Mutabile Semper

A GALLERY OF WOMEN--Theodore Dreiser--Liveright ($5).

This is no rogues' gallery, though with another guide it might have seemed so. Here are the case histories of 15 women whom Author Theodore Dreiser has known, pondered over and laboriously written about. Conscientious and truthful according to his lights, Author Dreiser tries to give a complete report; in the oblique way in which such attempts often work out, he succeeds in showing himself as one of the most sympathetic of inquiring reporters.

The Matter. Reina was a Hollywood cocotte, "a parasite by nature." She got a good man, but couldn't keep him. Olive, a Baptist from Salt Lake City, had an itch for men of culture. She died in Manhattan, after marrying one of many. Ellen wanted to be an artist. She found her opposite number in Paris, but he left her; then, she tried to make second bests do. Lucia was born on the Riviera, but she went to Paris to learn about love. When she was tired of being an old man's darling, she tried a young Canadian, but his respectable family frightened her away again. Most people thought Giff was crazy; her relatives had her locked up, but she got out and told fortunes for a living. One night fumes from the oil stove asphyxiated her.

Ernita, a clear-eyed Texan, went Bolshevik during the War, emigrated to Russia, where Communists disappointed her, but Communism kept her faith. "A girl of the Diana type," Albertine was Jersey City bred, but attained Park Avenue because her husband was a clever window dresser. Albertine took lovers, but was circumspect. Regina had a good job as superintendent of a Washington hospital: she got the morphine habit. No one knew how or where she died. Rella was a farmer's daughter, and just the right age. When her literary uncle-by-marriage came along, she fell in love with him, but his wife got him away in time. A Manhattan actress, Ernestine took life a little too fast. When she thought she had had enough, she turned on the gas. Rona was making a good thing out of a stenographic agency, but left it for a temperamental writer. When he finally deserted her, she started another agency. Ida was a rawboned Middle-western farmer's daughter, a hard worker. She married a mean man. When childbirth killed her he wrote a poem to her memory, saying what a good husband he had been. Emanuela was beautiful, but she was afraid of love. Against vigorous opposition, she remained a virgin. Esther married a poetaster: starvation and cold gave her tuberculosis. Bridget was a hellion of an old charwoman in downtown Manhattan. Hers was a rough tongue and none too savory a reputation, but she had courage.

The Manner. Author Dreiser has no sense of style, would be hard to imitate. His writing is ponderous, jumbled, awkward. This is typical: "Indeed, the life and light that was in her, if life and light it was, was a wholly quaint and laura-jean-shian thing, a smattering or perhaps, better yet, compote of hearsay culture as well as utility . . . plus gentility that was innate but colored by spindrift and spume concerning how ladies and gentlemen in some fabulous land of gentility (England principally, I believe; the old South next) conducted themselves."

Most newspaper stories are written in better English. Yet in spite of his formless, floundering style, Author Dreiser has won recognition as one of the most important U. S. writers. He is so much in earnest such a painstaking student of his fellows, that his stories, weak at almost any given point, have a cumulative strength.

The Author. Theodore Dreiser's real name is Dresser. (His songwriting brother Paul, author of "The Wabash Blues," still calls himself Dresser.) Born in Indiana in 1871, he wrote for newspapers (Chicago Globe}, was traveling correspondent for St. Louis Globe-Democrat, edited Butterick Publications (Delineator, Designer, New Idea). Fat-cheeked, loose-lipped, furrowed of brow, Author Dreiser looks like what he is: a puzzled brooder over the tragic inconsistencies of life. Other books: The "Genius," Chains, Jennie Gerhardt, Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy.

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