s of the better part of French literature, and of
much of English literature. He did not even read Hauptmann until after
"Jennie Gerhardt" had been written, and such typical German moderns as
Ludwig Thoma, Otto Julius Bierbaum and Richard Dehmel remain as strange
to him as Heliogabalus.

Sec. 2

In his manner, as opposed to his matter, he is more the Teuton, for he
shows all of the racial patience and pertinacity and all of the racial
lack of humour. Writing a novel is as solemn a business to him as
trimming a beard is to a German barber. He blasts his way through his
interminable stories by something not unlike main strength; his writing,
one feels, often takes on the character of an actual siege operation,
with tunnellings, drum fire, assaults in close order and hand-to-hand
fighting. Once, seeking an analogy, I called him the Hindenburg of the
novel. If it holds, then "The 'Genius'" is his Poland. The field of
action bears the aspect, at the end, of a hostile province meticulously
brought under the yoke, with every road and lane explored to its
beginning, and every crossroads village laboriously taken, inventoried
and policed. Here is the very negation of Gallic lightness and
intuition, and of all other forms of impressionism as well. Here is no
series of illuminating flashes, but a gradual bathing of the whole scene
with white light, so that every detail stands out.

And many of those details, of course, are trivial; even irritating. They
do not help the picture; they muddle and obscure it; one wonders
impatiently what their meaning is, and what the purpose may be of
revealing them with such a precise, portentous air.... Turn to page 703
of "The 'Genius.'" By the time one gets there, one has hewn and hacked
one's way through 702 large pages of fine print--97 long chapters, more
than 250,000 words. And yet, at this hurried and impatient point, with
the _coda_ already begun, Dreiser halts the whole narrative to explain
the origin, nature and inner meaning of Christian Science, and to make
us privy to a lot of chatty stuff about Mrs. Althea Jones, a
professional healer, and to supply us with detailed plans and
specifications of the apartment house in which she lives, works her
tawdry miracles, and has her being. Here, in sober summary, are the
particulars:

1. That the house is "of conventional design."

2. That there is "a spacious areaway" between its two wings.

3. That these wings are "of