Leonard Cassuto > Quotes

“But at the same time, Dreiser points in An American Tragedy to the significance of those very social connections in the creation of Clyde’s criminal motivation. In asking how Clyde Griffiths the murderer was formed, Dreiser takes a panoramic view of economic development and social change in the United States during the decades leading up to the 1920s. In particular, he views Clyde as the product of a certain kind of family during a certain historical period. Though the story of Clyde draws on accounts of an actual 1906 murder, Dreiser deliberately avoids exactly dating the story, and the book thus comments not on a specific moment, but on an American era.

The Cambridge Companion to Theodore Dreiser (Cambridge Companions to Literature) (p. 198). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.”
― Leonard Cassuto, The Cambridge Companion to Theodore Dreiser

“The notion that graduate school is a specialized training ground for future professors has been untenable for more than two generations, but the antiquated structure of graduate education marks our collective longing for a brief postwar golden age when a job as a professor was waiting for anyone with a doctorate. This”
― Leonard Cassuto, The Graduate School Mess: What Caused It and How We Can Fix It