Dreiser on the Web

by Roger W. Smith

Supplement:
Web-Propagated Misinformation About Dreiser

The web, of course, can be a good place for propagating misinformation, and Dreiser is no exception.  Below are excerpts from sites with erroneous or misleading statements about Dreiser.

“About Theodore Dreiser.”  Salon Classics Book Group.  http://www.salon.com/promo/1997/10/13classic_dreiser.html .

With editing help from Henry and “Jug,” Dreiser wrote what is now considered one of his finest novels, Sister Carrie.  Frank Doubleday, the publisher, objected to the novel's immorality -- the tale of a young woman in a big city who succeeds despite, or even because of, her immorality.  To fulfill his contact [sic] he agreed to publish Dreiser's work, but refused to promote the book.  Charges of obscenity soon followed, making Dreiser a cause célèbre for many young writers.

COMMENT: This is an oversimplification and misrepresentation of what really happened with the publication of Sister Carrie, and it conflates facts about the reaction to Sister Carrie with the charges of obscenity that followed the publication of The “Genius.”

“An American Tragedy (1925): Modern Library Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century.  Author Info: Theodore Dreiser, 1871-1945.”  http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/880/American%20Tra.htm .

Theodore Dreiser is considered to be the leading American practitioner of Naturalism-- which consists of writing about sex and violence in the lower classes in order to reveal what I gather were supposed to be shattering truths about the bleak aspects of modern industrial urban life.  To that end, Sister Carrie tells the story of a pretty small town girl who uses her feminine wiles to sleep her way from the factories and saloons of Chicago to the New York stage.  Along the way, the tavern owning married man who stole to fund their escape to Chicago, kills himself after being abandoned by Carrie and ending up in Bowery flophouses.  Meanwhile, An American Tragedy tells the story, based on a sensational true crime, of a young man who is working his way towards the American dream and refuses to let a pregnant former girlfriend stand in the way of his chance for romance with a wealthy woman.  He takes the slattern out in a boat & clobbers her, but is tried and executed for the crime.

It is an open secret that even critics who admire Dreiser, consider him to be a horrible writer technically.  American Tragedy has been called "the worst-written great novel in the world" and the otherwise loathsome Garrison Keillor has an amusing column about how bad he finds Sister Carrie on rereading it.  His books have all the literary grace of the phone book.

Thus, his reputation rests solely on the agreement of Left wing critics with his hatred of American capitalism.  Well, 100 years on, I think we can safely say that the American system has served us pretty well and the Sister Carrie's of the world are not simply insignificant but, worse for a writer, uninteresting.

COMMENT: Roberta Alden as portrayed in An American Tragedy does not even remotely fit the description of a “slattern”; there is no way such a characterization is applicable.  The assertions made in the last paragraph are unfounded.

“Author Spotlight: Theodore Dreiser.”  Random House Trade Group.  http://www.randomhouse.com/randomhouse/authors/results.pperl?authorid=7433 .

In 1894 Dreiser arrived in New York City and became editor of Ev'ry Month, a moderately successful literary magazine.

COMMENT: Ev'ry Month was, when Dreiser became editor, a “monthly piano magazine” (as described by Nancy Warner Barrineau in her introduction to Theodore Dreiser’s Ev’ry Month), or music magazine, published by a music firm, Howley, Haviland, and Company; it was not a “literary magazine” by any stretch of the imagination.  Dreiser did change the magazine’s content to include literary material and commentary (written by himself), and he changed its subtitle to “An Illustrated Magazine of Literature and Popular Music.”

“Biography of Theodore Dreiser.”  PageWise, Inc.  http://wawa.essortment.com/biographyofthe_rylp.htm .

Dreiser was a sensitive child, stuttered, and was often humiliated by his family's poverty.

Dreiser drifted from job to job; he worked as a driver for a laundry, in a real estate office, and as a collector for a furniture store.  He began his writing career by working for the St. Louis Globe Democrat.  He also worked for newspapers in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and New York, where he finally settled in 1894.

The book [Sister Carrie] was extremely controversial due to its immoral nature.  The publishers refused to market it.  However, after his second book, Jennie Gerhardt, was favorably received in 1911, Sister Carrie was reissued.  This was the beginning of Dreiser's successful writing career.

In this famous story [An American Tragedy] he showed that the real criminal was not Clyde Griffiths, the killer, but the slum environment in which he grew up.

COMMENT: There is no basis or evidence (direct or indirect) for the statement that Dreiser had a stuttering problem as a child.  He describes himself often in autobiographical works as stammering when flustered or insecure, but this is not the same as stuttering.

Dreiser began his writing career as a reporter for the Chicago Globe -- not the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

Clyde Griffiths is not portrayed as having grown up in a “slum environment.”  At the beginning of An American Tragedy (Cleveland: World, 1948, 23), Clyde, who is age 12, is living with his parents in Kansas City in what Dreiser describes as a “combination home and mission. . . . It consisted in its entirety of one long stone floor in an old and decidedly colorless and inartistic wooden building. . . the entire neighborhood in which it stood was very faintly and yet not agreeably redolent of a commercial life which had long since moved farther south, if not west.”  In other words, a downtrodden neighborhood for people going nowhere (but not a slum).

The statement about Sister Carrie’s “immoral nature” being the reason why the book was not marketed by the firm of Doubleday, Page & Co. is an oversimplification.

“Dreiser, Theodore.”  The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001.  http://www.bartleby.com/65/dr/Dreiser.html .

After working as a journalist on several Midwestern newspapers, [Dreiser] went in 1894 to New York City, where he began a career in publishing, eventually rising to the presidency of Butterick Publications.

COMMENT: Dreiser’s rose to the position of editor-in-chief at Butterick Publications but was never president of the firm.

"Dreiser, Theodore Herman Albert.”  Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia, 2003.  http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=761553856 .

Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, Dreiser was a reporter for the Chicago Daily Globe in 1892, dramatic editor and traveling correspondent for the St Louis Globe Democrat from 1892 to 1893, and traveling correspondent for the St. Louis Republic from 1893 to 1894.  His career as a novelist began in 1900 with Sister Carrie, which he wrote in the intervals between work for various magazines.  The novel tells the story of a small-town girl who moves to Chicago and eventually becomes a Broadway star in New York City.  It also traces the decline and eventual suicide of her lover.  As a result of public outcry against the novel for its depiction of unrepentant and unpunished characters and for its frank treatment of sexual issues, the publisher withdrew the book from public sale.

COMMENT: Dreiser was the drama critic (not “dramatic editor”) for the St Louis Globe-Democrat, and he only held this position on very insecure terms for about three months (see “Historical Commentary” in Nostwich, T. D., ed., Theodore Dreiser: Journalism, Volume One: Newspaper Writings, 1892-1895; University of PA P, 1988, 338) before losing it through his own fault.  Similarly, to describe his position with the two St. Louis newspapers he worked for as “traveling correspondent” is not accurate and implies that he held a senior reportorial position of distinction.  He was a general assignment reporter who traveled to a limited extent in the performance of his duties, mostly to communities in the immediate vicinity of St. Louis.  His one extended trip as a reporter was to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.  Otherwise, he did not travel, nor did he hold the title of “traveling correspondent.”

“Our Land, Our Literature: Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945).”  Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry, Ball State University.  http://www.bsu.edu/ourlandourlit/Literature/Authors/Dreisert.html  

At the age of 16, Dreiser left Warsaw for Chicago only to return to Indiana for a brief one-year experience at Bloomington’s Indiana University with the monetary aid of a former grade school teacher.  Still impoverished and unpopular among his peers, Dreiser was not happy with the school and despised the pomp of academia.

COMMENT: Although Dreiser experienced feelings of social and intellectual inferiority during his year at Indiana University, to say that he “despised the pomp of academia” is an overstatement and misrepresents his own assessment of his college experience as described in Dawn.  He was conscious of a certain social inferiority (which he felt he shared with quite a few other students) to the most prosperous and well-connected students, and he was never asked to join a fraternity.  But he liked his courses, admired many of his professors, and had many good friends among the student body, by whom he was well liked.  He was both overawed by the learning of some of his professors and a bit bemused by it.  In fact, the overall impression one gets of Dreiser’s attitude toward his college years is one of bemusement.  One thing that undoubtedly caused Dreiser to leave college after a year was the realization that he was not career-minded in a way that students pursuing what for him were boring careers (law, teaching, etc.) were.  He did often feel like an outsider in various college settings, but he seems (while complaining mildly about it) to have enjoyed his outsider status.  He seems to have never seriously entertained the idea of graduating, having understood his year at college as an idyll, a sort of paid vacation.  “ ... I had grown mentally to love this patchwork college or university,” he writes in Dawn (New York: Horace Liveright, 1931, 464), “... and was dreading to leave it.  ... my last examination concluded, and knowing that it was all over, I sat in my room one afternoon wondering whether I should start at once or linger a day or two on any pretext in order to enjoy for so much more time ... these last sweet days.”

Sarkar, Dipa.  “Dreiser Was Literary Pioneer.”  Historical Treasure Article, Vigo County Hist. Soc., 14 Apr. 1996.  http://web.indstate.edu/community/vchs/ht/ht041496.htm .

[Dreiser] was drama editor for the St. Louis Republic and editor-in-chief of Buttrick [sic] Publications in New York.

When his first novel, "Sister Carrie," modeled after one of his sisters, was published in 1900, only 450 copies were sold but it rocked the literary world.  It was condemned as immoral and shook the very foundation of Victorian Puritanism present at that time.  It was not republished until 1907.

COMMENT: Sister Carrie did not rock the literary world, at least not upon its publication, or shake the foundations of Victorian Puritanism (a term which comes close to being an oxymoron).  See comments above under “About Theodore Dreiser.”  Salon Classics Book Group.

Smith, J. N.  “About Sister Carrie.”  Classic Notes on Sister Carrie.  13 Feb. 2000.  GradeSaver.  http://www.classicnote.com/ClassicNotes/Titles/sistercarrie/ .

At the age of fifteen Dreiser moved to Chicago and held jobs washing dishes, clerking a hardware store, and tracing freight cars.  Dreiser fortunately was able to escape when a former teacher offered to send him to Indiana University at Bloomington for a year.  He soon became interested in journalism, but returned to Chicago and worked as a bill collector, real estate clerk and laundry-truck driver.

The book [Sister Carrie] was initially rejected by many publishers on the grounds that is was "immoral".  Indeed, Harper Brothers, the first publisher to see the book, rejected it by saying it was not, "sufficiently delicate to depict without offense to the reader the continued illicit relations of the heroine".  Finally Doubleday and Company published the book in order to fulfill their contract, but Frank Doubleday refused to promote the book.  As a result, it sold less than seven hundred copies and Dreiser received a reputation as a naturalist-barbarian.

Sister Carrie sold poorly but was redeemed by writers like Frank Norris and William Dean Howells who saw the novel as a breakthrough in American realism.  Charges of obscenity were brought against the novel, soon making Dreiser a cause celebre for many young writers.  However, the publication battles over Sister Carrie caused Dreiser to become depressed, so much so that his brother sent him to a sanitarium for a short while.

COMMENT: There is no direct relationship between Dreiser’s becoming interested in journalism and his attendance at Indiana University; he showed no interest in journalism while there.

Sister Carrie was not rejected by “many publishers” before its acceptance for publication by Doubleday, Page.  The only other publisher that had seen and rejected the novel prior to its submission to Doubleday, Page was Harper and Brothers.

“Charges of obscenity” were brought against The “Genius,” not Sister Carrie, making the former book “a cause celebre for ... writers.”  Of Sister Carrie’s initial reception, James West notes that “... the notices were mixed.  Some reviewers complained about the unpleasantness of the story, calling it depressing and pessimistic, but others praised the skillful realism and noted the power of the themes and characters.  Without support from its publisher, however, Sister Carrie was a flop.”  (“The Composition and Publication of Sister Carrie.”  DreiserWebSource. http://oldsite.library.upenn.edu/ special/dreiser/scpubhist.html.)

Publication battles over Sister Carrie did cause Dreiser to become depressed, although he was somewhat cheered by the favorable British reception to the book.  (He said as much in a February 27, 1903 letter to Ripley Hitchcock; Letters, I:70-71.)  It should be noted, however, that Dreiser reached bottom, emotionally speaking, in April 1903 (the month in which he entered Muldoon’s sanitarium).  Sister Carrie had been published over two years before, in November 1900.  Dreiser’s failure to complete Jennie Gerhardt was undoubtedly a contributing factor underlying his depression (as well as a symptom).  In the same 1903 letter to Hitchcock, he confessed he had “no immediate prospects” of finishing the novel. 

It is probably more accurate to say that Dreiser fell into a state of depression and near suicidal despair because of unknown factors of both a personal and occupational nature, which were manifested (among other symptoms) by a decreased literary output.  Other factors which should be considered as prime suspects include the mistake Dreiser felt he had made in marrying his first wife, Jug -- from whom, at the time when he entered the sanatorium, he was experiencing periods of intermittent separation -- and the sense of confinement he felt in the marriage (in addition to, and perhaps superseding, any literary concerns or factors).

“Theodore Dreiser.”  Spartacus Educational.  http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jdreiser.htm .

Dreiser continued to work as a journalist and as well as writing for mainstream newspapers such as the Saturday Evening Post, also had work published in socialist magazines such as The Call.  However, unlike many of his literary friends such as Floyd Dell, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, Max Eastman and Jack London, he never joined the Socialist Party.

COMMENT: The Saturday Evening Post was not a newspaper, and Dreiser rarely published there.  Jack London (who died in 1916) was not a friend (or a “literary friend”) of Dreiser.

“Theodore Dreiser 1871 - 1945.”  CenterStage Chicago.  http://search.centerstage.net/literature/whoswho/TheodoreDreiser.html .

A high school teacher paid to send him to Indiana University for one year, but Dreiser did not fit in, and he left college to become a reporter.

His first novel, “Sister Carrie,” based on the misadventures of his own sister, sold very poorly at first, and Dreiser lashed out against the publisher, Doubleday Page.  Dreiser despaired of ever succeeding as a writer and resigned himself to life as a laborer in the Brooklyn slums.  During these dark days Dreiser wrote a journal; although he intended it for personal use only, it was discovered and published in 1983.  When his brother, a composer, found out about Dreiser's bad luck, he plucked him out of his tenement and, much to Mrs.  Dreiser's relief, sent him to a resort for the wealthy.  Dreiser regained his courage and wrote “Jennie Gerhardt,” based on the life of another sister.  "Jennie" was a hit, and led readers to rediscover “Sister Carrie.”

Just as his writing career was taking off, Dreiser separated from his first wife, Sara Osborne “Jug” White.  His books after this point convey his philosophy more clearly, because Dreiser had always depended on the suggestions and criticism of Jug (who was also a reporter) and other friends.

Another of Dreiser's best-known novels is “An American Tragedy” (1925), which was adapted for the screen in 1951.

COMMENT: Dreiser did not leave college to become a reporter; he had no clear idea of what he wanted to do after completing his only year at Indiana University.  The claim that Dreiser “did not fit in” at college is not quite true.  He was well liked and made several good friends, although it is true that he felt somewhat at a disadvantage socially.  See comments above under “Our Land, Our Literature: Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945).”  Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry, Ball State University.

Dreiser did have troubles with his first publisher, Doubleday Page & Co., and insisted that they fulfill a verbal agreement to publish Sister Carrie, but he did not lash out publicly at them at the time.

Dreiser never worked as a laborer “in the Brooklyn slums.”  He was not living in a “tenement” when his brother Paul sent him off to Muldoon’s health spa; he was actually living in a small and depressing room in a boarding house.  (See An Amateur Laborer, 22-23.)  Dreiser was not sent to Muldoon’s sanatorium “much to Mrs. Dreiser's relief”; he was not living with Jug at the time.  She was not a reporter.

The writer does not seem to be aware (as often seems to be the case with devotees of the film A Place in the Sun) that there was an original film version of An American Tragedy released in 1931.

Ward, Selena.  “Sister Carrie: Theodore Dreiser.”  SparkNotes.  http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/sistercarrie/.

A journalist before he became a novelist, [Dreiser] began writing Sister Carrie in 1889. . . . Dreiser submitted the work to Doubleday, where it captured the attention of Frank Norris, who offered him a contract for publication.  Unfortunately, one of the wives of the men at the publishing house read the book and decided that it was thoroughly immoral.  Her outrage led to a struggle between Dreiser and the publishers, with the author demanding that Doubleday fulfill its contract.  Doubleday reluctantly published a small edition in 1900.  Perhaps because of the challenge it presented to conventional morals and middle class values, it did not sell well.

COMMENT: The story that the outrage of “one of the wives of the men at the publishing house” (Mrs. Neltje Doubleday) at what she perceived to be the book’s immorality led to a confrontation between Dreiser and the firm of Doubleday, Page & Co. over the publication of Sister Carrie, here stated as established fact, is apocryphal.