D r e i s e r      S t u d i e s

Editor's Note: The following bibliography replaces the annual checklist of work on Dreiser that has appeared in the Dreiser Newsletter and Dreiser Studies since 1971. It is the first of what is planned to be an ongoing series of annual supplements to Theodore Dreiser: A Primary Bibliography and Reference Guide by Donald Pizer, Richard W. Dowell, and Frederic E. Rusch. Published by G.K. Hall in 1991, the Pizer, Dowell, and Rusch bibliography provides a comprehensive record of publications by and about Dreiser through 1989. The supplements are intended to aid Dreiser scholars and enhance Dreiser scholarship by keeping that record up-to-date.

1990 Supplement to Theodore Dreiser: 
A Primary Bibliography and Reference Guide

Frederic E. Rusch
Indiana State University

Nancy Warner Barrineau
Pembroke State University

This bibliography is a supplement to the record of Dreiser's publications and of writing about him that appeared in Theodore Dreiser: A Primary Bibliograpy and Reference Guide, by Donald Pizer, Richard W. Dowell, and Frederic E. Rusch (Boston, 1991). The organization, format, and editorial policies for the bibliography are the same as those used in the work it supplements.

The supplement covers only writings by and about Theodore Dreiser that appeared in 1990. Publications from earlier years that were omitted from the Pizer, Dowell and Rusch bibliography as well as works from 1990 that were overlooked for inclusion in this supplement will be published in a list of addenda and corrigenda at some later date.

A00-1 SISTER CARRIE

1990 - New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (included in 8 Classic American Novels, edited by David Madden, pp.1053-1320).

A27-2 CHAINS

1990 - "Typhoon" (included in The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 2. Lexington, Mass: D. C. Heath, pp. 1127-54).Note: A new text reconstructed by James M. Hutchisson from surviving manuscripts and typescripts.

1 AARON, DANIEL. "Brother Theodore." New Republic 203 (12 November): 34-37, 40.

Finds Lingeman's two volume biography of Dreiser (1986.26 and 1990.22) "the fullest and best informed . . . to date" because, unlike Swanberg (1965.39), who focused on the "extraliterary Dreiser," Lingeman examines Dreiser the writer as well and thus "deepens the reader's understanding of both."

2 BARRINEAU, NANCY WARNER. "The Search for Ev'ry Month: An Update." Dreiser Studies 21 (Spring): 31-34.

Documents the fifty-year search for Ev'ry Month under Dreiser's 24 month editorship and provides an inventory of library locations for the 21 available numbers.

3 BIGELOW, BLAIR F. Review of Journalism: Vol. 1. American Literary Realism 23 (Fall): 84-85.

4 CAMPBELL, DONNA M. "Repudiating the `Age of the Carved Cherry-Stones': The Naturalists' Reaction Against Women's Local Color Fiction." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kansas, 431 pp.

Includes Dreiser among naturalist writers who, because of both their literary credo and their gender, rebelled against the domination of late nineteenth-century fiction by local color writers. See Dissertation Abstracts International 51A (1991): 3741A.

5 DE LA PERRIERE, EARLEEN. "Sister Carrie, Sisters in Sable Skin, and Gestures of Exclusion." Dreiser Studies 21 (Fall): 19-26.

Places Carrie in the context of black women living in her era and culture and argues that although she is a passive character who never entirely overcame social exclusion, she was nonetheless much more privileged than these contemporaries, who often had neither the support of men nor good luck. (Abridgement of a paper delivered at the 1990 "Working Girls" Conference at SUNY Brockport)

6 ELIAS, ROBERT H. "Dreiser's Long Foreground." Review 12: 179-185.

Review of Theodore Dreiser's "Heard in the Corridors," Theodore Dreiser: Journalism. Volume One, and Selected Magazine Articles of Theodore Dreiser.

7 FABRE, MICHEL. Richard Wright: Books and Writers. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, pp. 41-42.

Lists titles of works by Dreiser owned by Wright and quotes passages from Wright's writings that mention Dreiser and/or his works.

8 FECHER, CHARLES. "The Dreiser Paradox." Chicago Tribune Books, 16 September, p. 1.

Asserts that Lingeman's two volume biography of Dreiser (1986.26 and 1990.22) does not make the biographies of Elias (1949.6) and Swanberg (1965.39) obsolete, but it is the definitive one as it "admirably" covers the paradoxes in Dreiser's life and thought along with his "turbulent relationships with his publishers . . . and his intricate sex life."

9 FLUCK, WINFRIED. "Modelle der Relation: American Studies, Theodore Dreiser's Roman An American Tragedy und dessen Verfilmungen." Amerikastudien/American Studies 35, no. 2: 189-202.

Uses An American Tragedy and its film versions to discuss how theoretical models of "relation" and their cultural "pre-texts" are mutually limiting.

10 GERBER, PHILIP L. "The Doings at Brockport." Dreiser Studies 21 (Fall): 1-13.

Describes the behind-the-scenes preparations made by Gerber (guest editor of this issue of Dreiser Studies) for "Working Girls: Sister Carrie at Ninety," a conference held October 25-26, including papers, films, and a discussion which led to the Dreiser Society's formation.

11 GOGOL, MIRIAM. "Dreiser's Search for a `Religion of Life': A Psychoanalytic Reading," Dreiser Studies 21 (Spring): 21-30.

Connects Dreiser's abandonment of The Bulwark in 1914 and return to it at the end of his life with his effort to be reconciled with his dead father and, thus, with God as "father."

12 ___. "The `Genius': Dreiser's Testament to Convention." CLA Journal 33: 402-14.

Claims Witla's suffering for rebelling against the norms of society and his discovery that "he can will himself to do anything he chooses" indicate that, contrary to the views of most critics, The "Genius" does not present an argument against middle-class conventions, and it "only seems naturalistic."

13 HAKUTANI, YOSHINOBU. "Dreiser's Romantic Tendencies." Dreiser Studies 21 (Fall): 40-45.

Compares the 1900 first edition and the 1981 Pennsylvania Edition of Sister Carrie to demonstrate that the former emphasizes Carrie's romantic individualism while the latter restores the original naturalism of Dreiser's manuscript. (Abridgement of a paper delivered at the 1990 "Working Girls" Conference at SUNY Brockport)

14 HAMILTON, IAN. Writers in Hollywood, 1915-1951. New York: Harper & Row, pp. 53-56.

Traces Dreiser's battle with Paramount over the filming of An American Tragedy; describes the dispute as "a complicated tale of greed and amour propre."

*15 HART, JEFFREY. "Dreiser Hailed as Writer of the City." Washington Times, 7 May. The Last Word.

Source: Menckeniana, no. 116 (1990): 16.

16 HOWE, IRVING. "Dreiser: The Springs of Desire." In Selected Writings, 1950-1990. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, pp. 167-78.

Reprint of 1964.l3

17 HUSSMAN, LAWRENCE E., JR. "Dreiser's (Bad) Luck with Hollywood." Dreiser Studies 21 (Fall): 14-16.

Provides a transcript of introductions to An American Tragedy (1931), A Place in the Sun (1951), and Carrie (1952) (three films shown at the SUNY Brockport conference on Dreiser), in which Hussman discusses censorship, the quality of the adaptations, and the movies' treatment of women.

18 KAZIN, ALFRED. "Awkward but Immortal." New York Times Book Review, 30 September, pp. 1, 40-41.

Calls Richard Lingeman's biography (1990.22) "a fascinating documentation of the most troubled life led by any important modern American writer"; that it fails to analyze and explain Dreiser's gift is the result of Dreiser's being "so profoundly alienated that he stood outside of everything we are used to and mechanically accept."

19 LEHAN, RICHARD. "The Theoretical Limits of the New Historicism." New Literary History 21: 533-53.

Illustrates weaknesses in Walter Benn Michaels' reading of Sister Carrie (1987.34) in the course of pointing out problems in the assumptions of new historicism and the representational school of criticism.

20 LIMON, JOHN. "After the Revolutions: Brown and Dreiser, Poe and Pynchon, Hawthorne and Mailer." In The Place of Fiction in the Time of Science: A Disciplinary History of American Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 160-89.

Pairs Dreiser and Charles Brockden Brown in a chapter which concludes that, though Spencer and Darwin apparently influenced the Dreiser of Sister Carrie, his novel in actuality "fends off . . . the model of scientific history." Drawing evidence from Drouet, who does not evolve, and Carrie, who moves but does not progress, argues that the novel "connects Dreiser to a literary tradition that itself does not evolve."

21 LINGEMAN, RICHARD. "Another American Tragedy." New York Times, 22 January, p. 15.

Points out the parallels between An American Tragedy and the Charles Stuart murder case in Boston.

22 ___. Theodore Dreiser: An American Journey, 1908-1945. New York: Putnam's, 544 pp.

Volume II of a two-volume biography. Continues 1986.26 beginning with Dreiser's years as editor-in-chief of Butterick publications and ending with his Hollywood funeral.

23 MCKELLY, JAMES CRISLEY. "True Wests: Twentieth Century Portraits of the Artist as a Young American." Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 198 pp.

Includes Eugene Witla of The "Genius" in its survey of protagonists who answer the call made by Whitman in his 1881 essay "Poetry of the Future" for a new kind of American artist. See Dissertation Abstracts International 52A (1991): 919A.

24 MICHAELS, WALTER BENN. "The Contracted Heart." New Literary History 21: 495-531.

Devotes one of three studies dealing with the emergence of women from domesticity to showing how historical changes in the position of women in relation to consumption and the right to privacy are reflected in Sister Carrie and works by Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

25 MITGANG, HERBERT. "An American Writer and the Passions in His Art." New York Times, 10 October, p. C20.

Notes that the second volume of Lingeman's biography (1990.22) "skillfully interweaves a good deal of social, literary and political history" and that it is "especially revealing in its research into `An American Tragedy.'"

26 MUKHERJEE, ARUN P. "Sister Carrie at Ninety: An Indian Response." Dreiser Studies 21 (Fall): 27-39.

Argues that the canon in both India and Canada and critical discourse in the United States have excluded Dreiser and other realists who wrote about the inequities of race, class, and gender and tried to inspire their readers to change society. (Transcript of a paper delivered at the 1990 "Working Girls" Conference at SUNY Brockport)

27 MURAYAMA, KIYOHIKO. "Doraisâ to Rôdo-Kaikyu [Dreiser and the Laboring Classes]," in Kaikyû Ishiki to Amerika Shakai [Class Consciousness in American Society]. Edited by Kôichi Ogawa and Katayama Atsushi. Tokyo: Bokutaku-sha, pp. 261-78.

In Japanese.

28 NELSON, BERTIL C. "William James' Concept of the Self and the Fictive Psychology of Theodore Dreiser in Sister Carrie." Essays in Arts and Sciences 19 (May): 44-64.

Discusses the psychology Dreiser uses to interpret Hurstwood, Drouet, and Carrie in relation to William James' explanation of the material Me, the social Me and the spiritual Me in his concept of the self.

29 "New Light on Dreiser: A Summary of Session Four." Dreiser Studies 21 (Fall): 17-18.

Abstracts papers presented by James L.W. West III, Nancy Warner Barrineau, and Leonard Cassuto at the 1990 "Working Girls" Conference at SUNY Brockport.

30 NOZAKI, TAKASHI. "Doraisâ, Shidô [Dreiser, Theodore]," in Zô Ho Kaitei Shinchô Sekai Bungaku Jiten [The Shinchô Dictionary of World Literature]. Rev. and enlg. ed. Tokyo: Shinchô-sha, pp. 727-28.

In Japanese.

*31 NYE, DAVID E. "Theodore Dreiser's Subversion of the Novel of Social Reform." In Studies in Modern Fiction: Presented to Bent Nordhjem on His 70th Birthday, 31 May 1990. Edited by Eric Jacobson, Jorgan Erik Nielsen, Bruce Clunies Ross, and James Stewart. Copenhagen: Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen, pp. 33-48.

Source: MLA Bibliography.

32 OSTWALT, CONRAD E., JR. After Eden: The Secularization of American Space in the Fiction of Willa Cather and Theodore Dreiser. Lewisburg, Penn: Bucknell University Press, 160 pp.

Publication, revised, of 1987.44.

33 OURA, AKIO. "Amerika no Higeki no Seiritu [The Making of An American Tragedy] (3)," Journal of the Faculty of Literature, Chûô University (Japan) 66: 55-73.

In Japanese.

34 RUSCH, FREDERIC E. "A Dreiser Checklist, 1988." Dreiser Studies 21 (Spring): 35-41.

Lists work on Dreiser published in 1988 as well as items overlooked by checklists in previous years.

35 SMITH, WENDY. Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-1940. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 254-58 passim.

Focuses on Lee Strasberg's direction and problems with the set design in a discussion of the Group Theatre's production of Case of Clyde Griffiths.

36 SPITLER, THERESA MARGARET. "The Dilemma of Superiority: The Genius Character in American Fiction." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 299 pp.

Illustrates how American writers starting with James and Clemens struggled with the conflict between the genius and American society; concludes that later writers like Dreiser create protagonists whose naive expectations of social acceptance give way to unsuccessful attempts at retaliation. See Dissertation Abstracts International 51A (1991): 4125A.

37 STENERSON, DOUGLAS C. "Mencken's Efforts to Reshape Dreiser as Man and Artist." Dreiser Studies 21 (Spring): 2-20.

Chronicles the degeneration of Menchen and Dreiser's relationship between 1915 and 1926 and asserts it was caused primarily by Mencken's repeated attempts to make Dreiser fit a mold of Mencken's own making.

38 SZUBERLA, GUY. "Ladies, Gentlemen, Flirts, Mashers, Snoozers, and the Breaking of Etiquette's Code." Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies 15: 169-96.

Includes Carrie's walks and her meeting with Drouet in chapter 6 of Sister Carrie among the examples of the ways artists and authors at the turn of the century "recoded the conventions and gender roles that American culture, through its `street etiquette,' had once decreed."

39 TAKEDA, MIYOKO. "Henry David Thoreau to Theodore Dreiser--Genshô-Kai o Koete--[Henry David Thoreau and Theodore Dreiser--Beyond the Phenomenal World--]," Henri Sôrou Kyôkai Kaihô (Japan) 17: 11-16.

In Japanese.

40 TRIGG, SALLY DAY. "Theodore Dreiser and the Criminal Justice System in An American Tragedy," Studies in the Novel 22: 429-440.

Illustrates how, in Book Three of An American Tragedy, Dreiser criticizes the American criminal justice system for the unfairness in its mechanisms and in the social forces intertwined with it, and "for the death penalty and the harrowing psychological torture of Death Row."

41 WAGNER-MARTIN, LINDA. The Modern American Novel, 1914-1945. Boston: Twayne, pp. 61-62 passim.

Finds that An American Tragedy "becomes less naturalistic than it is modernistic" when it is examined in relation to other novels of the 1920s.

42 WEIR, SYBIL. "A Bacchante Invades the American Home: The Disappearance of the Sentimental Heroine, 1890-1910." In American Literature, Culture, and Ideology: Essays in Memory of Henry Nash Smith. Edited by Beverly R. Voloshin. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 191-218.

Briefly considers Dreiser in its discussion of the inversion of the sentimental heroine at the turn of the century. Argues that in Sister Carrie Dreiser "is most radical in his conception of the social aspirant when he suggests that women as well as men can seek material success without losing their moral credentials"; and that in Jennie Gerhardt sexual submission, the essence of true morality in women who lie "outside the social fabric of urban America," is merely a variant of the self-sacrifice which the nineteenth century extolled as a sentimental virtue.

43 WEST, JAMES L. W., III. "Theodore Dreiser," in Sixteen Modern American Authors. Vol. 2: A Survey of Research and Criticism Since 1972. Edited by Jackson R. Bryer. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 120-53.

Updates Robert Elias's bibliographical essay (1973.11) through 1985; includes a brief supplement for publications through 1988.

44 YARDLEY, JONATHAN. "Titan of American Realism." Washington Post Book World, 30 September, p. 3.

Finds Lingeman does a good job presenting Dreiser's literary works in the second volume of his biography (1990.22), but, unable to resist the "temptations" of the massive documentary evidence on Dreiser's life, he is "less successful" on other matters.