Theodore Dreiser was a controversial figure in his time because of his literary efforts, and of his personal life, which featured numerous sexual liaisons, included membership in the communist party, merited a 180-page FBI file, and ended in Hollywood. This biography weaves Dreiser's literary achievement into the context of his life.
"Jerome Loving is a major American biographer, and he has taken up the life of a central literary figure in The Last Titan. It is the best biographical study of Dreiser that has yet been written. Loving has an experienced hand, and he seems to know exactly where to go in the life, how to make the life available to the reader, and how to make one at least believe that this is how the great novels-Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy-and the other fascinating works by Dreiser got written. Loving obviously knows everything there is to know about Dreiser, and he has made an elegant selection here, fashioning a life of the author that has all the narrative momentum of a novel."-Jay Parini, author of Robert Frost: A Life
"Jerome Loving has produced an immensely readable, lively, detailed account of Theodore Dreiser's life, always with one eye on Dreiser's great books. This is vivid biography, bringing the man very much to life. The streets, the newsrooms, the rented rooms, the yearning of the young Dreiser for money, fame, women, good things in life, keeps reminding the reader of Dreiser's own Carrie and Clyde."-Robert D. Richardson, Jr., author of Emerson: The Mind on Fire
"Jerome Loving has a real gift for biography: he has the ability to draw both the big and the small picture and to bring them into mutual focus. While the major events in Dreiser's life are known, Loving brings an assortment of new details and intelligent conjecture to this compelling story. This will be the prevailing version of Dreiser's life."-Richard Lehan, author of The City in Literature: An Intellectual and Cultural History, and editor of Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, Twelve Men
