Dreiser (1871–1945), author of two of the most famous American novels in the naturalist school, Sister Carrie
and An American Tragedy
, rose from poverty to the top of the literary world, crossing paths with prostitutes and thugs (some of them his own siblings) as well as social reformers and presidents, all of whom informed the seemingly amoral universe of his fiction. It's easy to see why a biographer would be attracted to such rich subject matter. But Loving, biographer of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, has specific goals, which do not include painting a psychologically probing portrait of his subject (although one parenthetical aside suggests that Dreiser may have suffered from bipolar disorder—an intriguing and possibly groundbreaking idea that is dropped immediately). Instead, he races through the details of Dreiser's life in order to find the true antecedents and literary context of Dreiser's work. To do so, Loving turns to that work—whether books or magazine articles—for source material. While this account does the reader the favor of collecting all that material in one place and draws a thorough time line of Dreiser's life, it adds little to our knowledge of a major American writer. 47 b&w photos not seen by PW
. (Mar.)
