The Genius

by Theodore Dreiser

Book Overview

Theodore Dreiser heavily invested himself in The Genius, an autobiographical novel first published in 1915. Thoroughly immersed in the turn-of-the-century art scene, The Genius explores the multiple... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452007534
• ISBN13: 9780452007536
• Release Date: November 1981
• Publisher: Plume Books
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 4.3" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

The adulterated desire of genius

The "Genius" is the most directly personal of Theodore Dreiser's novels. It is also his most shocking, on account of the sexual candor its audience will encounter. Its story traces the career of Eugene Witla, a talented young artist from a small Midwest town. Seeking fulfillment in art and life he takes his ambitions first to Chicago and later to New York. Eugene's artistic prowess undertakes different guises throughout his climb unto the financial world and the creative resources he aptly taps into while gaining professional stock in the world of advertising and mass-circulation magazines. He will also cavort about these cities with an erotic hunger and pecuniary ambition that speaks by means of an expression diffracted across the spectrum of varied hues. These are different manifestation of a single force that breeds desire within Eugene. A philosophical take as much as it is a psychological claim. The language Dreiser adopted in the writing of this novel is more vital and less stodgy than the more commonly read efforts Dreiser is renowned for such as Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy. These pages have a genius that is pandering to the commercial strain of worldly affairs, a theme rehashed in The Financer, but here treated with undiminished assertiveness and a joyous explosiveness rather than tragic adumbration, although one should never expect such aloofness and alienation to be omitted from any of Dreiser's writings. Dreiser insists that the artists in the new American landscape, the artist of unprivileged birth, the artist of a competitive genius that hungers for financial success in spite of claims to do otherwise is involved in a conflict that is best dramatized in this resounding narrative. Dreiser wrote that "it is difficult to indicate to those who have never come out of poverty into luxury or out of comparative uncouthness into refinement, the veil or spell which the latter comes eventually to cast over the inexperienced mind, coloring the world anew. Life is apparently striving, constantly, to perfect its illusion and to create spells. There are, as a matter of fact, nothing but these outside that ultimate substance or principle which underlies it all. To those who come out of harmony, harmony is a spell, and to those who have come out of poverty, luxury is a dream of delight." Furthermore, Eugene will swing between two diverging ideological themes within his love affairs, either as an investment of his intellectual and spiritual sensuality or as a delightful dividend of achievements in other fields. He becomes conscious that the purity is an ideal worth alluding to but hardly unadulterated by narcissistic interests. Eugene rhapsodies on the nature of desire and meticulously scrutinizes his motives, only to rationalize a pathos he is the product of, as much as its genius.

His most autobiographical novel - and his own favorite

This was Theodore Dreiser's favorite of his own novels - and his most autobiographical. Although Eugene Witla, the main character, is a painter, Dreiser modeled him so closely after himself that some critics have used incidents from the book as evidence for things in his own life. Much of the novel is an examination and criticism of the sexual mores of the time, which Dreiser felt restrictive and counter-productive. In the initial section of the novel, after moving to Chicago to pursue a career as an artist, Witla meets Angela Blue; after enjoying much of what the city has to offer (including other woman), Angela and Witla marry. The next part of the book is concerned mainly with Witla trying to make it as a struggling artist. Like Dreiser himself, Witla works for a while as a manual laborer and then as an illustrator in an advertising agency, where he shows some success. But Witla can't control his restless sexual impulses and much of the last section of the novel concerns his affair with the very young Suzanne Dale, who is too immature and controlled by her mother to return Witla's affections. Angela also becomes pregnant at this time; after Suzanne is dragged off to Europe by her mother, thus ending anything that existed between her daughter and Witla, Angela delivers a baby girl but dies in the process. The book ends with an apparently wiser Witla caring for his daughter, also named Angela. The last section is the least effective: what Witla could see in Suzanne Dale is hard to imagine. The early parts of the book are extremely well done, however. What distinguishes the book (and also got it banned) is Dreiser's unflinching portrayal of female sexual desire being as strong as the male's. In the midst of Witla's seduction of Angela, she is in a state of ecstasy even greater than Witla's: "She threw herself back in a transport of agony and delight. `Save me from myself,' she begs him, `I am no better than any other, but I have waited so long, so long!'" Like just about all of Dreiser's novels, it is too long and at times is a hodge-podge of ideas and sensations, but it's an honest book and reveals its purposes realistically, one adult to another.

Semi-autobiographical Dreiser Novel

I sought this novel to supplement the memoirs "Dawn" and "Newspaper Days" as a way to gain additional insight into Theodore Dreiser's intriguing personality. I was not disappointed. The book provides information about Dreiser's sexual appetite, motivations, and philosophy. It also is an engaging read in the way that "Sister Carrie" and "Jennie Gerhart" are. Sure, Dreiser can go on in detail in ways that an editor could have made more succinct, and his sentence structure could become byzantine or odd. But the plot is well structured and the sense of impending doom that crops up is mercifully relented so that the novel does not become as squirm-inducing as "An Amercian Tragedy." The reader's sympathy is evenly divided among the principles and the events are seen as fate intertwining with the forces and choices of the personalities. Dreiser even more than Sinclair Lewis is my favorite depictor of U.S. life early in the 20th century.

Fighting Against the Fascist Strictures of Society !

Dreiser is the second author recommended by H.L. Mencken I have discovered. In Carl Bode's Mencken biography, he describes the libertarian critic's affinity for authors of the same ilk. "The Genius" describes an individualist who exists like many of us creative types, sometimes successful but unwilling to leave our wonderful, interesting existence. Much like Axel Heyst in Joseph Conrad's "Victory," the artist in "The Genius" is a great guy, a wonderful, creative guy. But as happens to the Greek heros their hubris leads to the inevitable downfall. You feel sorry for the main characters in both novels, but you feel fulfilled by them as well, just as free-thinking souls become better humans after reading Mencken...