Theodore Dreiser

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (1871-08-27 – 1945-12-28) was an American naturalist author known for dealing with the gritty reality of life.

Sourced

• Oh, the moon is fair tonight along the Wabash,
  From the fields there comes the breath of new-mown hay;
  Through the sycamores the candle lights are gleaming
  On the banks of the Wabash, far away.
  • On the Banks of the Wabash (1896), chorus
  • This song was written by Dreiser's brother Paul (known as Paul Dresser); but Dreiser later claimed that "I wrote the first verse and chorus" [A Hoosier Holiday (1916) ch. XLIII: "The Mystery of Coincidence"]

• Our civilization is still in a middle stage — scarcely beast in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason.
  • Sister Carrie (1900), ch. VIII

The Financier (1912)

• "The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions — none more so than the most capable."

• "A man, a real man, must never be an agent, a tool, or a gambler – acting for himself or for others – he must employ such. A real man – a financier – is never a tool. He uses tools. He creates. He leads."

• "Innate sensuousness rarely has any desire for accuracy, no desire for precise information. It basks in sunshine, bathes in color, dwells in a sense of the impressive and the gorgeous, and rests there. Accuracy is not necessary except in the case of aggressive, acquisitive natures, when it manifests itself in a desire to seize. True controlling sensuousness cannot be manifested in the most active dispositions, nor again in the most accurate."

• "Literature, outside of the masters, has given us but one idea of the mistress, the subtle, calculating siren who delights to prey on the souls of men. The journalism and the moral pamphleteering of the time seem to foster it with almost partisan zeal. It would seem that a censorship of life had been established by divinity, and the care of its execution given into the hands of the utterly conservative. Yet there is that other form of liaison which has nothing to do with conscious calculation. In the vast majority of cases it is without design or guile. The average woman, controlled by her affections and deeply in love, is no more capable than a child of anything save sacrificial thought – the desire to give; and so long as this state endures, she can only do this. She may change – Hell hath no fury, etc. – but the sacrificial, yielding, solicitous attitude is more often the outstanding characteristic of the mistress; and it is this very attitude in contradistinction to the grasping legality of established matrimony that has caused so many wounds in the defenses of the latter. The temperament of man, either male or female, cannot help falling down before and worshiping this non-seeking, sacrificial note. It approaches vast distinction in life. It appears to be related to that last word in art, that largeness of spirit which is the first characteristic of the great picture, the great building, the great sculpture, the great decoration – namely, a giving, freely and without stint, of itself, of beauty."

• "Few people have the sense of financial individuality strongly developed. They do not know what it means to be a controller of wealth, to have that which releases the sources of social action – its medium of exchange. They want money, but not for money’s sake. They want it for what it will buy in the way of simple comforts, whereas the financier wants it for what it will control for what it will represent in the way of dignity, force, power."

• "The Irish are a philosophic as well as a practical race. Their first and strongest impulse is to make the best of a bad situation – to put a better face on evil than it normally wears."

• "Parents are frequently inclined, because of a time-flattered sense of security, to take their children for granted. Nothing ever has happened, so nothing ever will happen. They see their children every day, and through the eyes of affection; and despite their natural charm and their own strong parental love, the children are apt to become not only commonplaces, but ineffably secure against evil. The astonishment of most parents at the sudden accidental revelation of evil in connection with any of their children is almost invariably pathetic. But it is possible. Very possible. Decidedly likely. Some, through lack of experience or understanding, or both, grow hard and bitter on the instant. They feel themselves astonishingly abased in the face of notable tenderness and sacrifice. Others collapse before the grave manifestation of the insecurity and uncertainty of life – the mystic chemistry of our being. Still others, taught roughly by life, or endowed with understanding or intuition, or both, see in this the latest manifestation of that incomprehensible chemistry which we call life and personality, and, knowing that it is quite vain to hope to gainsay it, save by greater subtlety, put the best face they can upon the matter and call a truce until they can think. We all know that life is unsolvable – we who think. The remainder, imagine a vain thing and are full of sound and fury signifying nothing."

• "The conventional mind is at best a petty piece of machinery. It is oyster-like in its functioning, or, perhaps better, clam-like. It has its little siphon of thought-processes forced up or down into the mighty ocean of fact and circumstance; but it uses so little, pumps so faintly, that the immediate contiguity of the vast mass is not disturbed. Nothing of the subtlety of life is perceived. Not least inkling of its storms or terrors is ever discovered except through accident."

Other

• I acknowledge the Furies. I believe in them. I have heard the disastrous beating of their wings.
  • "The First Voyage Over," The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (August 1913); later published in A Traveler at Forty (1913), ch. I: "Barfleur Takes Me in Hand"

• If I were personally to define religion, I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circumstance.
  • The Genius (1915) The University of Illinois Press, 2004, ISBN 0-252-03100-8, p. 734

• Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail.
  • "Life, Art and America," The Seven Arts (February 1917)

• Shakespeare, I come!
  • Intended last words, as told to H. L. Mencken. "When Dreiser wrote that he had already framed his last words — 'Shakespeare, I come!' — and asked Mencken what his would be, Mencken replied acidly, 'I regret that I have but one rectum to leave to my country.'" - William Manchester, Disturber of the Peace: H. L. Mencken (1951) University of Michigan Press, digitized 2007-01-28, pp. 109-110