Sister Carrie
Theodore Dreiser
RG Silver Medal 2000
12th-16th October 2000 in Cornwall
Synopsis
Sister Carrie is an epic of city life, of transient
idealists besieged by industrialism and its anonymity. It
specifically treats of two people, at once attracted and repelled
by their vastly different backgrounds, who in the course of
involvement, are led into wholly unexpected areas of experience.
Provincial and naive, Carrie becomes involved with Hurstwood,
a respectable Chicago tavern manager twice her age, who alienates
himself from his family. Out of despair he resorts to theft,
is compelled to flee and cannot obtain employment. Carrie,
in turn, becomes a chorus girl and later, under the dubious
glow of her fame as an actress, their tragedy crystallizes.
First lines
When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train
for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk,
a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in
a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her
ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van
Buren Street, and four dollars in money.
What other people thought
Its outstanding merit is its simplicity, its unaffected seriousness
and fervour.
H.L. Mencken
...in my mind, the idea of Sister Carrie [exists]
as a goldenish spot in the weariness of the world.
Ford Madox Ford
We do not recommend the book to the fastidious reader, or
the one who clings to old-fashioned ideas. It is a book one
can very well do without reading.
Books of the Century; New York Times review, May 1907
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