The Titan, Theodore Dreiser
The Titan, Theodore Dreiser
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The Titan

Author: Theodore Dreiser

Narrator: Stuart Langton

Unabridged: 19 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/10/2009

Categories: Fiction, Classic


Synopsis

The Titan is the second volume in what the author called his trilogy of desire, featuring the character of Frank Cowperwood, a powerful, irresistibly compelling man driven by his own need for power, beautiful women, and social prestige. Having married his former mistress, Aileen Butler, and moved to Chicago, Cowperwood almost succeeds in his dream of establishing a monopoly of all public utilities. Dissatisfaction with Aileen leads him, however, to a series of affairs with other women. When the Chicago citizenry frustrates his financial schemes, he departs for Europe with Berenice Fleming, the lovely daughter of the madam of a Louisville brothel. At last, Cowperwood experiences the pathos of the discovery that even giants are but pygmies, and that an ultimate balance must be struck.

About Theodore Dreiser

Theodore Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1871. The ninth child of German immigrants, he experienced considerable poverty as a child and was forced to leave home in search of work at the age of fifteen.

After briefly attending Indiana University, Dreiser found work as a reporter at the Chicago Globe. Later he worked for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, the St. Louis Republic, and the Pittsburgh Dispatch, before moving to New York, where he worked for the New York World while attempting to establish himself as a novelist. Dreiser was influenced by such authors as Charles Edward Russell, David Graham Phillips, and Frank Norris. In fact, it was Norris, who was working for Doubleday at the time, who helped get Dreiser's first novel, Sister Carrie, published. However, the Doubleday owners disapproved of the novel's subject matter, so it was not promoted and therefore sold poorly.

Dreiser continued to work as a journalist as well as write for mainstream newspapers, such as the Saturday Evening Post. At the same time, his work was being published in such socialist magazines as the Call. However, unlike many of his literary friends, he never joined the Socialist Party. Dreiser's second novel, Jennie Gerhardt, was not published until 1911. With the support of the literary critic Floyd Dell, who considered Dreiser a major writer, Sister Carrie was republished in 1912. This was followed by two novels: The Financier and The Titan, which is about Frank Cowperwood, a power-hungry business tycoon. The Genius was published in 1915, but it was another ten years before Dreiser's greatest novel, An American Tragedy, appeared. The book is based on the Chester Gillette and Grace Brown murder case that took place in 1906.

In addition to novels, Dreiser, a socialist, wrote several nonfiction books on political issues, including Dreiser Looks at Russia, Tragic America, and America Is Worth Saving. Dreiser joined the American Communist Party just before he died in 1945.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Paul on April 06, 2013

It kept my interest long enough to finish reading it. Since the main character is a bourgeois capitalist pig-dog, and he's opposed only by other such characters, it's hard to find any real empathy for anyone in the entire book (except for maybe one of the women he screws over).......more

Goodreads review by Patrick on July 14, 2024

Original review: 2017-July or August (but updated and greatly expanded 2020-04-10) - Fascinating book. I did not read the paperback, I listened to the LibriVox free audio recording from: [URL not allowed]-titan-by-the... The reader, Richard Kilmer, has a very mellifluous voice. Very easy to lis......more

Goodreads review by Gianni on December 29, 2020

Che trio incredibile di capitalisti filibustieri ha sfornato la letteratura nell’arco di quarant’anni: da Aristide Saccard, protagonista de Il denaro di Zola del 1891, a Frank Algernon Cowperwood in Il Titano di Theodore Dreiser del 1914 per finire a Macheath detto Mackie Messer, in Il romanz......more

Goodreads review by ☘Misericordia☘ on March 09, 2018

Q: How strange are realities as opposed to illusion! (c) Q: Rushing like a great comet to the zenith, his path a blazing trail, Cowperwood did for the hour illuminate the terrors and wonders of individuality. (c) Q: And this giant himself, rushing on to new struggles and new difficulties in an older land......more

Goodreads review by Mark on February 17, 2009

Less a follow-up to than an extension of Dreiser's _The Financier_. Whereas in that novel Frank Cowperwood's romantic relationships are ancillary to his financial speculation and relationship-building, in _The Titan_ Cowperwood's philanderings and the development of his inner aesthete take precedenc......more