novice prose
So far, An American Tragedy reminds me a little of The Adventures of Augie March -an innocent young man gets caught up in the volition of others, there’s even the mention of Croesus!- but Saul Bellow makes Dreiser look like a novice. The prose is rife with redundancy and disjointing thesaurus-like words, and is almost entirely devoid of the texture created by imagery.
To make matters worse, the moment Clyde forsakes his desperate sister for that silly twit, Hortense, he becomes unsympathetic. It is really difficult to read a book like this.
fiftytwoin52 