Twelve Men1919
by Theodore Dreiser
Although world-famous for his novels Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt, Theodore Dreiser was also highly accomplished in journalism, autobiography, and travel writing. In 1919, having recently accepted the publishing contract of a new publisher, Dreiser proposed to publish a "book of characters" that would collect twelve biographical sketches of individuals who were major influences on Dreiser, both as a man and as a writer.
The resulting narratives combine the best attributes of the character sketch, the autobiography, and the short story into miniature masterpieces of prose.
The men profiled in Twelve Men are a diverse and colorful group: from Dreiser's equally famous brother, the song-writer Paul Dreiser's ("My Brother Paul"), to the entirely obscure railroad foreman Michael Burke...