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Of Theodore Dreiser
Nov. 6th, 2014 08:22 am<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
INTERVIEWER
Where did you ever find out, for example, that Theodore Dreiser, after "Sister Carrie" was published, was so upset that he rented a room and spent a great deal of time realigning a chair? That’s an extraordinary detail.
DOCTOROW
I know a lot about the sufferings of writers. It’s a subject that interests me. Dreiser wrote this magnificent novel. It was published in 1900; it was then and is still the best first novel ever written by an American. It’s an amazing work. He found a voice, speaking of voice, for that book of the wise septuagenarian. I don’t know how he found it—he was twenty-eight when he began writing. Nevertheless, it is the voice of a world-weary man who has seen it all. The book was a magnificent achievement but the publisher, Doubleday, didn’t like it, they were afraid of it. So they buried it. And naturally it did nothing; I think it sold four copies. I would go crazy too in that situation. Dreiser rented a furnished room in Brooklyn. He put a chair in the middle of this room and sat in it. The chair didn’t seem to be in the right position so he turned it a few degrees, and he sat in it again. Still it was not right. He kept turning the chair around and around, trying to align it to what—trying to correct his own relation to the universe? He never could do it, so he kept going around in circles and circles. He did that for quite a while, and ended up in a sanitarium in Westchester, in White Plains. But the trip to the sanitarium didn’t interest me. Only the man turning the chair. So that’s where Dreiser is in "Ragtime", in that room, trying forever to align himself.
-- E. L. Doctorow at The Paris Review
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INTERVIEWER
Where did you ever find out, for example, that Theodore Dreiser, after "Sister Carrie" was published, was so upset that he rented a room and spent a great deal of time realigning a chair? That’s an extraordinary detail.
DOCTOROW
I know a lot about the sufferings of writers. It’s a subject that interests me. Dreiser wrote this magnificent novel. It was published in 1900; it was then and is still the best first novel ever written by an American. It’s an amazing work. He found a voice, speaking of voice, for that book of the wise septuagenarian. I don’t know how he found it—he was twenty-eight when he began writing. Nevertheless, it is the voice of a world-weary man who has seen it all. The book was a magnificent achievement but the publisher, Doubleday, didn’t like it, they were afraid of it. So they buried it. And naturally it did nothing; I think it sold four copies. I would go crazy too in that situation. Dreiser rented a furnished room in Brooklyn. He put a chair in the middle of this room and sat in it. The chair didn’t seem to be in the right position so he turned it a few degrees, and he sat in it again. Still it was not right. He kept turning the chair around and around, trying to align it to what—trying to correct his own relation to the universe? He never could do it, so he kept going around in circles and circles. He did that for quite a while, and ended up in a sanitarium in Westchester, in White Plains. But the trip to the sanitarium didn’t interest me. Only the man turning the chair. So that’s where Dreiser is in "Ragtime", in that room, trying forever to align himself.
-- E. L. Doctorow at The Paris Review
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