#an american tragedy

[cinematic-literature]

Asteroid City (2023) by Wes Anderson

Book title: An American Tragedy (1925) by Theodore Dreiser

[pygartheangel]

[author-mandi-bean]

On writing and money (part one).

What can American classics communicate about the pitfalls of a capitalist society? Is the American Dream dead?

“It was so hard to be poor, not to have money and position, and to be able to do in life exactly as you wished.” – Theodore Dresier, An American Tragedy In my high school English classroom, the last novel we studied was the American classic (and my favorite novel of all time) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is a timeless, powerful study of contemporary America and the ultimate denial…

[minnesbookshelf]

240417 ~ An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser.

Yesterday I finished An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser.

It really is one of the best books I've ever read so far! Especially because it was translated by Nora Gal.

What impressed me? • First of all, its language. It's written perfectly, not difficult to read, yet in a serious manner. Every detail can be easily imagined in your own mind. Thanks to the translators and the editor of the Russian edition. • The way the characters are described is true to life, including, of course, the main one, Clyde Griffits. His path was shown from the very childhood to... well, his last moments. As I was reading the book, my relationship with Clyde changed from time to time. At first, I loved him a lot, then I judged him and was a bit apathetic towards his fate, and, finally, felt terrible pain inside my chest during the last pages, despite my opinion on his deeds.  • Clyde's mother's love also impressed me. She was considered a strange religious fanatic, but I thought about my own mother. She must love me this much, too, despite everything.

What would I call a disadvantage? • The ending may be too religious for some people, but it was a part of Clyde's path.

I enjoyed An American Tragedy a lot and all its 800 pages were worth reading. It definitely can be viewed as #1 to me this year! I wonder if anything can beat that in the future.

[letterboxd-loggd]

An American Tragedy (1931) Josef von Sternberg

January 6th 2024

[justdonotaskmewhy]

i’ve just read An American Tragedy

and what a harsh book it is. i feel so depressed, empty and somehow serene at the same time. Dreiser was extremely talented. three parts are like three well written representations of different genres (coming of age, love novel and detective)

at first i felt so much sympathy for Clyde. afterwards i hated him. only to somehow feel sorry for him

[glassamphibians]

WEINERMOBILE CRASHED

[littlemintcat]

This motherfucking book. I'm about 400/900 pages into it and I have experienced all the thrills of working in a collar factory at the turn of the 20th century. Splatted a little girl going a teeth-clenching 40mph in a car and got out of buying a horrible woman a racoon fur coat.

[arachnerd-8-legs]

really disappointing that bunjywunjy had to be pestered twice just to quietly remove their reblog after using their huge platform to encourage garbage like raving about the lesbian estonian soviet flag and how 'new pride flag just dropped' so people could go 'ooh pretty' about a flag that was forced onto us by ppl who wanted our culture gone and oppressed us for about a century in total if not more.

to say nothing or not show anything of the truth about that flag and quietly remove the reblog felt more like it was done out of obligation (and you didn't agree) rather than care for the subject matter that is still a fresh wound in our country's memory. it's only been 33 years since it ended.

I'd rather you make the mistake about something you didn't know (eastern european history is easy for westeners to overlook, because we're not a big country like them, we're not england or france or spain or germany) and admit/apologize for said mistake or even just outright state that you don't actually care rather than say nothing and quietly remove something so that people would stop talking about it

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

Before anyone starts talking about gun laws in the US and "see, there's mass shootings in Europe too", this was the seventh and the worst mass shooting in this country since the end of the Second World War

[disgruntledkittenface]

Suddenly Last Summer by @disgruntledkittenface

Larry | Explicit | 44k

Louis is bored, rich and lonely. He has no reason to expect that this summer in the Hamptons with his friends will be different from any other – until he meets Harry. Suddenly he has someone who listens to him and cares about what he thinks. Someone who really sees him. But their happily ever after is forever marred by an incident at a party during Labor Day weekend, and Louis is left with a choice to make.

READ ON AO3

[minnesbookshelf]

finished an american tragedy today... uh oh watch me cry for the rest of the night

[dailymothanon]

This also happened at Fort Ross trust me on this I was literally there. I read that Alaskans at the fort did... basically everything, like seriously just about all the work 😓 Cali must've been like at some point, let him breathe damn!!! Now Alaska gets to be coddled after because I said so. Perhaps the first Outsider to actually see him as a person. Plus Alaska didn't have facial hair at this point since it's the 1800s 😌 Anyways I've been wanting to draw some pre purchase (Or at the least, pre statehood) Alaska. becaus i want to. plus i might slap history facts in there maybe

[ocdhuacheng]

To the half of my mutuals in my notes that would vote for Philly over Chicago……. Sleep with one eye open babes.

[i-am-church-the-cat]

you want 917 words on clones and Logan Sargeant? yes you do, keep reading

--

Athletes are freaks of nature. Not everyone can be an athlete, even if they have the drive, passion, and opportunity. You can be too tall for a sport, too short, you shoulders could be too wide, your legs too long. There are a hundred and one genetic variations that can keep someone in competing professionally within the rules of athletics.

So why waste your time on chance? Why put all that money and time in if you can't be completely sure that it's going to be worth it? Wouldn't it be easier to just remove the unknown variable altogether? That way we can truly test how far the human body is able to go.

But when does it stop being human? When you can hand-select the color of a baby's eyes? When you pump the fetus full of drugs? How about when you grow it in a lab? Is it still human then?

Logan Hunter Sargeant was made for fighting. Sargeant Trading payed billions of dollars to create the perfect All-American soldier, the kind you'd find on posters. He was bred for speed, for strength, for durability. He was programmed to follow orders even if it limited his ability to think strategically. Logan was made to be the perfect weapon for the U.S. Government, and in exchange, gain Sargeant Trading back a hundred-fold what they shelled out for him.

But something when wrong in that lab, is what Logan's been told. That while the scientists could make his body perfect for fighting, they couldn't make Logan a perfect fighter. Because the problem with clones, at the end of the day, is that they're still fucking people. And people have feelings.

Weapons aren't supposed to have feelings.

So Logan was a failure. Is a failure, as his uncle likes to remind him. No, not his uncle, Harry Sargeant III has no relation to Logan, whose DNA was cultivated from a variety of donors. Just because Daniel Sargeant took a failed experiment in and raised him alongside his own son, doesn't mean Logan is a Sargeant where it matters.

But what does a weapon that isn't capable of being a weapon supposed to do? Logan can't escape the urge to push his body to its limits, can't ignore the pull towards things that get his adrenaline pumping. His body craves the thrill like an addict, not because of any choices that he made, but because his creators put him together that way.

Racing is the only thing he's ever done that soothed that itch. That kept him from unleashing all his pent up energy as violent outbursts that made him hate himself and scared of his own body. Being in a plane, in a boat, in a four-wheel kart spinning around the edges of a racetrack kept all his atoms soundly inside his body.

Logan couldn't be a soldier, but his body was made for being pushed to his limits. Racing was the only thing that met his threshold for physical activity. Unlike the other kids who had to train their bodies for the pull of gravity, Logan's body was made for it.

Sometimes it felt a little too perfect. Like someone had messed up and made him a racing clone instead of a fighting one. And other times - usually when he was slamming into some barriers and getting the wind knocked out of him - he knew it was all just a happy accident.

The FIA doesn't have any rules restricting clones from competing. Logan's pretty sure that's because no one really knows they exist. They're something from science fiction, maybe some abstract future concept, not a fledgling industry for the rich and ethically defunct. Logan can't imagine ever telling anyone what he is. The thought that someone might think he's a dangerous freak is second to the possibility that someone might think he was cheating, that he wasn't working just as hard as everyone else. Yeah, he lucked out by having a hand-coded body type and rich pseudo-parents, but that can be said for most of the kids on the Formula track.

When Logan wins the World Karting Championship, he knows this is more than just science, nothing like destiny. This was his choice from start to finish.

And he was certainly going to finish it now. He thinks about the sprouts of conversations surroundings clones in professional sports and has to laugh at the thought. If anyone wants to argue that being made for athleticism gave an inherent advantage to a person, they can just point them Logan's way. Billions of dollars went into him. He might have the speed and the strength and the dexterity, but he's a shit fighter and now, a shit racer, too.

Being made in a lab didn't help him when his car was fighting him every step of the way. It didn't help him retain information faster or track the most efficient route around the track. It just made him strong enough to take a hit. And the last two years have proved it. If there's anyone that could be kicked while they were down, it was Logan Sargeant.

He isn't sure what he would do with himself if he doesn't have racing. His body was made to fight but his heart couldn't handle it. His heart yearned to race but his brain couldn't handle it.

He was a twice-failed epitome of human strength. He was made in a lab somewhere. And it didn't fucking matter at all.

[ciderjacks]

ik everyone and their mother has said this already but I appreciate how many episodes of puppet history focus on non-white stories and are both respectful and dont just focus on mass suffering at the hands of white people, and when they do have episodes involving that they still make sure to focus on the people fighting back and not just "oh this horrible thing was done, sad!"

Also I appreciate how Shane makes an effort to pronounce shit correctly, and to be respectful of people's cultures and spirituality, and to find lesser known stories from these cultures. It's always cool to go into the comments and see people who usually don't see their history or people acknowledged talking about how happy the episode made them.