The Last Titan. A Life of Theodore Dreiser

6. TD to Waldo Frank, July 1, 1917; and Waldo Frank to TD, July 23, 1917

(Penn). Frank and Oppenheim’s overture to Dreiser is quoted in the notes to the

July 1 letter in Elias’s transcript at Cornell.

7. H. L. Mencken, “The Dreiser Bugaboo,” Seven Arts 1 (August 1917):

507–17, partly reprinted in DML, 2: 768–75.

8. AD, 181.

9. Walker Gilmer, Horace Liveright: Publisher of the Twenties (New York:

David Lewis, 1970), 9.

10. Ben Huebsch to TD, March 6, 1918 (Library of Congress); L, 1: 250–51;

and DML, 1: 312.

11. May Calvert Baker to TD, February 6, [1917]; and TD to Baker, Febru-

ary 15, 1917 (Penn).

12. Card at Penn.

13. DML, 1: 309; AD, 160n and 173n.

14. Gilmer, Horace Liveright, esp. 1–19.

15. Boni & Liveright to TD, August 8, 1917 (Penn).

n o t e s t o p a g e s 2 6 8 – 2 7 7

4 4 2

16. AD, 191n; and Jug’s 1914 agreement (Penn).

17. Dreiser states the amount for “Free” in AD as $750 (238). Elias estimates

that “The Second Choice” earned around $600, possibly higher (Theodore

Dreiser, 209). W. A. Swanberg claims that “Married” received $800, but he also

errs in saying that “Free” earned only $500 ( Dreiser [New York: Charles Scrib-

ner’s Sons, 1965], 219). “Married” and “The Second Choice” appeared respec-

tively in Cosmpolitan 63 (September 1917): 31–35, 112–15; and 64 (February 1918):

53–58, 104, 106–7. “Free” appeared in the Saturday Evening Post 190 (March 16,

1918): 13–15, 81–89. On Rose, see Sara White Dreiser to Fremont Rider, April 1,

1918 (Penn): “here am I whose death would make scarcely a ripple in the lives of

men, & who would so gladly have gone in her stead. And she as wife & mother

was so much needed.”

18. ND, 103–5, 128; and Free, 139, 158, 162. See also chapter 3.

19. ND, 158.

20. See, for example, the first pages of Dreiser’s notes for HH (Penn); and L,

1: 247–48.

21. Free, 324, 333.

22. DML, 1: 315.

23. “A Story of Stories” was based on the Red Galvin episode in chapters 48–50

of ND. In a pamphlet advertising Free (Virginia), Boni & Liveright used the Sun’s dismissal of “Nigger Jeª ” in juxtaposition with the Cincinnati Enquirer’s assertion that the story was “powerful in its realism.”

24. Joseph Gri‹n, The Small Canvas: An Introduction to Dreiser’s Short Sto-

ries (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985), 24, 16; TDCR,

306, 310; and [ Virginia Woolf ], “A Real American,” TLS, August 21, 1919,

reprinted in Ellen Moers, “Virginia Woolf on Dreiser,” DN 7 (Fall 1976): 7–9.

25. TM, x; and DML, 2: 791, 399–400.

26. TM, 108, 188; and Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass, ed. Jerome Loving (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 446.

27. TDCR, 314.

28. Dreiser first published his story on the mayor of Bridgeport in the June

1903 issue of Era; see chapter 6. For Burke see chapter 8, n. 36. Dreiser wrote the

introduction to Robin’s Caius Gracchus (1920), a verse tragedy published under

the pseudonym of Odin Gregory.

29. Ellen Moers, Two Dreisers (New York: Viking Press, 1969), 246–50; and

Hey, 243. The working title for Hey was “The King Is Naked.”

30. L, 1: 284–87; and TD, Notes on Life, ed. Marguerite Tjader and John J.

McAleer (University: University of Alabama Press, 1974).

31. Police Report in Dreiser’s hand; DML, 2: 350; TD to May Calvert Baker,

June 2, 1919; and Baker to TD, March 29, 1918 (Penn).

32. May Calvert Baker to TD, September 4, 1918; and TD to Baker, Octo-

ber 19, 1918 (Penn).

n o t e s t o p a g e s 2 7 7 – 2 8 4

4 4 3

33. May Calvert Baker to TD, October 24, 1918; and TD to Baker, Novem-

ber 23, 1918 (Penn).

34. May Calvert Baker to TD, undated; AD, 257–68; Baker to TD, June 28,

1919; and TD to Baker, August 16, 1919 (Penn).

35. AD, 269–73.

36. ML, 12–23; AD, 318–19; and Vera Dreiser, My Uncle Theodore (New York: Nash Publishing Co., 1976), 141–42.

37. AD, 278–80.

38. AD, 339.

39. AD, 282; and TD, “Myself and the Movies,” Esquire 20 ( July 1943): 50,

159.

40. Boni & Liveright to TD, August 25, 1919 (Penn).

41. AD, 310, 283; and ML, 27–30.

42. Peter Cowie, Eighty Years of Cinema (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1977), 45;

and Robert H. Stanley, The Celluloid Empire: A History of the American Movie

Industry (New York: Hastings House, 1978), 43–44.

43. ML, 33; AD, 287–89, 294, 296, 307–8n; and Vera Dreiser, My Uncle

Theodore, 143–44.

44. Horace Liveright to TD, September 18, 1920; Dreiser told Edward H.

Smith on January 2, 1920, that he moved frequently “to escape the result of leaks”

(Penn).

45. DML, 2: 360; AD, 338; Ephraim Katz, The Film Encyclopedia (New York:

Harper & Row Publishers, 1979), 600–601; and TD, “Hollywood: Its Morals

and Manners,” Shadowland 5 (November 1921): 37, 61–63; (December 1921): 51,

61; ( January 1922): 43, 67; and (February 1922): 53, 66. See also TD’s “Holly-

wood Now,” McCall’s 48 (September 1921): 8, 18, 54. For Mencken’s phrase, see

his letter to Estelle Bloom Kubitz, May 26, [1922]; reprinted in In Defense of Mar-

ion: The Love of Marion Bloom & H. L. Mencken, ed. Edward A. Martin (Athens:

University of Georgia Press, 1996), 174–75.

46. ML, 33, 35–36. The order and approximate beginning dates of their seven

residences in Los Angeles between 1919 and 1922 are as follows: (1) November 1,

1919: Stillwell Hotel at 9th and Grand; (2) November 8: 338 Alvarado; (3) De-

cember 1: 558 North Larchmont and Clinton streets; (4) September 1, 1920: 1553

Curran Street in Highland Park; (5) around January 25, 1921: 6309 Sunset Drive;

(6) March 8: 1515 Detroit Street near Sunset; and (7) August 1921 (until Octo-

ber, 1922): 652 North Columbus Avenue, Glendale, California.

47. Liveright later proposed that Clyde’s last name would be easier to pro-

nounce if spelled without an “s” (Horace Liveright to TD, April 23, 1924 [Penn]).

As to Arbuckle, Dreiser initially thought of using this material somewhere, but

a year later he recorded in his diary on September 21, 1921: “Working on cutting

out all data relating to Arbuckle” ( AD, 384).

48. AD, 310, 326; and AT, 1: 3, 6–7. It was originally thought that Dreiser

n o t e s t o p a g e s 2 8 4 – 2 9 1

4 4 4

completed only twenty chapters in Los Angeles, but recently John Williams Reynolds discovered that there are two diªerent chapters in the Dreiser collection at Penn marked VI (“The Genesis and Compositional History of Theodore

Dreiser’s An American Tragedy [Ph.D. diss., University of Connecticut, 1999]).

For Conklin, see chapter 2.

49. AD, 336, 340. See also Horace Liveright to TD, April 22 and July 8, 1920

(Penn).

50. L, 2: 395; GW, 531, 562–63; and AD, 349–50.

51. L, 2: 396n; L, 1: 302; and Edward H. Smith, “Dreiser—After Twenty Years,”

Bookman 53 (March 1921): 27–39.

52. John W. Robertson, Poe: A Study (San Francisco: privately printed, 1921);

see also L, 1: 369–71.

53. TD to George Douglas, September 27, 1920 (Penn); AD, 344n; and He-

len Richardson to TD, October 18, 1920 (Penn).

54. AD, 350–51; and TD to Ethel Kelley, July 8, 1921 (Texas A&M Univer-

sity Library).

55. ML, 52–59. The dating of the lily pond incident has been somewhat con-

fused because the illustration in AD featuring the newspaper clipping reporting

Sterling’s plunge is placed next to the visit in May of 1921 (367); whereas Dreiser

records the incident in his diary for August 16, 1922 (391). In AT, Clyde Gri‹ths

and Roberta Alden finally come together in a canoe on a lily pond.

56. L, 2: 390–98n.

57. DML, 2: 449–51.

58. TD to Helen Richardson, December 1, 1923 (Penn); and AD, 382–83n.

59. DML, 2: 480–81.

60. Estelle Kubitz to TD, January 22, 1921 (quoted in Reynolds, “Genesis

and Compositional History,” 47); and AT, 1: 246.

61. AD, 394; and Oliver M. Sayler, “Picking America’s Premier Pen-Masters,”

Shadowland 5 ( January 1922): 57, 63, 74.

t h i r t e e n . a n a m e r i c a n t r a g e d y

1. See Jack Salzman, ed., “‘I Find the Real American Tragedy’ by Theodore

Dreiser,” Resources for American Literary Study 2 (Spring 1972): 3–75 [12];

reprinted from a series of essays by that title in Mystery Magazine 11 (February

1935): 9–11, 88–90; (March): 22–23, 77–79; (April): 24–26, 90–92; (May): 22–24,

83–86; and ( June): 20–21, 68–73; partially reprinted in TDS, 291–99. For slightly

diªerent versions which led to “I Find the Real American Tragedy,” see also “Amer-

ican Tragedies” (Penn); “Theodore Dreiser Describes ‘An American Tragedy,’”

New York Post, October 2–6, 1934; and the Philadelphia Record for approximately