The Last Titan. A Life of Theodore Dreiser

Jonathan Yardley (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 28.

59. “Henry L. Mencken and Myself,” in Isaac Goldberg, The Man Mencken:

A Biographical and Critical Survey (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1925),

378–81; reprinted in DML, 2: 738–40.

60. TM, 7.

n i n e . r e t u r n o f t h e n o v e l i s t

1. TM, 22, 377–78, 52–53.

2. Vera Dreiser to W. A. Swanberg, May 5, 1964 (Penn).

3. Robert H. Elias to W. A. Swanberg, May 10, 1962; and William C. Lengel

to Swanberg, March 2, 1962, where Lengel, according to Swanberg’s notes, told

him: “Dreiser [while married to Jug ] didn’t know he was sterile” (Penn). More-

over, in spite of his long record of promiscuity, no oªspring, legitimate or oth-

erwise, have ever come forward to claim Dreiser as their biological father.

4. The “Genius” (New York: John Lane Company, 1915), 269.

5. FF, 233.

6. [H. L. Mencken], “In Defense of Profanity,” Bohemian 17 (November

1909): 567–68.

7. [TD], “In the Days of Discovery” and “The Day of Special Privileges,”

Bohemian 17 (November 1909): 563–64 and 565–67.

8. [TD], “Empty the Cradle,” Delineator 70 (October 1907): 491–92.

9. Editor & Publisher, November 2, 1907; and Printing News, December, 1907,

both included in Dreiser’s Delineator scrapbook at Penn; New York Herald, Oc-

tober 11, 1908; Theodore Roosevelt to TD, December 25, 1908; and James E.

West to TD, January 11, 1909 (Indiana).

10. James B. Wasson to TD, January 23, 1909; and N. Lafayette-Savay to TD,

April 24, 1909 (Indiana).

11. William C. Lengel to W. A. Swanberg, March 2, 1962; and Lengel, “The

n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 8 8 – 1 9 6

4 3 2

‘Genius’ Himself,” Esquire 10 (September 1938): 55, 120, 124, 126. Lengel told Dorothy Dudley in 1930: “Dreiser was big, ungainly, homely, but after [reading

Sister Carrie] I would have done anything he asked of me” ( FF, 221–23).

12. [TD] to Charles W. Taylor, Jr., December 11, 1908 (Indiana); and Louise

Campbell to W. A. Swanberg, June 21, 1962 (Penn).

13. DLM, 1: 37–38. “The Decay of Churches” was never published in the

Bohemian.

14. Mrs. Charles Seymour Whitman (formerly Thelma Cudlipp) to W. A.

Swanberg, November 11, 1962 (Penn).

15. Mrs. Charles Seymour Whitman, “October’s Child,” unpublished man-

uscript; and Ann Watkins to W. A. Swanberg, November 12, 1962 (Penn).

16. Whitman to Swanberg, November 11, 1962.

17. Whitman to Swanberg, November 11, 1962; and TD to Whitman, Feb-

ruary 23, 1943 (Penn).

18. L, 1: 104–9; TD to Annie Cudlipp, October 11, 1910; and Ann Watkins

to Swanberg, November 12, 1962: “He threatened suicide with such frenzy that

I was scared to death he’d do it right in my apartment” (Penn).

19. DML, 1: 52, 63–64.

20. Sinclair Lewis, “Editors Who Write,” Life, October 10, 1907; quoted in

Mark Schorer, Sinclair Lewis: An American Life (New York: McGraw-Hill,

1961), 179.

21. Schorer, Sinclair Lewis, 179; see also Martha Solomon, Emma Goldman

(New York: Twayne Publishers, 1987), 1–28.

22. Thomas P. Riggio, “Dreiser’s Song of Innocence and Experience: The

Ur-Text of Jennie Gerhardt, ” DS (Fall 2000): 22–38.

23. D, 599n. For an exhaustive and penetrating analysis of Jennie Gerhardt as

well as the text before it was edited by Harper’s, see JG, where it is also asserted

on p. 422 of the “Historical Commentary” that Carl Dreiser lived with Mame

at the turn of the century.

24. JG, 4, 108, 12–13.

25. Richard Lehan, Theodore Dreiser: His World and His Novels (Carbondale:

Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), 80–81.

26. “A Literary Apprenticeship” (Penn); and Albert Mordell, “Theo. Dreiser—

Radical,” Philadelphia Record, December 13, 1913.

27. Lehan, Dreiser, 87; and JG, 321.

28. JG, 442 and 214. For examples of passages with redundancies, see 194–95,

298–99, and 304–5.

29. DML, 1: 81; Letters of H. L. Mencken, ed. Guy J. Forgue (New York: Al-

fred A. Knopf, 1961), 18–19; Lillian Rosenthal to TD, January 25, 1911; L, 1: 110;

and Sara White Dreiser to TD, April 19, 1926 (Penn).

30. FF, 256.

31. H. L. Mencken, “A Novel of the First Rank,” The Smart Set 35 (Novem-

n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 9 6 – 2 0 7

4 3 3

ber 1911): 153–55; reprinted in DML, 2: 740–44. It is also reprinted in TDCR, where the other reviews of Jennie Gerhardt quoted are to be found (57–95).

32. Grant Richards, Author Hunting: Memories of Years Spent Mainly in Pub-

lishing (1934; repr. London: Unicorn Press, 1960), 138–43.

33. Lucia A. Kinsaul, “The Rudest American Author: Grant Richards’ As-

sessment of Theodore Dreiser,” DS 23 (Spring 1992): 27–28.

34. TD to Grant Richards, November 4, 1911 (Texas); reprinted in Richards,

Author Hunting, 145–46.

35. Richards, Author Hunting, 148–49.

36. DML, 1: 82–84.

37. DML, 1: 126–27; Thomas P. Riggio, “Europe without Baedeker: The

Omitted Hancha Jower Story—from A Traveler at Forty, ” Modern Fiction Stud-

ies 23 (Autumn 1977): 423–40; and TF, 80. See also Renate von Bardeleben,

“Dreiser’s Diaristic Mode,” DS 31 (Spring 2000): 26–42.

38. TF, 11, 32, 63.

39. DML, 1: 125; and TF, 113–27. A slightly truncated version of “Lilly: A

Girl of the Streets” was also published in The Smart Set 50 ( June 1913): 81–86,

as “Lilly Edwards: An Episode.”

40. Riggio, “Europe without Baedeker,” 428n., 431–32.

41. Riggio, “Europe without Baedeker,” 436.

42. TF, 146, 203.

43. TF, 208, 217, 247.

44. L, 1: 130–31.

45. TF, 271–72, 347–53.

46. TD to Floyd Dell, March 12, 1912 (Newberry Library); DML, 1: 93; and

TF, 397, 447–48.

47. TF, 444, 453.

48. TF, 486; and L, 1: 137.

49. TD to Floyd Dell, May 1, 1912 (Newberry Library); and Richards, Au-

thor Hunting, 153.

50. Unedited typescript of TF, 1152–56 (Penn); and TF, 523.

51. TF, 523, 525 .

t e n . l i f e a f t e r t h e t i t a n i c

1. New York Times, June 23, 1912 (reprinted in TDS, 192–95); L, 1: 143; and

“Theodore Dreiser, Author of ‘Jennie Gerhardt’ . . . Woman the Centre of In-

terest in Contemporary Fiction,” New York Evening Post, November 15, 1911.

2. W. A. Swanberg, Dreiser (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965), 162;

and Anna Tatum to TD, November 7, 1911 (Penn). “The Mighty Burke” ap-

peared as “The Mighty Rourke” in TM; see chapter 8.

n o t e s t o p a g e s 2 0 8 – 2 1 9

4 3 4

3. Anna Tatum to TD, November 7, 11, 23, 1911, and April 12, 1913 (Penn).

4. AD, 207, where Dreiser also asserts Tatum’s bisexuality.

5. DML, 1: 96–98.

6. DML, 1: 99.

7. Charles Shapiro, Theodore Dreiser: Our Bitter Patriot (Carbondale: South-

ern Illinois University Press, 1962), 44.

8. ND, 499.

9. “The Supremacy of the Modern Business Man” (Virginia).

10. Burton Rascoe, Theodore Dreiser (New York: Robert M. McBride & Co.,

1925), 7–8.

11. “The Materials of a Great Novel,” New York World, February 4, 1906;

quoted in Philip L. Gerber, “Dreiser’s Financier: A Genesis,” Journal of Modern

Literature 1 (March 1971): 354–74.

12. Charles Edward Russell, “Where Did You Get It, Gentlemen?” Every-

body’s 17 (September 1907): 348–60; L, 1: 208; Donald Pizer, Novels of Theodore Dreiser: A Critical Study (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976),

161–62; and Edwin LeFèvre, “What Availeth It?” Everybody’s 24 ( June 1911):

836–48. Dreiser consulted Henry Clews, Fifty Years in Wall Street (1887);

Charles A. Conant, Defense of Stock Exchange (1903); John R. Dos Passos, Trea-

tise on the Law of Stock Brokers and Stock Exchanges (1882); Francis L. Eames,

History of the New York Stock Exchange (1894); Sereno S. Pratt, The Work of Wall

Street (1903); S. A. Nelson, The ABC of Wall Street (1900), and The Theory of

Stock Speculation (1903).

13. The Financier (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1912), 11–13; and “A Les-

son from the Aquarium,” Tom Watson’s Magazine 3 ( January 1906): 306–8,

reprinted in TDS, 159–62.

14. See Richard Lehan, Theodore Dreiser: His World and His Novels (Car-

bondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), 101–2; Philip L. Gerber, “The

Financier Himself: Dreiser and C. T. Yerkes,” Publications of the Modern Lan-

guage Association 88 ( January 1973): 117–18; and Robert Edwin Wilkinson, “A

Study of Theodore Dreiser’s The Financier” (Ph.D. diss., University of Penn-

sylvania, 1965), 12.

15. The Financier (1912), 127, 133; and ND, 132–36, 702n. In creating Butler

and his daughter, Dreiser may have also drawn upon the plot of Henry M. Heyde’s

The Buccanneers (1904); see Philip L. Gerber, “Hyde’s Tabbs and Dreiser’s But-

lers,” DN 6 (Spring 1975): 9–11.

16. Joann Krieg, “Theodore Dreiser and the Penitentiary System,” DN 8 (Fall

1977): 5–8; Krieg points out that Dreiser’s otherwise meticulous description of

the famous prison, which in its day was both an architectural and a penal model