Dreiser on the Web

by Roger W. Smith

12. Misrepresentation and Misappropriation of Dreiser on the Web

 The web, of course, can be a good place for propagating misinformation, and Dreiser is no exception. Many sites make erroneous or misleading statements about Dreiser. A common misconception, for example, that has been propagated on the Internet is that Sister Carrie “rocked the literary world”—that it caused controversy upon publication, leading to a “public outcry” along with charges of obscenity, making Dreiser a cause célèbre for the artistic community. This seems to be the result of a tendency to confuse the details of Sister Carrie’s publication with the controversy surrounding The “Genius.” Another common misconception is that A Place in the Sun represents the only and the authentic film version of An American Tragedy, an accurate and detailed adaptation of the book. Clyde Griffiths is described for the benefit of the putative reader of An American Tragedy as a member of the underclass who was raised in a slum, and Roberta Alden is a “slattern” who almost deserved to be murdered considering that Sondra Finchley (whose limitations and personality defects are overlooked) is unquestionably more worthy of Clyde’s affections.

The web abounds in annoying factual errors, too. Ev’ry Month is described as a “literary magazine.” Dreiser is said to have been plagued by a stuttering problem in his youth; to have developed a vocation as a reporter while attending college; to have been employed as a “dramatic editor” and “traveling correspondent” for the St Louis Globe-Democrat; and to have left college in a huff because he “despised the pomp of academia” and saw through it all. Another oversimplification that obscures the facts is that Dreiser went into a state of depression immediately after his struggles with publisher Doubleday, Page, & Co. over the publication of Sister Carrie, and that this was the immediate and prime cause of the period of near suicidal despair described in An Amateur Laborer. One site presents as established fact the apocryphal story that the outrage of “one of the wives of the men at the publishing house” (Mrs. Neltje Doubleday) at what she perceived to be the book’s immorality led to a confrontation between Dreiser and the firm of Doubleday, Page over the publication of Sister Carrie.

Another development which should be noted for the record is that quotations of Dreiser and synopses of his views appear on websites whose content is either overtly racist or anti-religious and therefore controversial. Instances of such web content are noted below:

• Anti-religious statements. It is perhaps not surprising that Dreiser’s anti-religious remarks have been quoted in support of an atheist agenda, although he never proclaimed himself an atheist (see Gordon Stein, ed., The Encyclopedia of Unbelief, 2 vols. [Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985], vol. 1: 12, a printed work). Anti-religious remarks attributed to Dreiser (lifted from sources such as a Carole Gray desktop calendar, The New York Public Library Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations, and George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations) are posted at the web site of an atheist group, Positive Atheism, at http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/quote-d1.htm .

• Anti-Semitic quotations and views. Anti-Semitic quotations from Dreiser (along with other writers such as George Sand, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Henry Adams, Hamlin Garland, Richard Harding Davis, H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence, George Bernard Shaw, H. L. Mencken, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe and a host of other figures ranging from Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson to Henry Ford and Adolf Hitler) are posted on web sites of hate groups with an Anti-Semitic, Aryan supremacist, and racist agenda. The Dreiser quotes are taken from a 1922 letter to H. L. Mencken and a 1935 letter to Hutchins Hapgood printed in the Nation. (See Robert H. Elias, ed., Letters of Theodore Dreiser: A Selection, vol. 2: 405, 650–52). Self-styled Anti-Zionist sites also make the following claims, which are repeated verbatim at the two such sites that were accessed, namely, Anti-Zion-General Commentary Part. http://www.thirdworldplanet.com/jubel/general-1.html  and “Books Online: AntiZion.” Historical Review Press. http://www.ety.com/HRP/booksonline/antizion/D.htm :

An early Dreiser work, The Hand of the Potter, describes the sex-slaying of a little girl by a young Jew. A Shylock-like Jewish landlord is shown trying to collect rent from the grief-stricken father when the girl’s body is discovered in the Jew’s house. Dreiser’s private correspondence is peppered with the word “kyke” (his spelling). After the rise of National Socialism in Germany, he was encouraged to call for public debate on the Jewish question, and as part of this, the magazine he edited published an anti-Jewish “Symposium” (American Spectator, September, 1933). Dreiser was under heavy pressure to disavow his anti-Jewish sentiments, and Jewish apologists usually claim that he did, although it is often overlooked that the supposed conversion occurred when the then-elderly and ailing author had become ensnarled with the Communist Party.

The vitriolic and unabashedly racist content of these sites (which abound in distortions and misstatements of fact) does not deserve further comment. An excellent and comprehensive introduction to the controversy over Dreiser and anti-Semitism can be found in Richard Tuerk, “The American Spectator Symposium Controversy: Was Dreiser Anti-Semitic?” Prospects 16 (1991): 367–89, a printed work.

For additional comments and evaluation of web-propagated misinformation about Dreiser, see the online continuation of this discussion.