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Prepublication Reactions
Wishing to sample responses to his first completed draft of The "Genius", Dreiser got Eleanora R. O'Neill, Barbara Langford, Lillian Rosenthal, and, later, Anna P. Tatum to read the typescript. O'Neill, the Boston book reviewer, praised Dreiser's portrayal of characters "in broad master stokes," but complained of a surfeit of details.[6] "[M]erely suggest things with your vigorous strokes—don't explain and draw every line," she advised. Langford and Rosenthal, who had influenced Dreiser's reshaping of Jennie Gerhardt from a happy to a tragic ending, acclaimed The "Genius," which Rosenthal nonetheless believed could be "cut to advantage."[7] She remarked further: "I think you need to introduce . . . a reason for this man's peculiar passion for a certain type of woman." This time, however, Dreiser did not follow Rosenthal's suggestion.
On 20 December 1912, Dreiser arrived in Chicago for a stay lasting until 10 February 1913, to investigate the phase of Charles Tyson Yerkes's career pertinent to his writing of The Titan. During that visit, according to Lengel's 1962 testimony, Dreiser gave Lengel a carbon copy of The "Genius" typescript "to read and pass on to [Floyd] Dell, Lucian Cary [participant in the Chicago literary revolution], and Ray Long," editor of Red Book (Swanberg 166, 549 n. 9). Moreover, Donald Pizer mentions, Dreiser left behind the typescript brought especially for Lengel's perusal "to be read by Edgar Lee Masters . . . among others" (Novels 133-134). A question occurs about Lengel's 1962 recollection inasmuch as on 14 February 1913 Lengel wrote asking Dreiser for a copy of The "Genius" so that he could begin excerpting a serial as Dreiser had requested (UPDC). Shortly thereafter he informed Dreiser: "Have worked over 'The Genius' all day and think I've got the line on the serial. Hope I can get the remaining chapters soon" (undated, UPDC). After cursory examination of the story, Lengel turned over the typescript, as Dreiser wished, to Cary and to Dell (Lengel to Dreiser, 21 Feb. 1913, UPDC). Apparently Lengel had received this duplicate copy of the typescript through Ray Long, whose estimate Lengel inaccurately summarized in a letter of 21 February: "Long says you have produced a master piece that will in itself
On 31 March, Lengel reported to Dreiser his reaction to "The Genius," noting that his "brash statements" were "written with honesty and sincerity" and also anguish.[8] Lengel had recognized living originals in the various characters as well as the troubled state of mind in which Dreiser wrote the story. "When I think of . . . the pain it caused you in chronicling the story, . . . I am tempted to say, publish it." But Lengel expressed the conviction that a five-year delay in publication might enable Dreiser to gain "a different perspective" on the subject. Furthermore, Lengel found that the plot "lacks cohesiveness" as events of life do, that the characters seem bereft of purpose and relationship, that Witla is neither an admirable nor a sympathetic figure. Dreiser rejoined that most reactions so far had been favorable (see Lengel to Dreiser, 19 April 1913, UPDC). On 9 April, however, Dreiser received Long's critique: namely, that "The Genius" seemed "too much a blue print," "went into details of life in a country town . . . which could not possibly grip a reader," then "was told in a sort of brutality" after Witla reaches the city (UPDC).
This most autobiographical of Dreiser's novels evoked responses of approval from women who read the first full draft even as it wakened objections from the earliest male readers. When Dreiser sought the judgment of Anna P. Tatum, she commended the "form of the book," which struck her as "identical" with its message (Tatum to Dreiser, 12 April 1913, UPDC). She described the novel as the most "searching . . . portrayal of an unhappy sex relationship . . . in any literature" and credited it with "'laying bare the human heart' . . . with a kind of shameless primitive Biblical solemnity." The opinion of the handsome Miss Tatum, "a scholar who could quote Verlaine in French, knew all the great novels (putting his own near the top)," carried weight with Dreiser (Swanberg 162). Decima Vivian, too, must have sounded convincing when she commented to Dreiser that in "The Genius," by his focus on "the usual, the typical" in American life, he might fulfill a prophecy attributed to Arnold Bennett that Dreiser would write the great American novel.[9]
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