Recommendations

[Vesuvia]

Hi, I am new to this site. I am a big fan of Theodore Dreiser and wonder if anyone could recommend other writers I may enjoy?

[Pompey Bum]

Hello Vesuvia, and welcome to the site. I love the name! :) I'm no expert on American literature from Dreiser's time, but if you like that sort of gritty urban realism, you might want to check out Upton Sinclair. If you want more general recommendations, I'm sure you will find many opinions here. I would suggest Dostoyevsky. Read Crime and Punishment (or Notes From the Underground) for gritty realism. Read The Brothers Karamazov of you want to understand the limitations of being human. Read The Idiot if you want to understand the tragedy of those limits. And read Tolstoy if you want to see how human lives all fit together to make fate.

[Emil Miller]

Hi, I am new to this site. I am a big fan of Theodore Dreiser and wonder if anyone could recommend other writers I may enjoy?

I read a good deal of Dreiser when I was younger and particularly enjoyed An American Tragedy and Sister Carrie, although a couple of years ago I tried to read Jennie Gerhardt and found it too similar to Sister Carrie to continue reading it. Considering his former reputation as perhaps the foremost naturalist writer in the USA, it seems strange that he appears to be somewhat neglected nowadays.
Another naturalist writer I think you would enjoy is Frank Norris who was writing about the same time as Dreiser but unfortunately died young, but not before writing one of the great American classics: McTeague: sub-titled A Story of San Francisco. I have read it three times and intend reading it again shortly. His other completed novels are 'The Octopus' and also 'The Pit: superb examples of the effect of US capitalism on the farming community that produced the food for the expanding city of Chicago.
Incidentally, there is a marvelous film based on Sister Carrie made in 1952 and starring Jennifer Jones and Laurence Olivier that follows the book very closely.