SOURCE: "The Short Stories: No Lies in the Darkness," in Theodore Dreiser: Our Bitter Patriot, Southern Illinois University Press, 1962, pp. 114-23.

[In the following essay, Shapiro examines several of Dreiser's short stories, asserting that while some of them are effective literary achievements, Dreiser's style was more suited to the novel form.]

Students usually get an unfortunate and inadequate introduction to Dreiser's fiction, for though his talent lies in the lengthier form of the novel, he too often is presented as a short-story writer. Assorted collegiate anthologies sandwich his contributions between the shorter efforts of Henry James and Ernest Hemingway, and it would, in truth, take a truly dedicated reader to be inspired to sample more of Dreiser's work.

Much of Dreiser's effects in his novels depends on a steady, cumulative emotive presentation, small, pointed, meaningful additions which add to the formal action of the fiction. The short stones too often read, not as complete architectonic units within themselves, but as compressed, dehydrated novels. In these cases the famed Dreiserian defects bulge out. Pompous, essentially show-off expressions are trotted out for no specific purpose. In "Free," for example, at an inappropriately dramatic moment we have the following: "It was a mirage. An ignis fatuus." Superficial, sophomoric psychologizing is abundant. "They were amazing, these variations in his own thoughts, almost chemic, not volitional, decidedly peculiar for a man who was supposed to know his own mind—only did one, ever?" Worst of all are the stretches of clumsy, overwritten prose, much too typical of the magazine fiction of the time. A child dies, and "little Elwell had finally ceased to be as flesh and was eventually carried forth to the lorn, disagreeable graveyard near Woodlawn." As for the father: "How he had groaned internally, indulged in sad, despondent thoughts concerning the futility of all things human, when this had happened!" And these lapses, lamentable in Dreiser's realistic tales, become absurd in his feeble efforts at fantasy (such as in "McEwen of the Shining Slave Makers," "Khat," and "The Prince Who Was a Thief").

Though a few of the stories are of interest (especially two of the three we will look at—"Nigger Jeff," and "The Lost Phoebe") there is little to support James T. Farrell's contention [in the introduction to The Best Short Stories of Theodore Dreiser, 1961] that they rank among the best written in America during this century or Howard Fast's belief that Dreiser has "no peer in the American story" [Best Short Stories]. It is interesting that Sherwood Anderson, who wrote the introduction to a 1918 edition of Dreiser's stories, never becomes specific with his judgments. His tribute is a general one, in praise of a man "who with the passage of time is bound to loom larger and larger in the awakening consciousness of America," who is brave, and who was no trickster. Most important of all, he sees Dreiser the hero of an American movement aiming "toward courage and fidelity to life in writing," and notes that "the beauty and the ironic terror of life is like a wall before him but he faces the wall" [Introduction to Free and Other Stories]. Certainly Dreiser is, as always, sincere and honest, boy scout virtues which are not, in themselves, enough for a writer. Only in a very few controlled, shorter works did he manage to approach the strength of his better novels.

Howard Fast was right in commenting that Dreiser "painted not with the quick, nervous brush of today, but in large planes and solid masses." This slabbish quality is probably best seen in "Free," a flashback tale which depressingly plunges us into the study of a seemingly successful architect whose wife is dying and who realizes, to his horror, that life, for him, was but a series of pitiful compromises. "Like the Spartan boy, he had concealed the fox gnawing at his vitals. He had not complained." Now he complains, and with a vengeance.

A longer story than most of Dreiser's, "Free" has a structural unity, an action based on the wife as the symbol for the architect's essential lack of nerve.

But even that was not the worst. No; that was not the worst, either. It had been the gradual realization coming along through the years that he had married an essentially small, narrow woman who could never really grasp his point of view—or, rather, the significance of his dreams or emotions—and yet with whom, nevertheless, because of this original promise or mistake, he was compelled to live. Grant her every quality of goodness, energy, industry, intent—as he did freely—still there was this; and it could never be adjusted, never. Essentially, as he had long since discovered, she was narrow, ultraconventional, whereas he was an artist by nature, brooding and dreaming strange dreams and thinking of far-off things which she did not or could not understand or did not sympathize with, save in a general and very remote way. The nuances of his craft, the wonders and subtleties of forms and angles—had she ever realized how significant these were to him, let alone to herself? No, never. She had not the least true appreciation of them—never had had. Architecture? Art? What could they really mean to her, desire as she might to appreciate them? And he could not now go elsewhere to discover that sympathy. No. He had never really wanted to, since the public and she would object, and he thinking it half evil himself.

Rufus Haymaker (other names in the narrative include Elwell, Ethelberta, and Ottilie) is vague in his anger, never really focusing on specific targets and less intense than the middle-aged heroes of, say, Sherwood Anderson, Thomas Wolfe, or William Faulkner. It is a formless rage aimed, not at his wife, his spoiled children, or even American society, but at heavy, Dreiserian fate. "Cruel Nature, that cared so little for the dreams of man—the individual man or woman." If ever there was a tale nakedly revealing the naturalistic movement's effect on the American writer, this is it. "Almost like a bird in a cage, an animal peeping out from behind bars, he had viewed the world of free thought and freer action."

Perhaps the ruminations and outbursts of Haymaker have relevance to Dreiser's own peculiar marital troubles; in any case they do betray some of the blatantly adolescent attitudes about sex which marred The "Genius," "Think of it! He to whom so many women had turned with questioning eyes!"

After a long chronicle of repressions and chances missed, Haymaker looks into a mirror. The theme of the story is recapitulated. "The figure he made here as against his dreams of a happier life, once he were free, now struck him forcibly. What a farce! What a failure!" And summarizing it all, the meaning of his failure, he wonders just what he had missed. With his wife's death he will be free; but it is too late. He is free only to die. What has happened here is that a novel is compressed into shorter form. We never understand even a small part of Haymaker, his life or his development; in consequence his problem, stated over and over, is essentially meaningless as it doesn't involve a defined character. Dreiser misuses the short-story form here, and "Free" unfortunately becomes a parody of his poorer novels.

While "Free" is an artistic failure, "Nigger Jeff," which at first seems just one more protest tale of a lynch mob and its victim, develops into a well-structured, meaningful story centered on the reactions of a bewildered young city reporter who faces organized violence for the first time. The action lies in our discovery of how Elmer Davies reacts to the horrifying event and what he discovers about America and himself.

Davies is introduced as "a vain and rather self-sufficient youth who was inclined to be of that turn of mind which sees in life only a fixed and ordered process of rewards and punishments." At first he believes in the justice of the forthcoming lynching and is concerned only with the story he must write. Arriving at Pleasant Valley he notices the white houses "and the shimmering beauty of the small stream one had to cross in going from the depot." Throughout the narrative Dreiser, as Crane before him, will inject descriptions of the placid countryside, almost as direct counterpoint to the frightening events taking place. As the mob hurries on, "the night was so beautiful that it was all but poignant . . . and the east promised a golden moon." Again: "Slowly the silent company now took its way up the Sand River Pike whence it had come. The moon was still high, pouring down a wash of silvery light." At the lynching "the pale light over the glimmering water seemed human and alive." And as Davies sits, watching the dangling form, "the light of morning broke, a tender lavender and gray in the east. . . . Still the body hung there black and limp against the sky, and now a light breeze sprang up and stirred it visibly." Finally, after the body is cut down, it is placed in a small cabin and Davies watches the rapist's mother weeping over her son Jeff. "All the corners of the room were quite dark. Only its middle was brightened by splotches of silvery light."

Along with balancing the transcending wonders of nature with the human agonies, Dreiser also details Davies' petty dealings which are necessary to his reporting assignment.

He is forced to haggle and connive. These three elements: the powerful landscape, the tragedy played out in front of it, and the reporter's small movements have their effects on Davies. His attitude towards life is different. "The knowledge now that it was not always exact justice that was meted out to all and that it was not so much the business of the writer to indict as to interpret was borne in on him with distinctness by the cruel sorrow of the mother, whose blame, if any, was infinitesimal."

[In his Theodore Dreiser: Apostle of Nature, 1970] Robert Elias feels that in his stories Dreiser restates "his belief that nature must prevail . . . the subject of each story served to show that individuals were limited by circumstances or feelings for which only an inscrutable and indifferent nature appeared to be responsible. Men and women, created in one image, could not make themselves over in any other, and if there was a solution to their predicaments, no one knew it." Perhaps. But man can learn. "Nigger Jeff" ends with the reporter's crying out his new ambition, as a man and as a writer. "I'll get it all in!" In no sense does Jeff become a Joe Christmas, for Dreiser, unlike Faulkner, did not write a complicated allegory of modern man's betrayal. He simply told of one man's discovery; and this tale, carefully constructed, is a strong and moving work.

Dreiser's strangest story, "The Lost Phoebe," had a curious publishing history. Though completed in 1912, four years elapsed before it was finally accepted for publication. Even Dreiser's champions were shocked by the tale. In a letter to Dreiser, H. L. Mencken noted: "Nathan is so full of the notion that this 'Lost Phoebe' lies far off of the Dreiser that we want to play up that I begin to agree with him" [Letters of Theodore Dreiser, 1959].

"The Lost Phoebe" relates the pathetic wanderings of an aged, lonely farmer who is unable to accept the reality of his wife's death. For seven years he stumbles around the countryside, kept up by "spiritual endurance." Finally, one night, he believes he truly sees his late wife, younger, more beautiful. "He had been expecting and dreaming of this hour all these years, and now as he saw the feeble light dancing lightly before him he peered at it questioningly, one thin hand in his gray hair." Old Henry Reifsneider chases the phantom over a cliff. "No one of all the simple population knew how eagerly and joyously he had found his lost mate."

This depressing story does have its rough moments. The steady, dreary chronicle is too often interrupted with the familiar Dreiserian asides, especially forced commentaries on the simple nature of his protagonists. And at times Dreiser, the pseudo-scientist, interrupts: "That particular lull that confies in the systole-diastole of this earthly ball at two o'clock in the morning." But the story is successful, combining a lyric quality epitomized in the title and the descriptions of the landscape, with the hard facts of farm life.

They had lived here, these two, ever since their marriage, forty-eight years before, and Henry had lived here before that from his childhood up. His father and mother, well along in years when he was a boy, had invited him to bring his wife here when he had first fallen in love and decided to marry; and he had done so. . . . Of the seven children, all told, that had been born to them, three had died; one girl had gone to Kansas; one boy had gone to Sioux Falls, never even to be heard of after; another boy had gone to Washington; and the last girl lived five counties away in the same State, but was so burdened with cares of her own that she rarely gave them a thought. Time and a commonplace home life that had never been attractive had weaned them thoroughly, so that, wherever they were, they gave little thought as to how it might be with their father and mother.

The petty details of farm life are noted, and the minor quarrels of the elderly couple are presented in some detail. F. O. Matthiessen is quite correct in calling this Dreiser's most poetic story, yet it is the artful juxtaposition of the dreary, daily existence with the later mystic quality of the search that makes the tale so successful [Theodore Dreiser, 1973]. We feel we are face to face with pain and truth, just as we were with "Nigger Jeff," and this is truth given us by an accomplished artist. As Sherwood Anderson noted [in his introduction to Free and Other Stories], "If there is a modern movement in American prose writing, a movement toward greater courage and fidelity in writing, then Theodore Dreiser is the pioneer and the hero of the movement."

My study, while facing some of the critical questions which inevitably arise in any discussion of Dreiser's work, deals, for the most part, with the themes present in his novels. There are, however, some qualities evident in all his books, qualities of spirit rather than tone, subject, or artistry. Man's courage in the face of tragedy, the bitterness, the sadness of America is usually at the heart of most of his fiction. Such an attitude towards life, of course, could slop over into a maudlin sentimentality if it were not for Dreiser's sense of wonder, his sympathy for and amazement at the way his characters operate, and survive. In this he is close to Faulkner. There is an energy and fierce sense of purpose common to both novelists.

I have concentrated on Dreiser's novels, but he was also the prolific author of poetry, plays, short stories, and nonfiction. The less said about his poetry and drama, the better. Dreiser simply wasn't a poet or dramatist. His shorter works of fiction contain many of the attributes of his novels, though very few come close to An American Tragedy or The Bulwark. Dreiser needed a large canvas. His nonfiction, especially his autobiographical works, have never been adequately dealt with, and I believe it is in this area that new studies of Dreiser will be most needed. The University of Pennsylvania recently issued an edition of Dreiser's collected letters, and this material will undoubtedly focus attention on biographical matters. Dawn, Dreiser's account of his early life, especially deserves revival and re-evaluation.

In the field of his novels most of the criticism has been in the nature of violent attacks or spirited defenses. As Dreiser comes to be an accepted part of American literary history, however, there will be more scholarly and critical, and less polemical, attention paid to his work. Indeed, such a trend is already established; we have begun to assess and appreciate the various aspects of Dreiser's achievement as a novelist.

And this achievement, I believe, marks him as one of our best novelists, a rare man who was able to make art out of his vision of life. Admittedly, Dreiser still bothers many readers. Perhaps Alfred Kazin is right when he observes that we often don't know how to react to Dreiser because a sense of contemplativeness, wonder, and reverence is at the center of Dreiser's world: "It is this lack of smartness, this puzzled lovingness for the substance of all our mystery, that explains why we do not know what to do with Dreiser today" [Introduction to The Stature of Theodore Dreiser, 1955].

But this refers to emotive reactions which are qualified by the time in which we live. If we often are unable to know how to handle our reactions to Dreiser, we can certainly appreciate these important chronicles of our American experience. For as Randolph Bourne said of Dreiser [in Stature of Dreiser], "his faults are those of his material and of uncouth bulk, and not of shoddiness. He expresses an America that is in process of forming. The interest he evokes is part of the eager interest we feel in that growth."