A
digest of the reviews of such a book as David Graham Phillips' "Susan
Lenox" or of such a play as Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler" would make astounding
reading for a Continental European. Not only the childish incompetents
who write for the daily press, but also most of our critics of
experience and reputation, seem quite unable to estimate a piece of
writing as a piece of writing, a work of art as a work of art; they
almost inevitably drag in irrelevant gabble as to whether this or that
personage in it is respectable, or this or that situation in accordance
with the national notions of what is edifying and nice. Fully
nine-tenths of the reviews of Dreiser's "The Titan," without question
the best American novel of its year, were devoted chiefly to indignant
denunciations of the morals of Frank Cowperwood, its central character.
That the man was superbly imagined and magnificently depicted, that he
stood out from the book in all the flashing vigour of life, that his
creation was an artistic achievement of a very high and difficult
order--these facts seem to have made no impression upon the reviewers
whatever.
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