“They are interesting in showing the philosophy which has been back of the vigorous, often shocking fiction of the author.”
+ Booklist 16:270 My ’20
“He states so many things that are not so, and he states them so arrogantly and cocksuredly, that the intelligent reader asks himself in amazement: ‘How can such an inane book—poorly written, full of repetitions, blatant in its irreligion, shameless in its immorality—find enough readers to warrant publication?’ Mr Dreiser has no saving sense of humor—hence this awful book.”
− Cath World 111:260 My ’20 320w
“Dreiser sets down his findings with all a greengrocer’s assiduity, and not a little of a greengrocer’s unimaginative painstaking. Here is a surprising absence of the creative instinct in a creative writer.”
− Dial 69:320 S ’20 160w
“In his novels Mr Dreiser seems very much the thinker. One is astonished, consequently, to find how unsublimated a product he is of the benighted environment he describes in his last essay when he has no characters through whom to express himself. Very simple and almost purely emotional is the reaction upon life cloaked in the scientific verbiage of this book. One asks oneself whether the soul of Jennie Gerhardt is not really the soul of Mr Dreiser himself. One thing is certain; he is far more interesting as the painter of Jennie’s life than as the recorder of Jennie’s views.” Van Wyck Brooks
+ − Nation 110:595 My 1 ’20 700w
“Heavy and turgid and monotonous and sensuously obtuse as he seems to be, he makes his discussion interesting. He is himself sincerely interested, and he is writing because he has something to communicate. The truth seems to be that Theodore Dreiser’s mind is formless, chaotic, bewildered. In short, our leading novelist is intellectually in serious confusion, and needs a deeper philosophy than—hey rub-a-dub-dub.” F. H.
− + New Repub 22:423 My 26 ’20 850w