Sister Carrie

　　 　　 　　 　　 　　sister carrie, theodore dreiser\'s revolutionary first novel, was published in 1900--sort of. the story of carrie meeber, an 18-year-old country girl who moves to chicago and becomes a kept woman, was strong stuff at the turn of the century, and what dreiser\'s wary publisher released was a highly expurgated version. times change, and we now have a restored "author\'s cut" of sister carrie that shows how truly ahead of his time dreiser was. first and foremost, he has written an astute, nonmoralizing account of a woman and her limited options in late-19th-century america. that\'s impressive in and of itself, but dreiser doesn\'t stop there. digging deeply into the psychological underpinnings of his characters, he gives us people who are often strangers to themselves, drifting numbly until fate pushes them on a path they can later neither defend nor even remember choosing. 　　dreiser\'s story unfolds in the measured cadences of an earlier era. this sometimes works brilliantly as we follow the choices, small and large, that lead some characters to doom and others to glory. on the other hand, the middle chapters--of which there are many--do drag somewhat, even when one appreciates dreiser\'s intentions. if you can make it through the sagging midsection, however, you\'ll be rewarded by sister carrie\'s last 150 pages, which depict the harrowing downward spiral of one of the book\'s central characters. here dreiser portrays with brutal power how the wrong decision--or lack of decision--can lay waste to a life. --rebecca gleason --this text refers to the paperback edition. 　　 　　book description 　　 　　"american writing, before and after dreiser\'s time, differed almost as much as biology before and after darwin," said h. l. mencken. sister carrie, dreiser\'s great first novel, transformed the conventional "fallen woman" story into a bold and truly innovative piece of fiction when it appeared in 1900. na?ve young caroline meeber, a small-town girl seduced by the lure of the modern city, becomes the mistress of a traveling salesman and then of a saloon manager, who elopes with her to new york. both its subject matter and dreiser\'s unsparing, nonjudgmental approach made sister carrie a controversial book in its time, and the work retains the power to shock readers today. 　　 "sister carrie came to housebound and airless america like a great 　　free western wind, and to our 　　stuffy domesticity gave us the first 　　fresh air since mark twain and whitman," noted sinclair lewis. "dreiser enlarged, willy-nilly, by 　　a kind of historical accident if 　　the modern library has played a significant role in american cultural life for the better part of a century. the series was founded in 1917 by the publishers boni and liveright and eight years later acquired by bennett cerf and donald klopfer. it provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, random house. the modern library has been a staple of the american book trade, providing readers with afford- 　　able hardbound editions of impor- 　　tant works of literature and thought. for the modern library\'s seventy- 　　fifth anniversary, random house redesigned the series, restoring 　　as its emblem the running torch- .　　bearer created by lucian bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau- 　　gurating a new program of selecting titles. the modern library continues to provide the world\'s best books, at the best prices. 　　 　　book dimension 　　height (mm) 175 width (mm) 107