An American Tragedy
An American Tragedy is a 1925 novel by American writer Theodore Dreiser. He began the manuscript in the summer of 1920, but a year later abandoned most of that text. It was based on the notorious murder of Grace Brown in 1906 and the trial of her lover.
Review by Black Oxford
None of us is born knowing what we want. We are taught what we want by other people. We do not choose these other people from whom we learn; they just happen. Our parents also just happen but in general, we feel it is necessary to unlearn whatever it is they've taught us to want, especially if it involves "an unimportant-looking family publicly raising its collective voice against the vast scepticism [sic] and apathy of life."
Learning from strangers is frequently regretted in later life but always welcomed as it occurs. What we learn from strangers, what we are taught to want, is what has been identified since ancient times as vanity.
Vanity is not only the pleasure we get from gazing at our image in a mirror (although that, too, particularly among Dreiser's women). It is "that old mass yearning for a likeness" as Dreiser has it. Vanity is the compulsion to see what we want ourselves to be in other people and to imitate them however that is possible.
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Novels