Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Genius
    Unavailable
    The Genius
    Unavailable
    The Genius
    Ebook1,060 pages18 hours

    The Genius

    By Theodore Dreiser

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The Genius is a semi-autobiographical novel by Theodore Dreiser.

    It concerns Eugene Witla, a talented painter of strong sexual desires who grapples with his commitment to his art and the force of his erotic needs. The novel is divided intro three sections: "Youth," "Struggle," and "Revolt." In Book I, Eugene Witla (like Sister Carrie, in Dreiser's earlier novel) escapes the confines of the small town in Illinois where he has been raised to make his way in Chicago.

    There he studies painting at the Chicago Art Institute and enjoys the excitement of the city and his first sexual experiences. He becomes engaged to a young woman, Angela Blue, with whom he is intimate before their marriage but, at all times, he finds it difficult to remain faithful. A life based on monogamy seems beyond him. In Book II, Eugene and Angela move to New York City, where he makes a name for himself in the art world as an urban realist but finds his marriage with the increasingly conventional Angela painfully limiting.

    They travel to Europe, he suffers a breakdown, and they return to New York where Eugene attempts to make a better living in the advertising world. Book III chronicles the deterioration of Eugene and Angela's marriage as he begins an affair with Suzanne Dale, the teenage daughter of a woman who works in the same office (this affair is one of the most autobiographical details in the book); Suzanne's mother and Angela do everything they can to end the relationship, but to no avail. In one scene, Angela, pregnant, comes upon her husband in bed with his teenaged girlfriend. Angela dies in childbirth, but her demise does not free Eugene to be with Suzanne. He ends the story alone, a man who has never been able to control his lust and uncertain of what use to put his talents, taking care of his newborn daughter.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSheba Blake Publishing
    Release dateNov 30, 2019
    ISBN9788827584354
    Unavailable
    The Genius
    Author

    Theodore Dreiser

    Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) was an American novelist and journalist. Born in Indiana, Dreiser was the son of John Paul Dreiser, a German immigrant, and Sarah Maria Schanab, a Mennonite from Ohio who converted to Catholicism and was banished by her community. Raised in a family of thirteen children, of which he was the twelfth, Dreiser attended Indiana University for a year before taking a job as a journalist for the Chicago Globe. While working for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Dreiser wrote articles on Nathaniel Hawthorne and William Dean Howells, as well as interviewed such figures as Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison. In 1900, he published his debut novel Sister Carrie, a naturalist portrait of a young midwestern woman who travels to Chicago to become an actress. Despite poor reviews, he continued writing fiction, but failed to find real success until An American Tragedy (1925), a novel based on the 1906 murder of Grace Brown. Considered a masterpiece of American fiction, the novel grew his reputation immensely, leading to his nomination for the 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature, which ultimately went to fellow American Sinclair Lewis. Committed to socialism and atheism throughout his life, Dreiser was a member of the Communist Party of the United States of America and a lifelong champion of the working class.

    Read more from Theodore Dreiser

    Related to The Genius

    Related ebooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      They Were One-offs

      Apr 6, 2022

      HOW I wish I’d written this book! Matthew Kelly celebrates four women whose work created the organisations and attitudes to conservation we take for granted today. Two are well known, two are not; all their stories enrich us. The well-known two are O

      7 min read

    • Article

      Low Expectations

      Feb 1, 2019

      Low Expectations
      7 min read

    • Article

      To The Manure Born

      Jun 1, 2020

      To The Manure Born
      5 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 4, 2018

      I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me. —Fred Allen I have always wondered, in reading travels, at the childish joy travellers felt at meeting people they knew, and their sense of loneliness when they did not, in

      4 min read

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Sep 1, 2022

      Table Talk
      10 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Mar 4, 2019

      An April Sunday brings the snow Making the blossom on the plum trees green, Not white. An hour or two, and it will go. —Philip Larkin, “An April Sunday brings the snow,” 1948 Do nothing, only keep agitating, debating; and things will destroy themse

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Loading Brush

      Sep 1, 2017

      The Art of Loading Brush
      27 min read

    • Article

      Around The World In 100 Plants

      Oct 26, 2022

      Simon Barnes (Simon & Schuster, £30) WE have become used, in recent years, to the convention of 100 short essays as a means of raising the reader’s eyebrows and setting away a never-ending series of big ideas from the starting point of an everyday o

      5 min read

    • Article

      Everything Worthwhile Is Very Far Away: An Excerpt from the New Introduction to ‘Poor White’

      Jun 28, 2018

      1. In 1919, after his first marriage had ended, his family had dissolved, and his career as a mail-order businessman had been tossed aside for artistic dreams, 42-year-old Sherwood Anderson published Winesburg, Ohio, his fourth book of an eventual 27

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Wilde Wild West

      Feb 20, 2024

      The Wilde Wild West
      10 min read

    • Article

      THE BATTLE FOR Kurrumbede

      Jul 21, 2019

      Ghosts shift soundlessly across drought-stricken paddocks. In abandoned slab huts, Doris Day smiles from an old magazine cover, and a gate leg table with barley twist legs lies in pieces on a broken floor. Desiccated umbrella grass tangles in stables

      9 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Feb 22, 2021

      by Kat Maxwell Mākaro Press — $25 A supervisor in civil construction by profession, Maxwell turns out to be a gifted writer in this short memoir consisting of a series of brief epiphanies. The longest is just eight pages and most are two or three, re

      5 min read

    • Article

      Beyond the Mangrove Trees

      Aug 6, 2020

      No one expects their house to float away. Ethel certainly hadn’t. Our story begins in the sleepy village of Greenwood, where Ethel had spent her entire life. It was an overcast Sunday afternoon and Ethel watched the rain lash against the window from

      7 min read

    • Article

      Odd Jobs

      Jul 19, 2017

      Odd Jobs
      3 min read

    • Article

      By the Horns

      Aug 28, 2017

      By the Horns
      13 min read

    • Article

      A Love Supreme

      Oct 9, 2021

      A Love Supreme
      5 min read

    • Article

      Winter Book Reviews

      May 29, 2023

      Winter Book Reviews
      4 min read

    • Article

      Page Turner

      Sep 19, 2019

      Page Turner
      5 min read

    • Article

      Monk’s House

      May 2, 2024

      Monk’s House
      6 min read

    Reviews for The Genius

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words