"And, sure, it’s not feminist literature or anything, but I found it charming, in a disturbing kind of way, and I’m sorry I put it off for so long. Yes, there’s a helpless, slightly dithery young woman, but she’s only helpless and dithery in fairly trying situations. Other times, she likes to play hockey. And yes, the hero is powerful and commanding and all that, but he also looks like a monkey and is slightly insane (Dell repeatedly describes him as looking like a monkey. The insanity I figured out on my own.)" - Redeeming Qualities review
Read It!
Showing posts with label 1911. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1911. Show all posts
Monday, 6 February 2012
Sunday, 5 February 2012
Jennie Gerhardt by Theodore Dreiser
The novel is referenced by Harvey Pekar in the film American Splendor (2003).
"In a 1911 review, H. L. Mencken wrote, "Jennie Gerhardt is the best American novel I have ever read, with the lonesome but Himalayan exception of Huckleberry Finn." Beautiful, vital, generous, but morally naïve and unconscious of social conventions, Jennie is a working-class woman who emerges superior to the succession of men who exploit her. There are no villains in this novel; in Dreiser's view, everyone is victimized by the desires that the world excites but can never satisfy." - The Library of America
Read It!
"In a 1911 review, H. L. Mencken wrote, "Jennie Gerhardt is the best American novel I have ever read, with the lonesome but Himalayan exception of Huckleberry Finn." Beautiful, vital, generous, but morally naïve and unconscious of social conventions, Jennie is a working-class woman who emerges superior to the succession of men who exploit her. There are no villains in this novel; in Dreiser's view, everyone is victimized by the desires that the world excites but can never satisfy." - The Library of America
Read It!
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