University of Virginia Library

Sequential Revision of the Typescript

Tracing the chronology of revision, one notes that Dreiser's editing appears not only in the holograph, but also on the typescript altered for publication of the first edition of The "Genius" (Box 164, formerly Boxes 86a and 86b). In addition to Dreiser's, however, other revisory hands can be identified on this typescript, notably those of Frederic Chapman, English reader for and confidential adviser to John Lane, the British publisher, and Floyd Dell, formerly an editor of the "Friday Literary Review" of the Chicago Evening Post and then an editor of The Masses. Since this typescript lacks Chapters 1 through 31, comparison of the text of those chapters in the holograph and in the other two typescripts with that of the galleys of The "Genius", which reproduce the revised typescript of Box 164 (86a and 86b), enables one to infer the general pattern of changes made, though not, in the absence of Chapters 1 through 31, the specific roles of the revisors of those chapters. The rest of the revised typescript, on the other hand, from Chapter 32 through "L'Envoi," permits one to eavesdrop on a group effort in revision. To one familiar with his handwriting, Dreiser's alterations, made mainly in black or blue pencil and blue crayon, are most easily identifiable, but least extensive. Chapman's alterations, in small clear letters, often singly inscribed, are uniformly in red ink. The content of some of Chapman's comments makes them unmistakably his: "This side at any rate pastels are not done on canvas" (381); "The sentence in brackets is incomprehensible, to an Englishman at any rate" (675); "Simile meaningless to an English ear" (744). Dell's alterations, made in separate instances in green ink, black pencil, and typewriting, can be identified (as can Chapman's) by reference to the handwriting in his letters to Dreiser.[37]

A great deal has been said about Dreiser's method of revising his work. But the services of editors who excised thousands of words to improve the novel is a point usually stressed, sometimes with the claim that Dreiser restored most of the deletions. Collation of the revised typescript with the galleys and with the published text of The "Genius" shows that Dreiser accepted the majority of cuts recommended by Chapman and by Dell. "Being a prolific and voluminous writer with a tendency to repetition," remarked Helen Dreiser, "Dreiser was convinced of the need for cutting, and although he himself had had wide experience as an editor, he often said a fresh eye . . . was . . . helpful to him."[38] But, she added, Dreiser was not quick to make or accept changes in his style or structure.

Dreiser's own editing of the "Revised Typescript [Incomplete]," most of it carried out from fall into winter in 1914, is more abundant than his manuscript editing and has greater effect on theme and structure.[39] His typescript revisions most notably include a large number of additions and deletions of words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs; numerous substitutions of words and phrases; frequent combination or restructuring or division of paragraphs (sometimes restoring them to their shape in the holograph); and, most important, such rewriting as transformed the original happy ending into Witla's grim experience of losing Suzanne and being at last, not converted to idealism, but "only hardened intellectually and emotionally—tempered for life and work" (734). When textural, these alterations seem attempts to conserve words and details, to supply more accurate diction, and to make blocks of sentences coincide with blocks of meaning, without modifying the overall design of the novel. When architectonic, however, as in the reshaped ending, they represent Dreiser's effort to bring fictional experience into closer relationship with life as he understood it.

Dreiser's revisions of the title occurred after those of the typescript. He originally spelled the title without quotation marks, as in the holograph and the "First Typed Copy" of 1914. He used no quotation marks in the title until around 30 November 1914, when he enclosed both words of the title in a pair of double quotation marks.[40] The final version of the title he adopted by 4 August 1915, when he wrote on the verso of page 576 of what he inscribed as "Revised Typewritten Copy from which 1st Edition was printed":

"Received, J. J. Little & Ives Co., Aug. 4 12:55 PM 1915" (Box 164, formerly 86b). The "Genius" was published on 1 October 1915.[41]

Instances in the revised typescript of Dreiser's effort to employ more precise diction are found, for example, in his penciling in "canvas" for "drawing" and "painting" for "pastel" (as Chapman advised).[42] More often, Dreiser added to the text some corroborative action or illumination of motive: renewed push in Angela's drive to improve her husband's conduct; presentation of White's open-armed reception of Witla's disaffected staff members and his hostile attitude concerning Witla's position in the United Magazine Corporation; Witla's remark to Suzanne that her love has made him "the artist again," but her failure to understand his meaning.[43] After the affair with Suzanne is under way, Dreiser added a sentence to clarify Witla's decision not to desert Angela financially, but to live with her no longer. After two chapters calling for little revision—Chapter 84 (Book 3, Chapter 9), in which Angela discovers Suzanne in Witla's arms in the Witla apartment, and Chapter 85 (Book 9, Chapter 10), the resulting verbal and emotional tug of war between Witla and Angela—Dreiser added a sizeable handwritten passage at the beginning of Chapter 86 (3, 11). The insertion indicates that by dawn of the morning following Angela's discovery, none of the three is further along the way toward sorting thoughts, that each dimly anticipates tragedy looming ahead. It also probes the attitude of each: Witla's terror lest Suzanne undergo a change of heart; Suzanne's easier cast of mind, believing that such situations ameliorate of their own accord if one lets them and that, "if it must be," she can live without Witla; Angela's sense of shock and despair. In Witla's misapprehension, upon finding Suzanne in her coat, that "she had been intending to slip away without seeing him any more," Dreiser reveals how little Witla knew Suzanne. In other additions, Dreiser emphasizes Witla's intimation of the folly and danger of his marital infidelity and elucidates Witla's double financial jeopardy in the set-back to his real estate investment. He added vivid detail to the scenes of Angela's Caesarean section as well as a note of relief in the sentence, "But the child was crying too, healthily." Each addition seems to carry its charge of meaning and feeling, each designed to prepare the reader for the newly darkened ending of the story.

On the other hand, Dreiser made numerous deletions from the typescript.[44] But more evident than concern about economy of words is attention to credibility, as in Dreiser's removal of several sentences indicating the respect in which celebrated persons held Witla's early art work. He crossed out the names of Howells, Twain, William James, and others. Again, he

excised such authorial comment as "Pages and pages . . . might be devoted to just such tirades as these," to begin a chapter instead in medias res: "For hours that night . . . the storm continued." He rejected comment explaining once again the breakup of Witla and Angela's relationship: a retrospective view, for example, of how Witla had learned through his sister's accidental discovery that Angela is older than he, of Angela's pleasing traits but failure finally to harmonize with Witla's moods and feelings, of Witla's past amours and weakness for girls of eighteen, and of Angela's mistaken belief that Witla would feel irrevocably tied by the marriage vow. The list could be extended.

Though in many instances the reshaping was minor, it was Dreiser's rewriting that made the most determinative impact on The "Genius".[45] He recast a paragraph, for example, describing Witla's reactions to London and to Paris by sharpening his sense of contrast between the cities. He rewrote a scene, making Witla weigh more cautiously the disquieting image of Suzanne in a photograph, a medium that Witla viewed as too often deceptive in capturing only a flattering surface. In Chapter 95—a scissors-and-paste chapter with a narrow majority of the copy in typescript, the rest in Dreiser's hand—he changed Witla's firm determination to regain Suzanne into a drifting and temporizing attitude about how to cope with obstacles to that goal. But his transformation of the novel's ending was the decisive alteration, rescuing the story from the experience of marital bliss for a man who had inexplicably converted from skepticism, antinomianism, and hedonism to belief in Christian Science and a style of behavior about which one can only guess. This major revision brought the final events and characterization into accord with the realistic perspective of the foregoing chapters and of Dreiser's theory of fiction. "I am for the type of fiction that confines its attempted interpretations to not only the possibilities but the probabilities," he explained in "The Scope of Fiction," "and I have no reading patience with anything that does not compel me by the charm of its verisimilitude."[46]

After Dreiser, the next major revisor of the typescript of The "Genius" was Frederic Chapman. Chapman wrote Dreiser on 26 May 1914 thanking him for "an advance copy of The Titan with such a flattering inscription" and asking to see copy of Dreiser's next book "before it goes to the printer" (UPDC). He added that he valued "getting the sense of a great personality" and "its environment" rather than "comparative trifles," but placed at Dreiser's disposal his extensive knowledge of "minutiae, little side things that tell in the matter of truth to period." On 8 July 1915, Chapman returned to Dreiser the first fifty chapters of the typescript of The "Genius" with his revisions, and on 15 July, Chapters 51 through 75, with the promise that the next mail would bring the remainder. "I have not altered . . . expressions put in the mouths of your characters," Chapman stated in the letter of 8 July (UPDC). "But when the text is purely narrative, . . . I have endeavoured to bring it more into accordance with traditional English with the fewest

possible changes." One of Chapman's duties for John Lane was to insure that English readers not suffer bemusement in encountering The "Genius". The text had to be so edited as to be intelligible to British as well as American readers. That achieved, the British publisher could print an overrun of sheets, publish the novel in the United States, and ship the overrun to England for binding and publication there.

Chapman's red-ink revisions appear on nearly every page of the typescript and include a multiplicity of spelling corrections, frequent substitutions of words and phrases, and deletions of sentences, paragraphs, and series of paragraphs. Having "corrected" a correctly spelled word on the typescript, he noted in the margin (499): "See what a pass your typist has brought me to!" A great number of passages in the script are enclosed in square brackets, "passages," wrote Chapman on 15 July, "that I suggest you should cut out altogether." Chapman wished that he could have marked additional passages for deletion,

Key objects of Chapman's pruning included Dreiser's authorial rumination and interpretation. He pared such passages so that in given instances characters' words and actions must speak for themselves. Sometimes Chapman merely subtracted a useless sentence like "A chronicle of Eugene's experiences here would make a book in itself, interesting and valuable, though they would have little place in this story" (553). Often, it seems, he was carrying out the aim stated in his letter: reducing Dreiser's "too elaborate" presentation of peripheral characters, as in a description of Loomis Cathcart (1084). "What's Hecuba to me?" Chapman jotted in the margin. Often, too, his suggested deletions involve development of main characters, as in the bracketing of a passage that portrays Angela's refusal to let Witla forget his infidelities (809). Deletion of the latter point seems aimed at an Angela with whom the reader can more readily sympathize and, by the same token, deprives Witla of one of the irritants that underlay his growing resentment at her need to control him. A further consequence is that Witla's words to Angela upon learning of her pregnancy seem doubly cruel. In a few instances, Chapman's recommended cut was dictated by his sense of propriety: "Cut this: It would offend thousands," he commented in the margin next to a description of "the great wooden cross" with "the bleeding Christ" hanging in Witla's studio (811). But Dreiser retained this object d'art. Wherever feasible, Chapman "eliminated the word 'sex', with which your story is positively peppered." In sum, Chapman's deletions totaled slightly more than one third of the alleged 50,000 words.[47]

Chapman's wide vocabulary was of special service in revision.[48] He corrected, for example, the malapropos "retroactive" to "retrogressive." He substituted "basis of suspicion" for "basis of proof," "on probation" for "probationally," and hundreds more. As with the word "sex," he sought to reduce the number of occurrences of the words "conservative" and "conservatism," replacing them with "quiet," "prudent," "cautious," and other equivalents. He pressed for consistency: M. or Mr. Charles. He rectified Dreiser's attempt at quoting Hamlet and his misattribution to Keats of a line of Longfellow's. He futilely offered the emendation Anadyomene, a title for Venus, for Dreiser's fabricated Dianeme, which found its way into the published text. He called for the active voice of the verb rather than the passive. Of Dreiser's "Rossetti Gallery" and reference to Rossetti's portraits of Elizabeth Siddal, he cautioned: "There is not and never has been such a place, or even a private collection that could be so styled. And Rossetti's portraits and studies of Elizabeth Siddal numbered nearer the hundred than the score."

In addition, Chapman recast passages in the typescript.[49] A single example must serve to represent several instances. Dreiser's "For one thing Mrs. Hibberdell had been more and more impressed with the fact that Carlotta was not only interested or content to stay all summer but once having come that she was fairly determined to remain" became ". . . the fact that Carlotta was not merely content to stay but once having come she was fairly determined to remain." By these and other alterations, Chapman sometimes supplied a smoother texture to Dreiser's prose. In the letter of 8 July, Chapman acknowledged that as John Lane's reader this was his role. Chapman's massive cutting of passages of authorial comment and explanation as well as of some facets of character depiction also made a contribution to the final shape of the novel. Chapman appreciated the validity of Dreiser's need to document event and character with a full measure of supporting details. He succeeded in understanding Dreiser's concern to present clearly even the most subsidiary characters, but urged greater selectivity. Following publication of The "Genius", he paid Dreiser the compliment, "You could teach most of your contemporaries to observe, to co-ordinate, and to deduce" (1 March 1916, UPDC).

The next revisor was Floyd Dell, but only after he had undergone a change of heart regarding The "Genius". Having had access to the 1911 typescript of the novel subsequently lost in the mail, Dell asserted early in 1913 that Dreiser had "written a very bad book" (undated, UPDC). He at that time admitted, however, that his opinion "was formed upon only part of the book," which he had not had the "chance to finish," and that his estimate might change after a complete reading. But in 1913, this was Dell's judgment:

Still, Dell did not doubt that Dreiser had "a story to tell . . . which would move me." Dell, who in the fall of 1913 had moved to Greenwich Village, had by then "warmed up to the story."[50] When Chapman had returned the full typescript to Dreiser in July of 1915, Dell next set to work to "turn it into a fine thing."

Dell embroidered the facts, however, when he later wrote about his role in editing The "Genius", for which Dreiser had "hired" him:

Dell's principal contribution, it is true, consisted in cutting and reshaping passages with the aim of giving the story, written by Dreiser in a spontaneous flow, more exact meaning and more graceful form. Dell seconded most of Chapman's suggested deletions, sometimes adding a paragraph for removal, but here and there Dell retrieved one of Chapman's bracketed passages. Dell's editing for economy occurs on the majority of pages of the typescript. For example, he revised the following: to This instance can serve to represent many.

A rewritten passage contrasting Witla's and Angela's outlooks appears in Dell's handwriting (420 and 428-430). Following Chapman's suggestion at the beginning of Chapter 37, Dell excised four paragraphs. The first consists in an explanation that human society, having left behind the instinctual "morality" of beasts, has entered upon a path of sexual indulgence while opposing any open discussion of sex. In the second, faced with contrasting views of matrimony—from sexual athleticism to the Christian Science emphasis on spirit, Witla estimates that sexual license is within the limits of his strength, in keeping with the principle of self-preservation. In the third,

Witla admits, however, that there is a case for chastity and for exclusively reproductive use of sex. In the fourth, observing that chastity is a cardinal point urged by great religious teachers and lust and adultery condemned as a root of sickness that besets body as well as soul, the fatalistic Witla can nonetheless see no possibility of his observing the injunction against license. In addition to the four paragraphs bracketed by Chapman, Dell cut out the fifth paragraph, which treats sustained intense sexual activity of Witla and his wife, a passage which Chapman had extensively revised and which Dreiser ultimately used elsewhere in the novel.

Taking exception to Chapman, Dell deleted the sentence "It would be useless to describe the details and difficulties of a persistent decline" (461) and restored the preceding five paragraphs, removed by Chapman, who relied on the sentence Dell deleted as a substitute for tracing Witla's decline. On more than one occasion Dell advised Dreiser on resolving questions noted by Chapman in the margins. Beside Chapman's "'It's all day with the Wickham Union': idiom that hardly explains itself" (689), Dell jotted, "'All day' was succeeded in US by 'good night!'—meaning done for, dismissed!" Beside Angela's "'I won't let you marry her'" (1106), Chapman had written, "But how could she? . . . or is 'marry' her euphemism for 'live together'?" Dell modified the line to read "'I won't let you have her.'" Beside "She could get no line on his temperament now" (1173), Chapman had noted, "Meaningless to an Englishman, and I can't hit on a substitute." Dell revised the line to "She could get no clue to his temperament now." To a great extent Dell's revisory role paralleled that of Chapman. But, whereas the latter concentrated on deleting what he judged ineffective passages and on substituting a more serviceable diction, Dell did not hesitate to alter structural elements. "When at one spot," Dell recalled, "I complained that a short passage was needed for structural reasons, [Dreiser] said with gigantic tolerance, 'Well, if you think it's needed, go ahead and put it in.' I was being paid, so I . . . put it in" (Homecoming 269). Since the bulk of Dell's deletions consisted of paragraphs already marked for removal by Chapman, their combined cutting included, by my extrapolation, little more than 20,000 words. The nature of Dell's and of Chapman's revisions and Dreiser's cooperation with each calls into question the claim that though Dreiser "often allowed others to edit the style of his books, he fought bitterly when their content was questioned."[51] As Helen Dreiser observed, Dreiser welcomed a fresh eye on work he had completed and, from wide experience as an editor, realized the value of reworking one's prose.

Though Mencken had offered suggestions that he believed might improve The "Genius", Dreiser had declined to accept them and inscribed the presentation copy, "Without change but with best wishes just the same."[52] In contrast, Dreiser abided by almost every cut suggested either by Chapman

or by Dell along with most of their other editing, as comparison of the revised typescript with the galleys makes clear.