Stupefying power

MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH

Jennie Gerhardt, The Financier and The Titan Theodore Dreiser (Panther 8s, 8s 6d and 8s 6d) The Violent Bear it Away Flannery O'Con- nor (Faber 30s) The Marrow of Tradition Charles W. Chest- nutt (University of Michigan Press, $1.95) Today only the strangely neglected novels of Leonard Mann evince, on a smaller scale, the combination of gloom, meticulous detail, clumsiness and power to move that characterises Theodore Dreiser's best work (this includes, in addition to the new paper- backs listed above, at least Sister Carrie, The Genius and, most important of all, An American Tragedy). But Mann (born 1895) is an Australian; it would no longer be pos- sible for an American or a European novel- list, however deterministic his outlook, to employ Dreiser's naturalistic methods to anything like the same effect. Borden Deal's recent attempt to write a full - scale naturalistic novel about the American tobacco industry, based on some notes Dreiser made, is a convenient practical illustration of this.

The most eloquent and bitter attack on Dreiser has come from Lionel Trilling, who, differing from most critics, seems to rate Jennie Gerhardt (1911) as his only worthy achievement. When Dreiser aroused interest —he is not popular just now—it was con- ceded by his admirers that stylistically and philosophically he was clumsy, stupid, be- wildered, naïve and crude; but these faults were seen as forgivable, both because Dreiser was like America itself—inchoately, hugely, struggling towards expression, and because, in Alfred Kazin's words, `he stupe- fies with reality'.

Trilling seeks to destroy this notion of Dreiser as a flawed genius, and to replace it with one of a pitiless, egocentric and offensive cheapjack. In order to perform this task he calls upon the example of Henry James, proceeds to attack Dreiser's notori- ously crude and unsophisticated systems of ideas—but not his novels—and finally proves his case, at least to his own satisfaction, by a superficial and misleading summary of the defects of the posthumous The Bulwark (1946). Trilling, of course, is an arch-intel- lectualiser, and he attacked Dreiser as much for not being a sophisticated critic as for not being Henry James. His attitude has been explained by Saul Bellow: `I often think criticism of Dreiser as a stylist [he might well have added, 'and as a "thinker"'] at times betrays a resistance to the feel- ings he causes readers to suffer. If they can say he can't write, they need not experience these feelings'.

Jennie Gerhardt, Dreiser's second novel, is not as powerful (that is the word one in- evitably uses of him) or moving as his later books. But it is an incomparable study of the consequences of poverty. Dreiser's major books are all studies of the victories (Sister Carrie, The Financier trilogy) or the defeats (Jennie Gerhardt, An American Tragedy) of people who have been born poor or in un- privileged positions. His first novel described how Carrie Meeber (partly modelled on his own sister) became a successful actress; his second described the inevitable defeat of Jennie Gerhardt (again, drawn partially from a sister).

Jennie is made pregnant, promised marriage, but cheated of it by her rich lover's death. Then she is taken up by a wealthy industrialist who uses up her best years and consequently drops her, only, b% a characteristically Dreiserian stroke o1 irony, to regret it and to commit virtual suicide by self-indulgence in food and drink. Just as in Sister Carrie Dreiser had power- fully, almost mysteriously, conveyed the sense of a whole personality and its built-in penchant for success, so here he poignantly conveys a sense of defeated sweetness. The tragedy is quite beyond the terms of either his simplistic materialism or its converse, his embarrassing notion of poetry (this may be seen in his execrable verse); it suggests that Dreiser's pontifications had no relation at all to his inner mental workings, that his

very defects should be examined 'structur-

ally' rather than written off as academic or aesthetic failings: the achievement is un-

deniably there, to justify the examination. and it goes even deeper than his generally acknowledged. massive power to evoke feelings of pity or indignation.

The Financier trilogy, the weak last volume of which, The Stoic (1947), was completed

by Dreiser's second wife and published posthumously, is based on the career of the crooked but successful American million- aire and womaniser Charles Yerkes (1837-

1905), to whom Dreiser gave the name of Frank Cowperwood. The Financier (1911) is superior to The Titan (1914), but neither has the conviction of Dreiser's greatest novels. Dreiser's attitude towards Yerkes.

and towards that vulgar part of himself that

desired power at the expense of decency (in the name of a materialistic philosophy of life), was ambiguous: he admired and was

fascinated by Yerkes, but could not fully accept him. And so Yerkes becomes some-

what over-humanised as Cowperwood: the process is too discernible to make for wholly successful fiction.

What Dreiser is admiring, here, is not simply Yerkes, but a kind of Yerkes who

might succeed and yet somehow not be a monster. Yet in long passages, the work displays all Dreiser's familiar cumulative power and persuasiveness. It is something

like reading a newspaper story by a truth- ful journalist fascinated by his material.

The art is negligible; but the great gift of compassion, of quite literally, in Clarence Darrow's words, excusing 'all who are

forced to live awhile upon the earth', is

never far from evident. We should not judge Dreiser by his brash espousal of material- ism, or by the anti-semitism he finally shed. or by his confusions—but by the often astonishing results of his only half-conscious struggle with his experience. Unlike Dreiser, Flannery O'Connor was an out-and-out symbolist and an intellectual. This reprint of her second novel, which was

first issued in 1955, is most welcome. The story of Francis Marion Tarwater's attempts

to escape the fate of being a prophet and

the baptiser of the son of Rayber, a rationa- list, it explains why Flannery O'Connor be-

gan by trying to be a cartoonist. A most

elaborately planned and often weirdly funny book, it lacks the perfection of the author's best short stories, but remains one of the most original and strange books of its decade.

Charles W. Chestnutt, America's 'first major Negro fiction writer', was less effec-

tive as a novelist than as a short story

writer. But The Marrow of Tradition, a bitter story of racial confrontation in a

Southern town. is deeply affecting as a docu- ment in the history of American race rela-

tions. Its fictional machinery creaks, but it has undoubtedly dignity and restraint; it 1, remarkable that Chestnutt knew he was addressing this deliberate plea against the myth of white supremacy to white