In
his irony there is a disdain which plays about even the ironist himself.
Dreiser is a product of far different forces and traditions, and is
capable of no such escapement. Struggle as he may, and fume and protest
as he may, he can no more shake off the chains of his intellectual and
cultural heritage than he can change the shape of his nose. What that
heritage is you may find out in detail by reading "A Hoosier Holiday,"
or in summary by glancing at the first few pages of "Life, Art and
America." Briefly described, it is the burden of a believing mind, a
moral attitude, a lingering superstition. One-half of the man's brain,
so to speak, wars with the other half. He is intelligent, he is
thoughtful, he is a sound artist--but there come moments when a dead
hand falls upon him, and he is once more the Indiana peasant, snuffing
absurdly over imbecile sentimentalities, giving a grave ear to
quackeries, snorting and eye-rolling with the best of them. One
generation spans too short a time to free the soul of man. Nietzsche, to
the end of his days, remained a Prussian pastor's son, and hence
two-thirds a Puritan; he erected his war upon holiness, toward the end,
into a sort of holy war.
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