The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 18, 1926, Page 14

By V. F. CALVERTON. by contemporary American literature there are few dramas and fewer novels that deal with the class strug- gle in a definite or direct fashion. All of them, however, reveal its influence in both style and substance, ration. religious parents, after an automobile catastrophe that drove hint; from his home. tgwn, finally finds work ‘and a The cry attributed to Chaliapin, “1 proleta- I am an artist,” no longer arrests, since we know that art is dependent as much upon social life for its conceptions as is -politics or philosophy, and the artist, there- fore,:is: neither free of social compul- sions nor aloof from social struggles. It iss because. art seems so removed into a blue-mist world of illusion that the connection between its substance and that of the social] world is so sel- dom detected. In the novels of the nineteenth cen- tury the virtues and ambitions of the bourgeoisie were extolled. -Toward the end of the century proletarian senti- mentalists. began to multiply. With the 20th century a distinct anti-bour- geois trend had developed in art. Theodore Dreiser is an expression of that -anti-bourgeois trend. Dreiser is no=proletarian. He is neither class- conséious “nor class-inspired. Altho his heroes very often represent. the period of individualistic development and achievement that belong to the early days of capitalism, Dreiser’s whole attitude toward the ethics of the bourgeoisie is one of disgust and detestation. The smugness of bour- geois virtue he scorns. The religiosity of the Victorian bourgeoisie he ridi- cules with callous gesture. The money-madness of our civilization he records with weary contempt. In the optimism of the 19th century bour- geois— “The snail’s on the thorn, “ fhe bird’s on the wing, “God’s in his heaven. All’s well with the world—” he sees only hollow rhetoric. Dreiser represents the spirit of so- cial decadence, Futility is his domi- nant note. Faith has fled. Social re- construction appears but a myth. He has no hope, no aim—only an unre- luctant resignation to futility. The proletariat means nothing more to him than the bourgeoisie. Men as a whole do not awaken in him the promise of prophecy. Progress is a delusion. Yet in his very contempt for man Dreiser paints life in patterns that have soeia] significance. That is why onesiould read “An American Trag- edy,” which is his latest and. best novel; and which is the most effective literary achievement of a contempo- rary American. “An American Tragedy” does not deal with the life of the proletariat, altho its hero is never more than a minor foreman in a coljar factory. Its tragedy is one of sex and social aspi- am neither bourgeois nor rian, Clyde Griffiths, the son of mistrésg in his uncle’s establishment. Préguatcy converted his mistress fromh # ource of pleasure into an_or- gamot pain. His alm to marry Sondra, a girkim rich society, is endangered by the pregnancy, of his mistress, who threatens to disclose their Maison. Clyde, driven by ambition, arranges a scene for the murder of his mistress, loses’ his ‘courage at the crucial mo- ment, but finally allows Roberta to drown when their boat is capsized. He is tried, convicted and electro- cuted. The story is simple, and aside from its sex candor is not peculiarly mod- ern in spirit or peculiarly origina) in structure. Its protagonist is a charac- ter of weak, irresponsible type, whose aspirations are devoted neither to the Promise and passion of the poetic life nor to the elusive task of reshaping an unjust and joyless world. Its sub- stance is not new and its situations, taken in outline, savor of the melo- dramatic. On its face, it promises lit- tle to. poet or prophet; It was Voltaire, however, who wrote in,his preface to Herod and Marianne phate 2 expression of them that the man of genius is easily discerned from the wit, and the poet from the scrib- bler.” And art is concerned fundamentally with the emotions and not the intel- “When the passions are to be de- scribed, nearly the same ideas oc cur to everybody; but it ig in the lect. Art is devoted to the projection of the passions in their relationship to their social origins, limitations and developments. And it is in Dreiser's description of the passions, his expres- sion of them, his choice of observa- tion to interpret them, ‘that makes him a genius instead of.a wit, that makes “An. American Tragedy” a colossal creation instead of a mediocre melo- drama, “An American Tragedy” is not writ- ten in an arresting style that detains thru. sheer joy of rhythm. or -pure: euphony of phrase. Like all.of Drei- ser’s novels, it is written in a halt- ing, ctreumlocutory, obese prose. In places, however, Dreiser has outwrit- ten himself and actually achieved. the elegant. The addition and multiplica- tion of phrases and parentheses, ney- ertheless, gives a formidable solidity to the book that a more finished, frag- ile stylist would have been unable to create. As in the novels of Zola, the indefatigable collection of detail, the WHAT AND HOW TO READ mals, lends to the narrative a realism hat is almost photographically com- plete and which in the process of in- terpretation acquires artistic power. If one is anxious to see American literature grow out of its adolescence into maturity, one cannot ignore Drei- ser’s “An American Tragedy.” Drel- ser is a transitionary novelist. His contempt for the bourgeoisie stands out in sharp contrast to the adoration of the bourgeoisie which characterized the novels of William Deans Howells, the leading American fictionist of the last half of the 19th and the first part of the 20th century. . From this transi- tionary . literature will eventually spring a genuine proletarian litera- ture—already palpitating in embryo— which will combine hatred of the bourgeoisie with appreciation of the proletariat. Send us the name and address of @ progressive worker to whom we oan send a sample copy of The slow, steady accretion of infinitesi- L DAILY WORKER. A WEEK IN CARTOONS _ By M. P. Bales GERMANY ADMITIED (| SEAaTEN Ly ALLIANCE. FORMER ATTY. GEN’L. DAUQERTY, (NFAMOUS HAVE ,on the terroristic activities of the In the Next Issue | The Little Red School Houde, by Oliver Garison. With photographs and tHustratione, Meditations of a Cherry Picker, by Pauline Schulman. The Great American Labor Strug- gles of the 1880’s, by Amy Schech- ter. Photostates of labor papers and events of that period. The Confessions of an Agent Pro- vecateur, A sensational document | Pilsudsky government in Poland. Reproductions of paintirigs by Polk’ Ish, artists, Textile Contrasts by Ramon Coff- man. Ramon Coffman is the “Uncle Ray” of newspaper fame. He is the author of the “Chitds' History of the World.” His article in the next issue of this magazine is an intimate pic- - ture of life of the American textile . workers, Intreducing Mr. H..C. Frayne, by Y. Zack. A clever little pen portrait of a typical labor fakir. A Captain of Industry, by Max Sehachtman. A review of the -book “Men and Rubber,” by Harvey S. Firestone, \ MASS MEETING OF 9,000 PASSAIC STRIKERS PRESENT Ceecenwe Pe ew