Theodore Dreiser possesses none of the standard qualifications for the art of fiction writing. He is not imaginative but inventive; he is not clever but clear; he is not excited but calm. Whatever the flaws in his considerable body of work no fair-minded reader may say that it is made to catch popular applause. Its tremendous distinction is sincerity. Another characteristic which his novels exhibit is resolute purpose. Dreiser is aiming at something, and in _The Titan_, the second book in an unfinished trilogy, he takes a long if wobbly step toward it. Previously to the publishing of this volume he had not even hinted at what he intended to work out. One thing was certain: he was not a trifler; he was not trying to write best sellers; literary success was not in his mind. He had set out seriously and indefatigably to write, not so much what he felt and thought, as what he saw. Some day he would try to get at the realities that lay back of their representations. He would probably undertake to reveal the soul of the American nation. He would pass through the growth stages of a nation, and achieve some kind of spiritual national life. In the last two pages of _The Titan_ this guess at his purpose receives appreciable encouragement. Moreover, it is made evident for the first time, in these concluding paragraphs, that Dreiser's prosaic realism springs not only from a vague, deep idealism but a large, hidden spirituality. For at the core of him Dreiser is a profoundly religious person. Neither his style nor his stuff is far above the dead level of mediocrity; in fact, Dreiser's rhetoric is often inexcusably atrocious--intentionally crude, one is tempted to assert. Obviously he is not interested in style; he is conscious of something bigger than that revealing itself in a huge, ugly, unfinished moving picture--a net result symbolical of a young, raw, riotous, unsynthesized national life. One is therefore tempted to say that Dreiser, more than any other author, is the personification of America. He represents the composite personality of Uncle Sam.