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An American Tragedy
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 34 hrs and 12 mins
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Publisher's summary
An American Tragedy is the story of Clyde Griffiths, who spends his life in the desperate pursuit of success. On a deeper, more profound level, it is the masterful portrayal of the society whose values both shape Clyde's ambitions and seal his fate; it is an unsurpassed depiction of the harsh realities of American life and of the dark side of the American dream. Extraordinary in scope and power, vivid in its sense of wholesale human waste, unceasing in its rich compassion, An American Tragedy stands as Theodore Dreiser's supreme achievement.
First published in 1925 and based on an actual criminal case, An American Tragedy was the inspiration for the 1951 film A Place in the Sun, which won six Academy Awards and starred Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.
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The Woman in White
- By: Wilkie Collins
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey, Simon Prebble
- Length: 25 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the greatest mystery thrillers ever written, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White was a phenomenal best seller in the 1860s, achieving even greater success than works by Charles Dickens. Full of surprise, intrigue, and suspense, this vastly entertaining novel continues to enthrall audiences today.
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Gripping novel, excellent production
- By David on 01-18-11
By: Wilkie Collins
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Piccadilly Jim
- By: P. G. Wodehouse
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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He was a gossip columnist’s dream. Piccadilly Jim’s life was a collage of broken promises and drunken brawls. And his straight-laced Victorian aunt was not amused. So, she decided to reform him. Unfortunately, her reform project started at a time when Jim had fallen in love and had already decided to reform himself. Thus, life became complicated. Jim pretends to be himself - a beautiful display of Wodehousean logic; hilarious indeed!
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Glad to Finally Have Frederick Davidson’s Version
- By John on 11-09-22
By: P. G. Wodehouse
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Howards End
- By: E. M. Forster
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Howards End is a beautifully subtle tale of two very different families brought together by an unusual event. The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes are practical and materialistic, leading lives of "telegrams and anger". When the elder Mrs. Wilcox dies and her family discovers she has left their country home - Howards End - to one of the Schlegel sisters, a crisis between the two families is precipitated that takes years to resolve.
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Fantastic Narration in Delightful Story
- By Wren on 05-05-18
By: E. M. Forster
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North and South
- By: Elizabeth Gaskell
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 18 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Written at the request of Charles Dickens, North and South is a book about rebellion that poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Gaskell expertly blends individual feeling with social concern and her heroine, Margaret Hale, is one of the most original creations of Victorian literature. When Margaret Hale's father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience she is forced to leave her comfortable home in the tranquil countryside of Hampshire....
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Delightful
- By Sally on 01-04-10
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A Room with a View
- By: E. M. Forster
- Narrated by: Rebecca Hall
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In this rich new audio production, acclaimed British American actress Rebecca Hall brings one of E. M. Forster's most admired works to life in this classic tale of human struggle. A charming young Englishwoman, Lucy Honeychurch, is wooed by both free-spirited George Emerson and wealthy Cecil Vyse while vacationing in Italy. Though attracted to George, Lucy becomes engaged to Cecil despite twice turning down his proposals. On hearing of the news, George confesses his love, leaving Lucy torn between marrying the more socially acceptable Cecil or George, the man she knows would bring her true happiness. Should Lucy choose social acceptance or true love?
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A lovely performance, and a wonderful story
- By Robert on 01-19-19
By: E. M. Forster
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Dombey and Son
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 36 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In this carefully crafted novel, Dickens reveals the complexity of London society in the enterprising 1840s as he takes the listener into the business firm and home of one of its most representative patriarchs, Paul Dombey.
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Perfect pair
- By Philip on 03-25-08
By: Charles Dickens
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The Shuttle
- By: Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Narrated by: Tabi That
- Length: 19 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Rosalie Vanderpoel, the daughter of an American multimillionaire marries an impoverished English baronet and goes to live in England. She all but loses contact with her family in America. Years later her younger sister Bettina, beautiful, intelligent and extremely rich, goes to England to find what has happened to her sister. She finds Rosalie shabby and dispirited, cowed by her husband's ill-treatment. Bettina sets about to rectify matters.
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More than Lovely
- By jTacy67 on 01-17-18
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Its been on my list for a while
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Outstanding classic, great narrator
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Need a pick me up.
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Great Story, but Audio Quality Not Always Good
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Its been on my list for a while
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Outstanding classic, great narrator
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Great Story, but Audio Quality Not Always Good
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Narrator ruined it
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Beautifully presented
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Powerful document of an all-too-familiar past
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Fake southern accent all wrong
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Not for the faint of heart, but addicting!
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THAT part of the Universe visible from Chicago!
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In 1851, Father Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indian in custom and belief. In the almost forty years that follow, Latour spreads his faith in the only way he knows—gently, all the while contending with an unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Out of these events, Cather gives us an indelible vision of life unfolding in a place where time itself seems suspended.
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A beautiful story, perfectly read
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What listeners say about An American Tragedy
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- TR
- 03-22-19
Not Monty
The story had a strong premise, but became a bit too preachy by the end for my taste. The narration was fine until in my opinion, he tried to imitate Montgomery Clift from the movie A Place in the Sun, which was based on this novel. He made him sound whiny and began to grate on my nerves. I completed the novel since I loved the movie and wanted to see how they compared. The book is worth a read, but I'd pass on the audible.
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- Mr. Eyuz
- 03-27-22
Quintessentially American--Warts and All
I waited many decades to undertake this book. While it has often cropped up in lists of essential American novels, references to it always came with off-putting caveats. First, there’s the sheer length of the book—a doorstop if there ever was one. Then there is Dreiser’s writing style, which is among the most unlovely in the English language. The author’s voice is an odd combination of tough, journalistic prose with florid verbosity. Why call something a lightbulb, when you can use the term “incandescent globe?” By the time I was half way through the book, I had started to compile a list of such “Dreiserisms.” A sampling: “eventuality,” “languishments” and “tergiversation.”
Yet for all his clumsiness as a writer, it would be wrong to call Dreiser tone deaf. In fact, when his characters speak, Dreiser reveals a deft ability to capture the nuance of place and class in their language. Business executives sound convincingly stentorian, tradespeople sound canny and unsentimental, young folk sound slangy and louche.
[An aside: It’s strange that both James Fenimore Cooper and Theodore Dreiser—key literary figures in the 19th and 20th centuries—had similarly tortured writing styles that were mitigated by an ear for dialog. What is it about the creative soil from which these writers sprang that they could only sing when their characters spoke?]
The contradictions in Dreiser’s style offer a microcosm of the novel’s assets and deficits. On the positive side of the ledger, An American Tragedy takes us on a guided tour of early 20th century America, from desolate city streets to the small town boarding houses, from revival meetings to drunken road trips, from swank hotels to factory floors. Along the way, were are shown an indelible profile of capitalism’s unwitting pawns. On the negative side, the story crawls along at such a pace that even its several reversals of fortune lack any punch. Dreiser was no puritan—indeed, he explores his character’s lustful and craven impulses without censure or commentary. Even so, he seems determined to drain his narrative of any pleasure, as if entertaining the reader were like dancing on the sabbath.
For much of his career, Dreiser made a living as a reporter, and in many respects, An American Tragedy reads like a very long news story. Nowhere is the journalistic voice more evident than in the last third of the novel, which deals with a murder trial and its aftermath. This is also where Dreiser seems on surest footing, his just-the-facts approach sounding and feeling thoroughly modern. But if such writing anticipates works like Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song by half a century, it must also be acknowledged that every narrative device Dreiser employs had been developed fifty years earlier by Emile Zola and his realist confrères. We are all susceptible to cultural chauvinism and can easily fall into the trap of viewing cornerstones of our culture’s art and literature as being the product of conditions that are uniquely our own. Let the record therefore show that there would have been no An American Tragedy without there first being a Germinal or La Bête Humaine.
Despite these French antecedents, An American Tragedy is a quintessentially American work of art. Its dark themes, sprawling scope and hard-nosed storytelling all have analogues in the contours of American history, geography and art. Reading this book is like driving across the United States. There are some noteworthy landmarks to be seen along the way, but also long, boring stretches that must be endured, and indeed this mix of adventure and tedium feels uniquely American. In the end, you are glad to have made the journey, but also glad when the trip is over.
[NOTE ON THE AUDIBLE PERFORMANCE OF THIS BOOK: Reading Dreiser’s prose would be a challenge for any actor, and therefore any performance of this text should be handicapped accordingly. That said, Dan John Miller is probably not the best choice for this undertaking. He reads stiffly—a problem that can be somewhat overcome by speeding up playback—and he struggles to give characters distinct voices. Some of his choices land very wide of the mark. Much of the novel’s action takes place in upstate New York, yet he gives many of the hard scrabble characters of the region southern drawls. Gosh darn it, this ain’t Faulkner!]
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- carolaird
- 07-20-23
Still relevant
Relevant after 100 years. Unmarried and pregnant? Want an abortion? You might as well be dead…
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- M. McGregor
- 12-21-23
Past as prologue
I love going back to titles from a century ago or more to see what still resonates today. With An American Tragedy, a lot. Stories like this still happen and probably always will, but not usually told so well. The characters are so fully fleshed out, their environments, their aspirations, their weaknesses, their shameful fears. And Dan John Miller's voice acting is superb, contributing much to the portrait of each individual.
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- Dr. Joe de Beauchamp
- 01-16-19
Tragedy
This is the story of Clifford Gillette. I found the story of a man that falls in love with two women an interesting read. I discovered the trial in the 1920s made a significant landmark legal precedent.
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- DM Brooks
- 11-21-18
Great performance to a very good story.
Tragic story. I should have figured with the title as it was that this book would be depressing. You feel for Clyde...and his seeming powerlessness against the tides of his life. Dreiser is an excellent conveyor of tragedy: of winding us up and letting us down... pulling the heart strings and making it hurt and bleed. He strives for what all authors would strive for. I recommend this book and this version to all looking forward to a gripping tragedy of epic proportions.
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- Karen Janulewicz
- 03-31-15
Classic
Gets bogged down in parts,
Great story coming of age
Every high school student would find this a typical classic
Also one if you missed on your summer reading list, read now.
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the book
loved this book. i laughed and cried . i loved the narator and will listen again.
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- lanny kaufman
- 09-08-11
Gripping!
What made the experience of listening to An American Tragedy the most enjoyable?
This book had me glued to my seat on the subway. I knew what was going to happen, but the transformation of the main character from an easygoing victim of circumstance to a reluctant murderer was fascinating.
Who was your favorite character and why?
My favorite character was Roberta Alden whom I felt sorry for and who epitomized for me the tragedy of this book. Clyde Griffiths was too flawed a character for me to consider tragic.
Which character ??? as performed by Dan John Miller ??? was your favorite?
The narrator did a great job with Clyde and Roberta, but also was outstanding with the district attourney and Roberta's father. His voice is able to pinpoint the role of the character. I haven't even finished this book, but so far every character is portrayed with authenticity.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
It is too big for one sitting, but whenever I had spare time, my mp3 player was on to this book.
Any additional comments?
By all means, buy the book from audible. Dreiser may have some shortcomings with his prose. He is not as elegant as Trollope, but the narrator brings it right to the emotions. My best books in audible are those that get me emotionally stirred whether joyfully or sadly. This is one of those books.
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- Ellen
- 06-18-16
A classic
How did I miss reading this as a young person. Great literature! Be sure you "read" or listen.
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