Finished: An American Tragedy (Dreiser). A good, good book with a very appropriate title! An American Tragedy is one of those loooonnnggg books (856 pages) that is on the Top 100 list that I've been putting off reading. Well, now I've read it. And, it was a tragic story. It could have stood for a little editing...been a little shorter, but it was a compelling story. When I read the back flap and saw that the Elizabeth Taylor/Montgomery Clift movie, A Place in the Sun, was based on this book, I knew what the major tragedy would be right away! Sadly, the story is about Clyde Griffiths, a poverty-stricken young boy being raised by street-preaching parents. His upbringing has kept him from any formal education, and from most practical education as well. He doesn't really believe in what his parents are peddling, and by the time he's 17 he leaves the family "business" and finds himself his first job at a luxury hotel as a bellboy. Suddenly, he's making more money than he's ever seen....and his true moral nature comes to the surface. Rather than innately giving up most of his earnings to his impoverished family to help out, he lies about the amount of money he's making and, instead, spends more and more money on nice clothes for himself. He is a good-looking, pretty charming boy, who longs to be nicely dressed and longs to associate with girls and other guys in a higher social class than himself. At this point in his life....any social class is higher than his. Unfortunately his first experience at love is with a young girl, Hortense Briggs, who sees how infatuated he is with her and totally strings him along so he'll spend all his extra money on her, taking cruel advantage of him. When one of the other bellboys takes a car of his uncle's employer without permission so all the friends can go on an adventure out of town (Clyde and Hortense included), tragedy occurs as the gang is rushing back to town with unsafe speed so the boys will not be late back to their jobs and they accidentally hit and kill a 10 year old girl in the street. Fearing prosecution for them all, the boys scatter and Clyde runs away to Chicago. Three years later, at 20, he's working at an exclusive Men's Club, again in a service roll, when he runs into his rich uncle, Samuel Griffiths. Samuel is his father's well-to-do brother. He owns a collar making factory in upstate New York. Samuel feeling somewhat guilty that his own father had been estranged from Clyde's father, and therefore excluded him from the wealth of his will after he died, decides that maybe he can do something for his impoverished nephew. Oh, don't get me wrong....he doesn't think Clyde should be elevated into the same social stratosphere as Samuel and his children, Clyde's cousins. As a matter of fact, he's a bit concerned about how bringing the poor relation to work in his factory might reflect on the Griffiths name...but his "compassion" wins out and he offers Clyde an opportunity to come and work at the very lowest level in the factory. Clyde jumps on the opportunity and heads to New York to work for his uncle. Gilbert Griffiths, his 23 year old cousin, Samuel's son and heir, HATES the idea of splitting anything at all with this interloper. He pretty much runs things at the factory and assigns Clyde, with his father's consent, to the sweaty, manual labor of the collar "shrinking" room. Sadly, and this is one of the few times I feel sorry for Clyde, he really is caught between a poor-rock and a rich-hard place. He doesn't want to do to anything at all to disappoint his uncle or to besmirch the Griffiths name, in great hopes that the family will eventually embrace him and fold him into their world. At the same time, the family really wants nothing to do with him socially. So, while he avoids socializing with anyone in the lower class who he actually works with, he's shunned by his own "family".  Therefore, Clyde is extremely, extremely lonely and, at times, in despair. After a couple of months, when his uncle realizes he's still languishing in the shrinking room, he tells his son that Clyde has worked hard enough down there and Gilbert needs to find him a small managerial position. After all...how does it look to keep a Griffiths down in the shrinking room for so long? Clyde is moved up to the collar stamping room where he is put in charge of a bunch of 20-something young women. Gilbert lectures Clyde that management types never, ever, ever fraternize with the worker types...and especially not the young women. Clyde understands and does fine keeping things to all business for a few weeks until the beautiful, sweet, also impoverished, young Roberta Alden comes to work under him. Clyde is immediately smitten with Roberta and she with him. He once again wears his heart on his sleeve and almost immediately declares his love for her. He rather pushily finally convinces her to embark on a sexual relationship. In his own mind, he knows he can never marry someone like Roberta because he fully expects to climb his way into the higher social class of his uncle's family. However, Roberta is certainly good enough for him to have a super-secret relationship with. All goes well with them, especially since no one knows about them, until one day when Samuel Griffiths finally decides that it's time to have Clyde out for a family dinner. Clyde arrives nervously, but seems to get more at ease as he gets to know one of Samuel's daughters, Myra. She's the homely one, so she's at home most nights. Gilbert is as snobby as ever, and treats Clyde pretty coldly. Finally, teenage Bella breezes in the door with her two socialite friends, Sondra and Bertine. Clyde is, once again, instantly smitten....with Sondra. She's gorgeous and well-dressed and doesn't give him a second look. However, he is instantly in love. Not really thinking he's got a chance ever with Sondra, he continues to sleep with Roberta, but now his heart and mind are elsewhere. Finally, Clyde starts getting invited to the upper crust society events and Sondra DOES actually take an interest in him. Of course, all the rich kids know that he's a poor relation, so none of them can really get serious about him, but since Sondra becomes infatuated herself, she keeps figuring out ways to have Clyde invited to events. Clyde is thrilled with the turn of events and begins blowing off Roberta. Just when Sondra has declared her love for Clyde and they are trying to figure out how they can be together once she turns 18 in the fall, Roberta comes to Clyde and tells him that she's pregnant. Poor Roberta. :-( She's a really nice girl who has given herself to Clyde because she didn't want to lose him. And now, he treats her terribly, standing her up all the time...and now she's pregnant. Clyde and Roberta try to come up with a way to "take care of the pregnancy", but it doesn't work. Roberta insists that Clyde should marry her so her baby can at least be legitimate, even if Clyde doesn't love her anymore. However, this is not acceptable at all to Clyde because he can't let Sondra or anyone else know he has been in relations with Roberta. To move things along here, Clyde does the unthinkable when Roberta threatens to go to his uncle if Clyde doesn't do right by her. Clyde lies to Roberta that he's taking her on a pre-wedding trip, and then takes her out on a remote lake with the intent of tipping the rowboat over and letting her drown, and pretending to drown himself, but then swimming out. He signs them in at the lake Inn with fake names and thinks that all is hunky dory with his plan. When he gets to the point of tipping the boat, though, he can't go through with it. He gets such a weird look on his face, though, that Roberta stands up suddenly to reach out to him. She lunges towards him and he accidentally hits her with his camera and she tips the boat over and they both go in the water. The boat hits her on the head, but she's still conscious and struggling because she can't swim (which Clyde already knew). Clyde watches as Roberta drowns. He does nothing to save her. He makes that conscious decision knowing that it will free him up to be with Sondra, and after all, he didn't murder her...he just didn't save her. Uggh. Anyway, Clyde has not covered everything as nicely as he thought, and after he's made his way to the high-class weekend cabin of his rich friends, including Sondra, the police are soon on his tail and arrest him. All his nightmares of them finding out about him come true. The rest of the book (which is based on a true story that happened in upstate New York in 1906), is all about Clyde's trial and eventual death sentence. It's also about his uncle and family, and all the other rich "friends", caring far more about their names and reputations than helping Clyde out at all. Needless to say, Clyde never sees Sondra again. Clyde's poor mother finally makes it out to see him after he's sentenced, but Clyde is still in denial that he is guilty since he had decided not to murder Roberta after all, but she still died. It's really just like it says...a tragic story. I think Clyde is a victim of his awful upbringing, no education, undo influences at an impressionable age, and also the class system. However, so many people who have Clyde's disadvantages are not so narcissistic that they can think only of themselves and their answer to getting rid of a "problem" that will hinder their social climb is to kill the problem. I've got to say that Clyde is one of my least favorite characters in a book in a long time. However, his rich uncle and his family aren't much better in my mind.