Nor is
there any compensatory deftness in structure, or solidity of design, to
make up for this carelessness in detail. The well-made novel, of course,
can be as hollow as the well-made play of Scribe--but let us at least
have a beginning, a middle and an end! Such a story as "The 'Genius'" is
as gross and shapeless as Bruennhilde. It billows and bulges out like a
cloud of smoke, and its internal organization is almost as vague. There
are episodes that, with a few chapters added, would make very
respectable novels. There are chapters that need but a touch or two to
be excellent short stories. The thing rambles, staggers, trips, heaves,
pitches, struggles, totters, wavers, halts, turns aside, trembles on the
edge of collapse. More than once it seems to be foundering, both in the
equine and in the maritime senses. The tale has been heard of a tree so
tall that it took two men to see to the top of it. Here is a novel so
brobdingnagian that a single reader can scarcely read his way through
it....
Sec. 3
Of the general ideas which lie at the bottom of all of Dreiser's work it
is impossible to be in ignorance, for he has exposed them at length in
"A Hoosier Holiday" and summarized them in "Life, Art and America.
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