[In the following essay, Farrell praises Dreiser for his achievement in the short story form and for his "healthy pessimism."]

Theodore Dreiser was a good storyteller and this collection contains some of his best stories. Due to the fact that his novels are so powerful and caused so much controversy, his stories have been neglected by critics. But among them are some of the finest and most moving short stories written by an American in this century.

In these tales there is variety of scene and range and depth of emotion. The emotions of mismated married people; the crazed feelings of a simple Midwestern old farmer who has lost his Phoebe, the partner of his life; the greed for gold of an illiterate farmer and his equally illiterate family; the despair of an Arabian beggar who approaches his end, poor, ragged, and despised; the feelings of Dreiser himself for Paul Dresser, his song-writing brother; the words and personality of a New Englander who lives by the Word of the Bible; the superstitious feelings of an Irish immigrant who works as a sand-hog under the Hudson River—here is range and variety. Dreiser paints and re-creates a broad human scene and, in each instance, he reveals his probing, searching mind, his ability to assimilate and make use of many details, and a compassion for humanity, its dreams and tragic sufferings, which is linked up with a sure insight into the nature of people.

During his entire literary life, Theodore Dreiser sought for a theory of existence. His mind seems constantly to have been filled with "whys." Why was life? Why was there this human spectacle of grandeur and misery, of the powerful and the weak, the gifted and the mediocre? Why did men drive and struggle for the prizes of this world—sometimes with little more than a jungle morality? And his fiction was a revelation of what he saw and how he felt about these questions. He found no answers, and most certainly he avoided cheap answers as he did the cheap tricks of commercial and plot short story writers. He was a deeply serious and brooding man, and in his writing he treated his characters with seriousness. They became intensely human in their dreaming, aspiring, and struggling as well as in their unhappiness, bewilderment, and moments of tragedy.

Dreiser saw a struggle between instinct and convention, and this was a major motif in both his novels and his stories. He saw how convention and conformity frustrates men and women. Here in this volume, there are several stories which deal with this subject matter. "Free," the story of a gifted architect with definite artistic ability and of his dying wife dramatizes the frustrating role of Convention in the life of a man with singular gifts. All of his life, Rufus Haymarket has been loyal and faithful to his wife in deed and action. She has controlled and dominated their social life. He has sacrificed his own impulses and many of his tastes in order that she will be happy. And when she lies dying, he dreams of freedom. He gazes out of the window of their apartment on Central Park West in New York City, thinks over their common life together and of his many frustrations. With her he has not found happiness or fulfillment. But she will die and then, for a brief span of years, he will be free. He is troubled by such thoughts. He does not want to have to think in this manner. But he has missed so much, a love that would be deeply satisfying, a life less bound by conventional tastes and values, and his need for freedom is rooted within him. And then his wife dies. Then he is free. But he realizes the meaning of his freedom. "Free! . . . Yes—free . . . to die!" This is a story of futility, but it is told with such sympathy and compassion that it acquires emotional force. Its simple tragedy becomes awesome, almost mysterious in the way that tragedy in real life is sometimes awesome and full of mystery. There are other stories of unhappy marriages, "Convention," "Marriage for One," and "The Shadow." These, again, are marked by a sympathy and understanding on a parallel with these same qualities that endow "Free" with such depth of feeling.

Along with "Free," there are two other Dreiser stories in this volume that have already become acknowledged classics, "The Lost Phoebe" and "Nigger Jeff." Henry and Phoebe lived together on their farm for forty-eight years. Their love had changed into a condition of habit and mutual need. Then, Phoebe died. Henry lived alone, and in time his mind became deranged. Day after day, he tramped the countryside searching for his lost wife. He could not accept the fact that she was dead—she had merely gone away. He would find her. The memory of Phoebe when young returns to him vividly. His search is not for the old woman who died, but for the young girl who had been his bride: his search is for dreams long since faded. He dies in deranged happiness, seeking the beautiful young Phoebe he knew years ago. In this story, it is as though life itself were speaking to us through the author. And it is a tale not only of the sad end which comes to us in old age; also, it is a tale of a lost dream, a dream that once endowed life with a beauty that was akin to poetry. Time, the enemy of all men, has eaten away beauty and rendered dreams obsolete. And yet the dreams remain. Dreiser's handling of this theme is truly poetic.

"Nigger Jeff" is a sympathetic and vivid account of a lynching. The main character is a reporter from a big city newspaper (undoubtedly a St. Louis journal) who is sent into a country district to cover a story where there might be a lynching. The description of the lynching, and the account of its impact on the young reporter, is presented so vividly and movingly that we feel that we are on the scene ourselves. And the "cruel sorrow" of the colored mother whose son has been hanged by a mob can only bring a choke in our throats. The young reporter says, in the last line of the story, "I'll get it all in!" Dreiser did get it all in and this means the human feelings, the terribleness of human sorrow that is caused by such a lynching.

Totally different is "My Brother Paul," Dreiser's account of his older brother. The feeling he had of brotherly affection is finely and sensitively revealed. Also, the story is quite genuinely nostalgic. It creates the Broadway atmosphere at the turn of the century so well that I found myself longing to have lived in that era and in Paul Dresser's world. Often, Dreiser has depicted emotions of greed, and he has described how human beings can destroy one another. Here, he writes of generosity of feeling, of manly affection, of kindness and helpfulness.

But every story in this book bears the mark of genuineness and caliber. In every story, there is respect—deep respect for human beings. Great art reveals the importance of human feelings and emotions. This is what Dreiser achieved. He cut beneath the surfaces of conventional attitude and sought, painstakingly, carefully, and sensitively to see human beings as they are and to render and re-create them truly but with sympathy.

We all must come to terms with time and death. Growth and maturity are evidenced in the way we make our terms with these. Dreiser's lifelong quest for a theory of existence was bound up with his own answers to time and death, his own willingness to face them in a spirit of moral bravery. This is one of the sources of his pessimism. It is a healthy pessimism, and when we encounter it we can gain a deepened sense of and respect for life. And these fifteen stories are but some of the works which Dreiser left us in his own quest and journey through the world. They tell us of men and women dreaming, struggling, and becoming caught in tragic bewilderment; they create a sense of wonder about those feelings which are the common clay, the common ground, the common elements of our humanity. Often they are somber, but their somberness breaks out in a revelation of that wonder and mystery of life which Dreiser felt so deeply.

Theodore Dreiser was a great writer of our century, and these tales of his fully bear the mark of his greatness, his sincerity, and his genius. Written years ago, they remain vital today. They belong to our literary tradition and they should long stand among the major short stories written in twentieth-century America.