Sister Carrie by Theodore Dresier (1900)

First off, I'm going to keep it short as I have literally just finished reading this book and I want to either crawl under the covers of my bed and cry myself to sleep or cuddle my dog into oblivion to let her know that I would never abandon her. That's how bad this book makes me feel.

I'd say he's like Thomas Hardy in that respect, but not as relentless. Sister Carrie turns the knife ever so slowly. It's hard to feel sympathy for Hurstwood in the beginning of the book, and I personally didn't see coming what came... On the other hand it's hard NOT to feel sympathy, from beginning to end, for Carrie, who indeed to modern readers at least, conducts herself pretty amiably.

The question of time I think, though, matters. This book was undoubtedly scandalous in 1900, for several reasons. I just read up on it a bit and found that it wasn't published uncut until 1981 -- so heavily had it been edited that anyone who wants to read it now should go out and buy a new version at Barnes and Noble or on Amazon or something-- I compared my Modern Library edition from 1952 to the new paperback, and the older one ends over one hundred pages earlier than the new one.

With good reason too. I'm not sure this book isn't just as scandalous in many ways as it would have been in 1900, but it seems to me for different reasons.

Ultimately, what resonates most with me in Sister Carrie is the passage at the very end, where Carrie is thinking with sympathy so affected by something pathetic she has just read in Balzac -- "Oh dear," said Carrie with whom the sufferings of father Goriot were still keen. "That's all you think of. Aren't you sorry for the people who haven't got anything tonight?" And it goes on. The image for me, of being so affected by a book, but so unaffected, in her way, by reality, is really striking, and, in a way I find that is what Sister Carrie is doing to me. It makes me feel so many things, but, after all, "What can I do?"