Dreiser: sensitive register of changing U.S.

Richard Lingeman, Theodore Dreiser At the Gates of the City 1871-1907, vol. 1. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1986. $22.95.

Theodore Dreiser continues to fascinate. Forty-one years after his death, the author of Sister Carrie, The Financier, and, above all, An American Tragedy continues to interest students of literature (whether or not they call themselves "critics"), students of American history and sociology — and those who are simply intrigued by a fascinating and important personality. What is more, Dreiser continues to be a subject of controversy often separating left-leaning critics from those of more conservative cast. There are several reasons why a new biography might now appear. New papers have been found, which help to shed some light not only on the man's life but also on writings. The University of Pennsyvania Press has recently published a "restored" version of Sister Carrie, Dreiser's first novel which was much changed, in the course of its peculiar publishing history, from the work originally completed by the young writer. The same press has also pulbished other material, some of it autobiographical, from Dreiser's enormously prolific pen. In addition, such items as letters from Dreiser to his fiancee have recently been "cleared" for publication. Richard Lingeman's biography is thus a timely and appropriate work that can help us to understand the writer some think of as THE crucial, powerful transitional figure from the writers of the "genteel tradition," the "mauve decades" and "local color,'' to the "modernist" giants of the '20s — the Hemingways, Faulkners, Fitzgeralds, Steins, etc.

It is fortunate that the person who undertook this task is a writer of the skill and, especially, the outlook of Lingeman. The executive editor of The Nation — no doubt the United States' premier politically left/ liberal magazine — apparently has profound empathy for Dreiser's growing sympathy with the poor, the disadvantaged, the powerless. Like Dreiser a journalist and a "magazinist," Lingeman writes a crisp, clear prose, making this work a joy not only for those interested in Dreiser, but for anyone who likes a biography which is a good "read."

This is the first of several proposed volumes. It begins with a brief family history antedating Dreiser's birth, and ends in 1907, when Dreiser is the successful editor of The Delineator, a magazine published by Butterick, the manufacturers of women's clothing patterns. That is also the moment when he is finally able — after great difficulties — to get published a new edition of Sister Carrie, attempting to overcome the abortive, or nearly so, first edition published by Doubleday, Page in 1900. It is also the year after the death of his older brother, the song writer ("My Gal Sal," "On the Banks of the Wabash") Paul Dreiser. Between these points in Dreiser's career, Lingeman provides copious details of the first 35 years of the novelist's life.

Theodore Dreiser, circa 1893

And quite a life it was. From Dreiser's upbringing in a small Indiana town in the house of a pious, tyrannical father, to his short stint as an Indiana University undergraduate; from his early newspapering in Chicago and other cities — eventually in New York — to his first magazine editing jobs; from his early sexual awakening to his marriage; from the relative heights of good editing and writing jobs to moments of frightening depression and poverty, Lingeman brings to life a fascinating and difficult figure. Chapters 41 and 42, "Touching Bottom," and "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me" (the latter the title of one of his brother's hit songs), are moving and, in the best sense, novelistic, describing the moment when Dreiser's "money played out like a lifeline through his hands" (he was down to $1.56) and how he eventually was saved from disaster by an adventitious meeting with his brother. Always in the background of his life stands first the person, then the memory of his much-loved mother. Always surrounding him, at least in his mind, are his many brothers and sisters — especially Emma, the "model" for Carrie Meeber of the novel, and Paul, the Broadway sport who was always available for help, whose money supported most of the Dreiser clan at one time or another, and with whom the novelist had a complicated love-hate relationship. Also of great importance is the novelist's peculiar — in my view still unclear — friendship with another writer, Arthur Henry, a relationship compounded of unrealized, perhaps eroticized, feelings of profound affection, which were, in time, to turn bitter.

Lingeman very successfully sets Dreiser's life within the framework of a United States moving rapidly — and painfully — into the 20th century. His focus is not only on the writers — Twain, Howells, Garland, Norris, Crane and others — who helped shape the literature of the period, but also on the socio-economic conditions that so aroused Dreiser's melancholy, brooding concern and that are, in one sense, the subject of Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt.

This biography uses well the work done by Dreiser's previous commentators — biographies like Robert Elias's excellent work, and critical studies like F. O. Matthiessen's, Donald Pizer's and many others. Echoes are sometime heard almost directly. Lingeman's work thus gives us a new, richly insightful, well-written and exciting biography of a writer whose major importance as a novelist, as national figure, as sensitive register of a changing United States, cannot be overestimated.

Frederick C. Stern is associate professor of English, University of Illinois at Chicago. Photo from Theodore Dreiser Collection, Department of Special Collections, Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania.

April 1987/Illinois Issues/19