'" Moreover, the tide
of his writing does not rise or fall with any regularity; he neither
improves steadily nor grows worse steadily. Only half an eye is needed
to see the superiority of "Jennie Gerhardt," as a sheer piece of
writing, to "Sister Carrie," but on turning to "The Financier," which
followed "Jennie Gerhardt" by an interval of but one year, one observes
a falling off which, at its greatest, is almost indistinguishable from a
collapse. "Jennie Gerhardt" is suave, persuasive, well-ordered, solid in
structure, instinct with life. "The Financier," for all its merits in
detail, is loose, tedious, vapid, exasperating. But had any critic, in
the autumn of 1912, argued thereby that Dreiser was finished, that he
had shot his bolt, his discomfiture would have come swiftly, for "The
Titan," which followed in 1914, was almost as well done as "The
Financier" had been ill done, and there are parts of it which remain, to
this day, the very best writing that Dreiser has ever achieved. But "The
'Genius'"? Ay, in "The 'Genius'" the pendulum swings back again! It is
flaccid, elephantine, doltish, coarse, dismal, flatulent, sophomoric,
ignorant, unconvincing, wearisome.
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