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Theodore Dreiser
A brief survey of Dreiser's career up to the writing of "The Color of a Great City" in 1924.
THIS TITLE IS CITED AND RECOMMENDED BY: Catalogue of the Lamont Library, Harvard College.
91 pages, Library Binding
First published January 1, 1974
About the author
Burton Rascoe
59 books6 followersAmerican journalist, editor, and literary critic. Born in Kentucky, grew up in Oklahoma. Worked for Chicago Tribune and New York Herald Tribune.
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October 19, 2013
Shockingly bad. I'm surprised that this book was ever published.
Sam Moskowtiz (Strange Horizons) thinks that Burton Rascoe was forced by Theodore Dreiser to read Charles Fort in order to get permission to write this book. There is no evidence of that--Fort is not mentioned here, Dreiser and Rascoe knew each other, and Rascoe would certainly not have needed access to write this book.
It is meant to be an introduction to Dreiser, the background to his work, his writing, biography, and critical reception. But it is superficial, even for a 2,000 word newspaper article, let alone for this (admittedly, very short) book. (It's 91 pages long.)
The first section, on the background to Dreiser's writing, is composed of two parts, a very long quotation from Garret Garret's article on Business in Civilization in the United States--a little more than five pages. (So more than five percent of the book is a quotation from another source!) The rest of the chapter is Rascoe venting spleen at his fellow critic Stuart P. Sherman, who held a torch for Victorian writers and was abashed at the immorality of Dreiser and Twain and H. G. Wells. Rascoe does a good job here of dressing down Sherman, and showing how his evaluations of Dreiser were wrong, in spirit and on the facts, but, really, who cares?
On pages 28, almost a third of the way through the book, we finally get an analysis of Dreiser's works, albeit one sloppily put together. Rascoe sings the praises of Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt and The Financier and the Titan and even the much-maligned The 'Genius.' He is not even put off by Dreiser's style or prolixity, going so far as to question Mencken's judgment on these matters. For Rascoe, Dreiser was writing about his era from a clear-eyed perspective. There were now men whose entire lives were spent making money. What drove them? How did they live? (Page 51: "He is alone in having achieved a perspective upon the great human drama involved in the war of finance, ad thus in being able to treat it with the same detachment that epic poets have had toward heroic events of the remote past.") And there were women who were also trying to make it in this new world, burdened by the puritanism of their upbringing and hemmed in by the evils of capitalism. Rascoe says Dreiser wants to document their lives. (Sherman, by contrast, was upset Dreiser was not turning their lives into morality tales.)
He also approves of Dreiser's "Twelve Men," a book of essays on real people he knew. He praised Dreiser for having transferring the sensitivities he used to write his novels to sketching real lives. A traveler at Forty, Plays of the Natural and Supernatural, Free and Other stories, and Hey, Rub-a-Dub-Dub are hastily dismissed. Rascoe claims--argue is to strong a word--that structure of The Hand of the Potter shows Dreiser's excellence as a craftsman. He uses A Book About Myself and The Color of a Great City as sources, but does not really evaluate them as works of art. He does attempt to contextualize the writing, but really only half-heartedly, mostly by dropping names. Also, this section is also burdened by very extensive quotations which substitute for argument.
Biographically, the book is naive, whether purposefully or artfully I don't know. Rascoe is astute enough to see that behind his materialism Dreiser is really a seeker; and that his youthful poverty drove him to valorize money, and his youthful insecurities drove him to be something of a womanizer, but he really downplays these and turns Dreiser into a sort of 'aw shucks' Indiana peasant, who was just smart enough to see the age for what it really was. "Utterly without vanity, greed or aggressiveness," he says of Dreiser on p. 73, "indeed a humble, grateful compound of sentimentalism and idealism." One need not indulge in higher gossip to see how unlikely this is, let alone wrong on the facts.
And then again, a boatload of quotes and more potshots at the poor Mr. Sherman.
The final bit directs readers to other writings on Dreiser, most enthusiastically Mencken's write up in his book of prefaces. But even this is infuriating, since he says he so wants readers to consult this essay that he has purposefully left out important material that Mencken found. What? Then why bother writing this (little) book at all? Why not just send people to Mencken? Was it really worth getting in a few more attacks on Sherman?
Worthless.
Sam Moskowtiz (Strange Horizons) thinks that Burton Rascoe was forced by Theodore Dreiser to read Charles Fort in order to get permission to write this book. There is no evidence of that--Fort is not mentioned here, Dreiser and Rascoe knew each other, and Rascoe would certainly not have needed access to write this book.
It is meant to be an introduction to Dreiser, the background to his work, his writing, biography, and critical reception. But it is superficial, even for a 2,000 word newspaper article, let alone for this (admittedly, very short) book. (It's 91 pages long.)
The first section, on the background to Dreiser's writing, is composed of two parts, a very long quotation from Garret Garret's article on Business in Civilization in the United States--a little more than five pages. (So more than five percent of the book is a quotation from another source!) The rest of the chapter is Rascoe venting spleen at his fellow critic Stuart P. Sherman, who held a torch for Victorian writers and was abashed at the immorality of Dreiser and Twain and H. G. Wells. Rascoe does a good job here of dressing down Sherman, and showing how his evaluations of Dreiser were wrong, in spirit and on the facts, but, really, who cares?
On pages 28, almost a third of the way through the book, we finally get an analysis of Dreiser's works, albeit one sloppily put together. Rascoe sings the praises of Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt and The Financier and the Titan and even the much-maligned The 'Genius.' He is not even put off by Dreiser's style or prolixity, going so far as to question Mencken's judgment on these matters. For Rascoe, Dreiser was writing about his era from a clear-eyed perspective. There were now men whose entire lives were spent making money. What drove them? How did they live? (Page 51: "He is alone in having achieved a perspective upon the great human drama involved in the war of finance, ad thus in being able to treat it with the same detachment that epic poets have had toward heroic events of the remote past.") And there were women who were also trying to make it in this new world, burdened by the puritanism of their upbringing and hemmed in by the evils of capitalism. Rascoe says Dreiser wants to document their lives. (Sherman, by contrast, was upset Dreiser was not turning their lives into morality tales.)
He also approves of Dreiser's "Twelve Men," a book of essays on real people he knew. He praised Dreiser for having transferring the sensitivities he used to write his novels to sketching real lives. A traveler at Forty, Plays of the Natural and Supernatural, Free and Other stories, and Hey, Rub-a-Dub-Dub are hastily dismissed. Rascoe claims--argue is to strong a word--that structure of The Hand of the Potter shows Dreiser's excellence as a craftsman. He uses A Book About Myself and The Color of a Great City as sources, but does not really evaluate them as works of art. He does attempt to contextualize the writing, but really only half-heartedly, mostly by dropping names. Also, this section is also burdened by very extensive quotations which substitute for argument.
Biographically, the book is naive, whether purposefully or artfully I don't know. Rascoe is astute enough to see that behind his materialism Dreiser is really a seeker; and that his youthful poverty drove him to valorize money, and his youthful insecurities drove him to be something of a womanizer, but he really downplays these and turns Dreiser into a sort of 'aw shucks' Indiana peasant, who was just smart enough to see the age for what it really was. "Utterly without vanity, greed or aggressiveness," he says of Dreiser on p. 73, "indeed a humble, grateful compound of sentimentalism and idealism." One need not indulge in higher gossip to see how unlikely this is, let alone wrong on the facts.
And then again, a boatload of quotes and more potshots at the poor Mr. Sherman.
The final bit directs readers to other writings on Dreiser, most enthusiastically Mencken's write up in his book of prefaces. But even this is infuriating, since he says he so wants readers to consult this essay that he has purposefully left out important material that Mencken found. What? Then why bother writing this (little) book at all? Why not just send people to Mencken? Was it really worth getting in a few more attacks on Sherman?
Worthless.
Displaying 1 of 1 review