azy aspiration may
well stand as the epitome of America, and it is made clearer here than
in any other American novel--clearer than in "The Pit" or "The
Cliff-Dwellers"--clearer than in any book by an Easterner--almost as
clear as the Paris of Balzac and Zola. Finally, the style of the story
is indissolubly wedded to its matter. The narrative, in places, has an
almost scriptural solemnity; in its very harshness and baldness there is
something subtly meet and fitting. One cannot imagine such a history
done in the strained phrases of Meredith or the fugal manner of Henry
James. One cannot imagine that stark, stenographic dialogue adorned with
the tinsel of pretty words. The thing, to reach the heights it touches,
could have been done only in the way it has been done. As it stands, I
would not take anything away from it, not even its journalistic
banalities, its lack of humour, its incessant returns to C major. A
primitive and touching poetry is in it. It is a novel, I am convinced,
of the first consideration....

In "The Financier" this poetry is almost absent, and that fact is
largely to blame for the book's lack of charm. By the time we see him in
"The Titan" Frank Cowperwood has taken on heroic proportions and the
romance of great adventure is in him, but in "The Financier" he is still
little more than an extra-pertinacious money-grubber, and not unrelated
to the average stock broker or corner grocer. True enough, Dreiser says
specifically that he is more, that the thing he craves is not money but
power--power to force lesser men to execute his commands, power to
surround himself with beautiful and splendid things, power to amuse
himself with women, power to defy and nullify the laws made for the
timorous and unimaginative. But the intent of the author never really
gets into his picture. His Cowperwood in this first stage is hard,
commonplace, unimaginative. In "The Titan" he flowers out as a blend of
revolutionist and voluptuary, a highly civilized Lorenzo the
Magnificent, an immoralist who would not hesitate two minutes about
seducing a saint, but would turn sick at the thought of harming a child.
But in "The Financier" he is still in the larval state, and a repellent
sordidness hangs about him.

Moreover, the story of his rise is burdened by two defects which still
further corrupt its effect. One lies in the fact that Dreiser is quite
unable to get the feel, so to speak, of Philadelphia, just as he is
unable to ge