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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 25, 1929)
10 THE BATTALION The Library Page S. C. GIESEY Editor R. L. HERBERT Asso. Editor P. A. RODGERS Asso. Editor (Staff not yet completed). This page is intended to serve as a means of expression for things literary produced by the students of this college. Anyone wishing to con tribute to the column should see one of the staff, or write the editor at box 475 S. E. TWELVE MEN By Theodore Dreiser Reviewed by R. L. Herbert Theodore Dreiser has been the ob ject of probably more uncomplimen- tiil heard. Among these are “On The Banks Of The Wabash” and ‘Just Tell Them That You Saw Me,” both of which are still in use in programs where old favorites are suitable. In picturing Dresser, Dreiser pre sents a good picture of the typical successful song-writer and actor of a few years ago, the happy-go-lucky type of fellow who spends and lends while he has the money and who is ;he center of admiration while at the peak of success, but who dies in want and without friends after his downfall. “In his day he had been by turn a novitiate in a Western Seminary which trained aspirants for the Catholic priesthood; a singer and entertainer wnth a perambulating cure-all troupe or wagon (“Hamlin’s Wizard Oil”) traveling through Ohio, ndiana and Illinois; both end and middle-man with two or three dif ferent minstrel comnanies of repute; the editor or originator of a “funny column” in a Western small city paper; the author of the songs men tioned and a hundred others; a black face monologue artist; a white-face ditto; a comic lead; co-star and star in melodramas. “There is little won der that Dreiser picked him as one of the characters of his book.” “Culhane, the solid man” is the title of a sketch equally as good as that of Dresser. Picture an Irish prize-fighter who has come up from the ranks by virtue of the money he earned in the ring to the owner ship of a sanatorium where physical wrecks of the more intellectual walks of life come to repair ill-used and wornout bodies. Realizing that he can never be the social equal of these men, he takes particular delight in showing them their weaknesses and in ridiculing them, dominating them in mind and body and subjecting them to torture, mental and physi cal, for a period of six weeks. Pic ture a man who can do this and get paid six hundred dollars for doing it, and you have pictured Culhane. To me Culhane is one of the most admirable characters in the book, not because of any characteristic or because of any virtue the moralists would admire, but because he takes the very men, the preachers, teach ers, lawyers, doctors, etc., who are supposed to be trying to reform him and others in his class, and domi nates them in every way possible. Theoretically he is to them a “brand to be snatched from the burning,” yet they are awed by his very pres ence and their intellect gains them nothing in face of his superior will. It is of sketches of this type that Twelve Men is composed, sketches of (Continued on Page 12) tary and unflattering comments than any contemporary writer with the possible exceptions of H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis, both of whom have accomplished more than Dreiser ! and have therefore drawn a greater | amount of adverse criticism from the critics; literary and pseudo-lit erary. “Dreiser is a man with a bad taste in his mouth and a style of bad grammar in which to express it,” an early English instructor of mine once said. Later he added, “Too much of Dreiser will make you sick. Only vomitting will bring relief.” But if this is Dreiser, and I hearti ly agreed when I had braved the in troductory pages of his voluminous American Tragedy, we have a slight ly different Dreiser in Twelve Men. The absence of radicalism and other Dreiserian characteristics gave me one of the greatest surprises I have experienced in recent reading. The bad taste is, for the most part, miss ing but the bad grammar is always present. Twelve Men is a book of sketches, presenting twelve men whom, with possibly one or two exceptions, we would all delight in knowing. Cer tainly, if they are in real life as Dreiser pictures them in his book, they would be interesting and valua ble acquaintances for anyone. Each character in the book is evi dently a man whom Dreiser has known during his life, and at least the majority of them are actual per sons; men who, because of some unique characteristic, attracted Dreis er’s attention. Each of them is a man who is prompted by the Dreis erian theory, “Do whatever instinct and desire prompt.” It is men of this type who inter est Dreiser, and from reading the sketches one would come to the con clusion that it is only men of this type who are worthwhile. Dreiser is a confirmed and confessed enemy of conventions, and evidently an advo cate of Butler’s theory that the only way to live is to enjoy life. Butler and Dreiser could probably have been friends had they lived at the same time and in the same country, al though Butler would have been amused and often irritated at many of Dreiser’s sophomeric ideas and whims. Probably the best of the sketches in the book is that of his brother, Paul Dresser, song-writer and com poser a number of yeai’s ago. Dress er was the author of a number of songs which were popular a few years ago and some of which are • • • Your Personal Pen and nohody’s else but! You choose the point that writes like you. Just the stroke—just the smoothness—just the response that fits your chirographic ideas. You choose the holder that you prefer. Just the shape—just the color—just the size—just the style—just the price that suits you. 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