V isiting his fi ancée’s Missouri home-stead in 1894, Theodore Dreiser was struck by “the spirit of rural America, its idealism, its dreams.”
V isiting his fi ancée’s Missouri home-stead in 1894, Theodore Dreiser was struck by “the spirit of rural America, its idealism, its dreams.” But this was an “American tradition in which I, alas, could not share,” Dreiser wrote. “I had seen Pittsburgh. I had seen Lithua- nians and Hungarians in their [alleys] and hovels. I […]


