AN AMATEUR LABORER

by Theodore Dreiser ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1983

Hardly the major literary event heralded in some newspaper reports, this offering from the Dreiser archives consists of an incomplete 120-pp. memoir from 1904--in which the writer records his 1903 nervous breakdown and the beginnings of his recovery. (Fragments of first drafts and incomplete chapters are also included.) In direct but rather flat prose, Dreiser describes his wretched weeks in a tiny Brooklyn apartment: suffering from ""neurasthenia"" and insomnia, poverty-stricken, unable to write or to get menial jobs (his weak, bookish appearance). . . and unwilling to seek help from his well-to-do brothers and sisters. (""To say that my weariness, my physical pain, the dread of the future and my depressed mental state constituted a horrible physical combination for me is but putting it mildly."") Then Dreiser happens to run into his rich-songwriter brother Paul on the street--a jovial, warmhearted, kind fellow who insists on sending Dreiser off, at Paul's expense, to a posh--but-rigorous sanitorium in White Plains. The strict food/exercise program there gets Dreiser back into some sort of condition, though (with one or two exceptions) he is appalled by his fellow patients, ""exceedingly sordid and so narrow and conventional in their views. . . ."" And in the last completed chapters he's then able to take a railroad job on the Hudson--carrying shavings, sweeping up, getting some insights into labor, ""the subtle connection that exists between skill and experience. . . ."" Wisely, editor Richard W. Dowell makes no great claims for the literary merits of this memoir--which is something of a drone in the repetitious, misery-soaked early chapters, considerably more readable once Paul and the sanitorium appear. Instead, Dowell conscientiously discusses the contrasts between the version of events here (""clearly the most reliable account"") and the versions in later, published ""semiautobiographical"" pieces--many of which ""have been accepted by Dreiser biographers."" A primarily academic item, then--for scholars of Dreiser life-history, and for critics interested in Dreiser's creative/distorting use of autobiographical material.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION