A Book about Myself

by Theodore Dreiser

Autobiography about Dreiser's days as a newspaper reporter.

Genres: Autobiography, Biography

502 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1922

About the author

Naturalistic novels of American writer and editor Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser portray life as a struggle against ungovernable forces. Value of his portrayed characters lies in their persistence against all obstacles, not their moral code, and literary situations more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of choice and agency; this American novelist and journalist so pioneered the naturalist school.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore...

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Free download available at Project Gutenberg

I made the smooth-reading of this book and Project Gutenberg will publish it pretty soon.

[Kyle D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most interesting to hear "I was there" accounts of Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and NYC in the 1890s (but written 30 years later), especially if you've been to those cities. Sure, it's overlong and occasionally boring, but as a time capsule it's worth a read.

[John Payton · Rating 2 out of 5]

A rather self-indulgent autobiography. I read a couple of chapters for Librivox. I'm currently listening to the whole thing, and without rancor, I find some of the readers difficult to listen to.

Dreiser apparently spent his youth feeling really bad about the plight of blue-collar workers, but avoiding their company all the same. He wanted very badly to make it big in the newspaper business, and was not above lying to get jobs. He despised the state of politics, believing that the country was turning into an oligarchy (spoiler, it did), but he constantly sucks up to the rich. Oh, and let's not forget his never-ending quest to get laid.

I do give Dreiser credit for predicting the replacement of Democracy for a plutocracy.

Librivox:
https://librivox.org/a-book-about-mys...

YouTube:
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILrnW...
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01GVY...
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYiZp...