Of all modern novelists Theodore Dreiser most entirely catches the
spirit of America. Here is the huge torrential stream of material
energies. Here are the men and women, so pushed and driven and parched
and bleached, by the enormous forces of industry and commerce, that
all distinction in them seems to be reduced to a strange
colorlessness; while the primordial animal cravings, greedy,
earth-born, fumble after their aims across the sad and littered stage
of sombre scenery.
There is something epic--something enormous and amorphous--like the
body of an elemental giant--about each of these books. In the "Titan,"
especially, the peculiar power of Dreiser's massive, coulter-like
impetus is evident. Here we realize how, between animal passion and
material ambition, there is little room left in such a nature as
Cooperwood's for any complicated subtlety. All is simple, direct, hard
and healthy--a very epitome and incarnation of the life-force, as it
manifests itself in America.
27. CERVANTES. DON QUIXOTE. _In any translation except those
vulgarized by eighteenth century taste_.
Cervantes' great, ironical, romantic story is written in a style so
noble, so nervous, so humane, so branded with reality, that, as the
wise critic has said, the mere touch and impact of it puts courage
into our veins. It is not necessary to read every word of this old
book. There are tedious passages. But not to have ever opened it; not
to have caught the tone, the temper, the terrible courage, the
infinite sadness of it, is to have missed being present at one of the
"great gestures" of the undying, unconquerable spirit of humanity.