Moers on Dreiser

By Tracy

Ellen Moers in 1970 describes Dreiser as

a writer of massive stature, fierce, unpredictable, eccentric, with the disagreeable habits that have always afflicted major novelists... He was a great novelist, perhaps the greatest of the Americans, and left a reputation for not knowing how to use words... Unusually cerebral in his approach to fiction, he spent most of his time informing himself about everything that science and philosophy could teach the novelist about the act and the will; but he left a reputation for being stupid, unlettered, a 'primitive'.

Of course he's not stupid or any of that -- and Moers is on his side, having "discovered" his fiction "with astonishment" not long before she began writing her very solid book, Two Dreisers, from which this description is taken.

It's the self-taught, wide-ranging aspect of Dreiser I most admire: there are some great advantages to a writer in not being thoroughly steeped in institutional education. Dreiser had limited schooling and in his early days it was in a German-language Catholic school (he had the strange circumstances of being born into mixed Catholic and Mennonite parentage); later he did one year of college paid for by one of his teachers. The rest, he did himself, through library access and building up his own collection of books. You can read about his personal library -- and check out a list of titles -- here.

Re-reading Dreiser

By Tracy

I'm most of the way through a re-read of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (see earlier post) and have to say that it benefits from the better format of the Library of America edition -- good font, good layout and spacing, restful shade of paper... a much less arduous read than the copy I read earlier, underlining for me how much those physical factors can affect my response to a book.

Dreiser's style hasn't changed, objectively, yet I like it better. This is partly a case of getting used to it, too -- the typos or possibly misspelled words (even in this better edition), the odd word-choice on occasion -- and the incessant use of "And... And" with present participles -- are sometimes beyond belief.

The critic Lee Clark Mitchell, back in 1985, actually saw that last stylistic feature as a positive, or at least as belonging in a pattern of repetition counted as part of Dreiser's art:

"Just as characters, events and descriptions overlap, so the prose itself divides and doubles, saved from utter fragmentation by participial clauses and frequent conjunctions that link phrases into parallel structure..."

[Novel: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 19, no.1]

In any case, whether intrinsically flawed or following a pattern many of us have failed to recognise and appreciate, Dreiser's style bothers me much less than it did on first reading, and though undeniably a "big book" (934 pages in this edition), it doesn't seem to drag this time around.

Besides, even if you don't like his style, the vision and expansive grasp of the novel have plenty to offer. Alfred Kazin once wrote:

"With his proverbial slovenliness, the barbarisms and incongruities whose notoriety has preceded him into history, the bad grammar, the breathless and painful clutching at words... he has seemed the unique example of a writer who remains great malgré lui. It is by now an established part of our folklore that Theodore Dreiser lacks everything except genius."

Refusal, restoration and reading

This is a posting from both of us. It's been a really difficult few weeks with illness in the house, but we're all emerging from that now.

John had to cancel a couple of visits east to deliver papers, though he was lucky enough to have friends on the other side of the country willing to act as his proxy.

One of John's papers, delivered by David Brooks at the "Trace" poetry conference at Monash University, was entitled "Half-masts", and was another in his series of activist poetics essays.

These essays might be gathered together under the rubric of a "poetics of refusal". Both of us have decided that it's essential to cut back on our plane travel, and John was in fact supposed to make this journey by Indian-Pacific (train). He still has the tickets and will use them when he has to be in Adelaide next month. It's still using the world's resources, but reducing the amount we fly is a small step. John in particular flies too much and feels the overwhelming need to lessen and eventually stop this.

Interestingly, he's just having an email conversation with someone who took part in the conference, about the notion of complicity and distancing one's "self" or "subjectivity" in discussing these matters. Anyway, he might examine this at length in a later blog entry.

We are attempting to change our way of life by eventually going "off-grid" and powering our house with a complete solar (we hope) electricity system, and of course lessening our reliance on electricity anyway.

A composting toilet... And greywater recycling. Both are also on the cards, when we can. The time has come for us to make the step as a family... We are also looking to "restore" some damaged bush area, but more of that later.

When we were each single without children, it was easier for both of us to live without being so "plugged-in". The real challenge is to be able to do it as a family.

Weeks of flu were a bit of a challenge for our usually busy family too, but at least we could use some of the "inactive" time to catch up on reading.

John couldn't read at all for the first couple of weeks, but lately he's been reading

With Love and Fury: Selected Letters of Judith Wright

Patricia Avis's Virago title, Playing the Harlot (was never published in her lifetime, and its total flatness & lack of organisation show this, though it does have some moments)

The brilliant & inspiring Stendhal's Souvenirs d'Egotisme

He has also gone back to reading Edith Södergran's Complete Poems.

Tracy's just finished Graham Kershaw's The Home Crowd, his first novel (already read his second, Dovetail Road). In fact the main character of the second novel appears fleetingly and tangentially in the first, making me (Tracy) wonder if the author planned him already as a character at that early stage (kind of the way Balzac has people reappearing across his Comédie humaine) or if it was a later idea... I liked The Home Crowd very much: it's strong on mood and contemplation, and (like Dovetail Road, though with a completely different setting) very evocative of place and the people that spring from place.

Also partway through Amélie Nothomb's Robert des noms propres -- she irritates and fascinates in almost equal measure. As is evidenced by the fact that I put it down a while ago and haven't gone back to it, though I know I will.

And Camus's La Peste. Another universe entirely.