Well I started out really enjoying
An American Tragedy but man is it a long book... It is broken into three sections and the first two sections are great, but the third just drags. Two of the long chapters in that section basically just recap the previous events of the book. Anyway...
The book tells the story of Clyde Griffiths, a poor young man that was raised in a roving religious family. He decides to get a job, earns a bit of money for himself, falls in with the wrong crowd and becomes involved with the wrong woman. This leads to a tragic accident that causes Clyde to runaway. But that's just the lead up to the main story... eventually Clyde discovers that he has a rich uncle with a factory and by chance ends up meeting him. The uncle offers him a job and Clyde (still poor) finds that he isn't liked by the rich crowd or the working class (since they seem to think him rich because of his relation to his uncle). So of course Clyde does the one thing he's specifically told not to do... date a woman, Roberta, that he supervises at the factory. But then a woman in the rich crowd takes a shine to him and Clyde is thrilled because all he can think of is how much prettier and richer this second girl is. Well the complication comes in that he has now gotten the first woman pregnant and this being set in the 20's would be scandalous if anyone finds out. Now let me point out this is about half way through the book... so it is long but a lot happens. Clyde reacts to this news by ***SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT*** trying to find someway for the woman to have an abortion. At this he fails and convinces Roberta to leave town for a bit while he gets some money together and maybe he'll marry her but really he's pretty passive aggressive about it and just keeps hinting that it would be better if they just never saw each other again. At the very least Roberta agrees to give him a quick divorce after the child is born if they get married. But this won't work for Clyde because it'll ruin his chances with the rich girl and everyone will realize that he dated someone at the factory and he'll get fired. So yeah, Clyde is never a likable character. He's selfish and stupid. You just know that he'll do the wrong thing. He can't NOT do it. So he happens upon an article about a boat accident in which a couple died but the man's body was never recovered. See he can't even think of his own plan for murder either... So he figures he'll get Roberta out on a deserted lake, knock her out of the boat and fake his own death under an alias. Are there logical problems with this? Of course and Clyde sees none of them. So he gets her out there and has second thoughts mostly because he's a coward but he does then kind of accidentally/sort of on purpose (maybe) creates the very scenario he had planned on. And because Clyde is a dummy he pretty much gets caught right away. Now at this point we're maybe 70% through... which means maybe only 300 pages left... So then the rest of the book follows his trial and subsequent time on death row. So yeah... lots of recap at the trial and Clyde convincing himself that he's really innocent.
Overall I liked it... just the ending kept dragging on and on... A-
Have I ever mentioned here that Slaughterhouse-Five is my favorite all time book? Well it is. Probably because when I first read it as a teenager I really found the whole dark humor, meta-fiction, ironic tone thing right up my alley. Plus it has time travel and space aliens while still being considered serious literature. How could I not love it? And got me thinking how most people's favorites are formed before they hit their thirties. I'm pretty sure that nothing I read during this list project will dethrone this as my favorite book in the same way that I know my favorite superhero movie will always be the 1989 Batman. Why? Because I saw that movie when I was 13...
