A vigorous, if undeniably crude, figure in contemporary American
fiction, is Theodore Dreiser. Lacking style and literary distinction,
frequently bordering on the ridiculous, he nevertheless, by a rigid
devotion to a certain kind of realism that omits no details, has built
up a following that chooses to regard him as something of a great man.
His first book, written a dozen years or more ago, was “Sister Carrie.”
It introduced a soiled, unsentimental, rather sordid, but pathetic
and very human heroine. After a career in Chicago, Sister Carrie made
her way to New York, and eventually climbed to comfortable heights of
worldly success. “Jennie Gerhardt” (1911) was in much the same vein
and manner. “The Financier” (1912) gave a picture of American business
life as it was or as Mr. Dreiser conceived it to be during the Civil
War and the Reconstruction Period. Whatever its merits or demerits may
be, “The Genius,” his latest novel, owes its chief prominence to its
much debated morality.
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