, against its suppression after
it was in type. But this theory runs aground upon two circumstances, the
first being that Dreiser did not actually read "McTeague," nor, indeed,
grow aware of Norris, until after "Sister Carrie" was completed, and the
other being that his development, once he began to write other books,
was along paths far distant from those pursued by Norris himself.
Dreiser, in truth, was a bigger man than Norris from the start; it is to
the latter's unending honour that he recognized the fact instanter, and
yet did all he could to help his rival. It is imaginable, of course,
that Norris, living fifteen years longer, might have overtaken Dreiser,
and even surpassed him; one finds an arrow pointing that way in
"Vandover and the Brute" (not printed until 1914). But it swings sharply
around in "The Epic of the Wheat." In the second volume of that
incomplete trilogy, "The Pit," there is an obvious concession to the
popular taste in romance; the thing is so frankly written down, indeed,
that a play has been made of it, and Broadway has applauded it.
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