Truisms, aren’t these? I wish Dreiser, “the greatest,” and his hailers would ponder over them before they apply the term art to 736 pages devoted to rumination of what Ellis calls “marginal elements” of life. And what a life! In what respect does the life of Witla, the “genius,” deserve so much elaboration and painstaking analysis? The hero’s only distinction is his sexual looseness. But he is not a Sanin who gratifies his animalistic instincts with contempt for motivation or justification. Witla, and Dreiser, and Scavenger, are reformed Puritans. When Witla falls in “love” with the round arm of a laundress, or with the golden hair of a country girl, or with the black eyes of an art-model, or with the perfect form of a gambler’s wife, or with the innocence of a mama’s girl; when in each case the lover swears and damns and lyricizes in bad English and strives to win and possess the object d’art, Mr. Dreiser appears from behind the sinner, pats him on the shoulder, and flings defiantly into the faces of the terrified philistines: “Witla is all-right. He is an artist. He loves beautiful things. See, God damn you?!” Is he? Throughout the long book we are told time and again that he is an _artist_. Unless we take the author’s word for it we are inclined to doubt it very much. True, an artist loves beauty; but does he necessarily desire to possess the object of his admiration? Does not the contemplation of a beautiful arm or sunset or flower or vase or rug bring the artist complete satisfaction and possession? I do not condemn Witla; although I dislike him, for he is a loud mediocrity. There is a Witla in every one of us men; but we take our Witla as our animalistic self, not as the artistic. Ah, dear Scavenger, I do love rugs. But there are rugs and rugs. The Scavenger’s Swan Song What a remarkable fellow my friend the Incurable is! I talk to him about rugs, quite casually, as we wait for a car, and what does this devil of a psychologist do but walk deep into my soul on one of them. I read him a Huneker article on Huysmans which he remarks is excellent at the time, only to find (almost too late) that I should have read Havelock Ellis.... How I envy him this distinction of having read Havelock Ellis instead of James Huneker, of being subtle enough to prefer the deep, metaphysical didactics concerning Life (with a capital L, Miss Editor) to the contemplation of that most seductive of literary signposts—Huneker. But it is so foolish to quibble about books.... If I had anything else to do I wouldn’t read them....