The Financier by Theodore Dreiser
Published 1912 · 190,000 words · about 13 hours at an average pace · Fiction, Literary Fiction, Naturalism, Historical Fiction
How hard is The Financier to read?
The Financier scores 30 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 40 out of 100
- Financial and legal terminology is used extensively and not always explained. Dreiser's prose is workmanlike but includes period-specific business vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 35 out of 100
- Dreiser writes in long, sometimes ungainly sentences. His prose lacks elegance but has cumulative power. The syntax is more labored than complex.
- Abstraction: 35 out of 100
- Dreiser works through accumulation of concrete detail rather than abstract argument. The philosophy is embedded in the narrative of financial transactions.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- Extremely dense with financial, political, and social detail. Dreiser explains bond markets, city treasury operations, and political machinery at length.
- Narrative indirection: 20 out of 100
- A direct, chronological narrative told by an omniscient narrator who explains characters' motivations explicitly.
- Symbolic density: 25 out of 100
- The lobster-and-squid scene is the novel's central symbol. Otherwise, Dreiser works through realist accumulation rather than symbolic suggestion.
- Ironic distance: 25 out of 100
- Dreiser writes with a naturalist's detachment rather than a satirist's irony. He presents Cowperwood without moral judgment, letting the facts speak.
- Resolution withholding: 30 out of 100
- As the first volume of a trilogy, the novel ends with Cowperwood's story unfinished — he is freed from prison and preparing to move to Chicago.
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- A long, chronological narrative following one man's career. The structure is conventional; the complexity is in the density of detail.
How The Financier is regarded
The Financier holds a literary regard score of 64 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.