He himself was the one exception

Theodore Dreiser, the American novelist who wrote "An American Tragedy," had his first novel, "Sister Carrie," published on this day in 1900. He made $68.40 in royalties. Dreiser once wrote: "Life is a God-damned, stinking, treacherous game and nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand are bastards."

Fellow novelist Sherwood Anderson wrote about Dreiser: "Something grey and bleak and hurtful, that has been in the world perhaps forever, is personified in him."

(Also read about Dreiser at Last Words -- click this entry's title.)