On the first page of "Jennie
Gerhardt" one encounters "frank, open countenance," "diffident manner,"
"helpless poor," "untutored mind," "honest necessity," and half a dozen
other stand-bys of the second-rate newspaper reporter. In "Sister
Carrie" one finds "high noon," "hurrying throng," "unassuming
restaurant," "dainty slippers," "high-strung nature," and "cool,
calculating world"--all on a few pages. Carrie's sister, Minnie Hanson,
"gets" the supper. Hanson himself is "wrapped up" in his child. Carrie
decides to enter Storm and King's office, "no matter what." In "The
Titan" the word "trig" is worked to death; it takes on, toward the end,
the character of a banal and preposterous refrain. In the other books
one encounters mates for it--words made to do duty in as many senses as
the American verb "to fix" or the journalistic "to secure."...
I often wonder if Dreiser gets anything properly describable as pleasure
out of this dogged accumulation of threadbare, undistinguished,
uninspiring nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, pronouns, participles and
conjunctions.
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