The meeting will discuss how the social dimension is depicted in the prose of Gorky and Dreiser: rises, falls, environmental pressure, and personal will. PhD candidate Alexey Bodyashkin will explain how the prose of Maxim Gorky and Theodore Dreiser resembles a social barometer. The heroes of Gorky and Dreiser rise to the peaks and fall face-first into the mud. What determines fate in these stories: the "instinct of overcoming," the pressure of circumstances, cultural habits, the environment? The comparison of the two literary worlds allows us to see how scenes of success and failure are constructed, how a person changes when pushed by poverty, ambition, envy, and hope. The listeners of the lecture will try to "synchronize the clocks" of the Russian and American traditions. In what way does Gorky turn out to be the "Russian Dreiser," and Dreiser the "American Gorky"? The lecture is part of a mini-course dedicated to the birthday of Maxim Gorky. On our website, we talk about free events in Moscow.