. Naturalism always revels in a preposterous sense of essentialism and determinism. Case in point: Theodore Dreiser’s heroine has an atavistic instinct for shopping. In fact, the obtrusive narration of Sister Carrie keeps making osten-tedious arguments about women and fashion.…
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Proust and My Day
Proust’s sentences are like extended, protracted, interminable, long-drawn-out silkworms ; precious creatures producing the finest of fabric: text. Even people who have never read any of Proust’s writing know that his sentences are gentle behemoths–so long as to make you forget they even had a beginning once you reach their elusive end. They might not…
