“The Financier” starts Frank Cowperwood on his adventurous career. He wants to get rich quick and by any means. He steals the public chest of his native city and, in doing so, comments Dreiser, he shows himself neither better nor worse than the majority of his political and financial opponents. Unfortunately for him, he is caught with his hand in the bag, and sentenced to four years in jail. The energy of the man shows itself in the course of this episode. Cowperwood’s stoicism is worthy of a better cause, and it is, in his case, not the product of an excess, but of an entire lack of conscience. He personifies the triumph of bio-chemistry. We are given to understand that his misfortunes are the natural lot of all those who revolt against what Nietzsche called the ethics of the herd. Of course, when society jailed Cowperwood it acted for its best interests. To cage a tiger is always moral. Prisons have been providentially designed to give Cowperwood and his like time to think. He is not at all surprised to find himself behind the bars. The only thing which worries him is to know how he can get out. He has lost everything in the fray, but he stands invincible on the ruins of his own universe, ready to begin all over again without any redemption or expiation, and certainly without any conversion. In fact, “The Financier” is only the first volume of an unfinished trilogy, and several hundred pages in volume number two will hardly suffice Dreiser to complete the story of his rascalities. “The Financier” is a powerful book. Dreiser gave free rein in it to his passion for collecting statistics, and for making an impression on the reader by arranging a mosaic of characteristic odds and ends. He piles up evidence as a reporter or a coroner, without wanting to enliven the testimony by any flare of wit or emotion. As a writer, he abjured all rhetoric. If most of the time his novels prove indigestible, it is due to the fact that he never inserts anything in them which can divert one from facts. He writes in a lump, so to speak. He serves us a heavy meal without any spices or gravy. His style is entirely amorphous. It is ponderous and, one might say, elephantine. See how Zola succeeded in putting zest and interest into his dreariest and most objective narratives; how Flaubert and Maupassant added the human and artistic touch even to their most matter-of-fact cartoons. EXACTITUDE! EXACTITUDE! THE FACTS! THE FACTS! HOW? WHY? WHEN? Has not Dreiser as an artist been misled by those mechanical suggestions?