Shelfology Book Pairing

Theodore Dreiser

by Theodore Dreiser

An American TragedyTheodore DreiserAn American Tragedy (1925) is a novel by the American writer Theodore Dreiser.Ambitious but ill-educated, na�ve, and immature Clyde Griffiths is raised by poor and devoutly religious parents to help in their street missionary work. As a young adult, Clyde must, to help support his family, take menial jobs as a soda jerk, then a bellhop at a prestigious Kansas City hotel. There, his more sophisticated colleagues introduce him to bouts of social drinking and sex with some of the hotel's female guests and with prostitutes.Enjoying his new lifestyle, Clyde becomes infatuated with Hortense Briggs, who inveigles Clyde into buying her an expensive jacket. When Clyde learns Hortense desires his colleague Sparser, not himself, as a lover, he becomes jealous. Hortense repeatedly tells Clyde that she loves him while getting him to buy her the jacket (for which they are overcharged by a stereotypically greedy Jewish shopkeeper).Clyde's life changes dramatically when Sparser, driving Clyde, Hortense and other friends back from a secluded rendezvous in the country in a stolen car, hits a little girl and kills her. Fleeing from the police at high speed, Sparser crashes the car. Everyone but Sparser and his partner flee the scene of the crime. Clyde leaves Kansas City, fearing prosecution as an accessory to Sparser's crimes. This pattern of personal irresponsibility and panicked decision-making in Clyde's life recurs in the story, culminating in the central tragedy of the novel.

A Novel by the Russian Author Fyodor Dostoevsky

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky's classic tale of Rodion Raskolnikov, the murder he commits as an exploration of the human condition, and the crushing criminal and psychological consequences. The two years before he wrote Crime and Punishment (1866) had been bad ones for Dostoyevsky. His wife and brother had died; the magazine he and his brother had started, Epoch, collapsed under its load of debt; and he was threatened with debtor's prison. With an advance that he managed to wangle for an unwritten novel, he fled to Wiesbaden, hoping to win enough at the roulette table to get himself out of debt. Instead, he lost all his money; he had to pawn his clothes and beg friends for loans to pay his hotel bill and get back to Russia. One of his begging letters went to a magazine editor, asking for an advance on yet another unwritten novel - which he described as Crime and Punishment. One of the supreme masterpieces of world literature, Crime and Punishment catapulted Dostoyevsky to the forefront of Russian writers and into the ranks of the world's greatest novelists. Drawing upon experiences from his own prison days, the author recounts in feverish, compelling tones the story of Raskolnikov, an impoverished student tormented by his own nihilism, and the struggle between good and evil. Believing that he is above the law, and convinced that humanitarian ends justify vile means, he brutally murders an old woman - a pawnbroker whom he regards as "stupid, ailing, greedy...good for nothing." Overwhelmed afterwards by feelings of guilt and terror, Raskolnikov confesses to the crime and goes to prison. There he realizes that happiness and redemption can only be achieved through suffering. Infused with forceful religious, social, and philosophical elements, the novel was an immediate success. This extraordinary, unforgettable work is reprinted here in the authoritative Constance Garnett translation. Others novels and novellas by Dostoevsky are: (1846) Poor Folk (novella) (1846) The Double (novella) (1847) The Landlady (novella) (1849) Netochka Nezvanova (unfinished) (1859) Uncle's Dream (novella) (1859) The Village of Stepanchikovo (1861) Humiliated and Insulted (1862) The House of the Dead (1864) Notes from Underground (novella) (1866) Crime and Punishment (1867) The Gambler (novella) (1869) The Idiot (1870) The Eternal Husband (novella) (1872) Demons (also titled: The Possessed, The Devils) (1875) The Adolescent (1880) The Brothers Karamazov