The Genius

In November of 1911 Theodore Dreiser sailed for Europe with his English publisher Grant Richards. Dreiser would spend almost six months touring England, with side trips to Florence and Berlin. He returned on 11 April 1912 on the liner Kroonland, having passed up the opportunity to sail on the maiden voyage of the Titanic two days earlier for lack of funds. Having come that close to disaster he would have to continue writing in America to produce the books whose advances had funded his trip abroad. One of those books was his fifth novel, The "Genius", published in 1915.

The "Genius" is a novel dealing with the American Artist and his search for a place in American life. The three sections of the novel narrate the story of an artist who show more begins his life in a small Midwestern town and eventually reaches the heights of magazine publishing in New York City. The first part, "Youth", contains some of Dreiser's best writing and chronicles the youth of Eugene Witla growing up in a middle-class family in Illinois. He moves to Chicago where he becomes a newspaper illustrator and studies evenings at the Art Institute. His life there includes a variety of jobs and the beginnings of his relationships with women that will become an important theme in the book. He returns home and meets a young girl from Wisconsin, Angela Blue, who will he will eventually marry; but only after having spent time as an illustrator in New York. Developing his career there he becomes an artist with potential for major success. The first part of the novel concludes with his return to Wisconsin as he is about to marry Angela, a farm girl who is older and much more conservative than Eugene, the eager independent artist. Their differences are never reconciled over the course of a marriage that covers most of the succeeding two sections of the novel. "Youth" is by far the most successful part of the novel as the remaining five hundred-plus pages of parts two and three become somewhat repetitive with Eugene's multiple affairs with women as background to his rise as a painter and ensuing nervous breakdown. His own destructive impulses impair his career and wound his marriage. Some have suggested that Dreiser's attempts to adapt the story too closely to his own biography may account for some of the problems of these sections. Eugene's life seems to drift. At his peak his genius for painting seemed sui generis and he was becoming recognized in artistic circles, but he made questionable decisions about the direction of his life that took him away from pure art and into the publishing business and investments where, after some apparent success, he ultimately failed.

The epic scope and strength of the novel are marred by unrealistic passages and melodramatic moments and ultimately a failure of the novelist to present a coherent direction for Eugene's life. Dreiser's power as a story-teller holds the novel together in spite of these issues, but he is not able to succeed in bringing it to the level of his earlier successes in Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, and The Financier. Dreiser's main critical champion, H. L. Mencken, praised its epic panorama while recognizing the "rambling, formless, and chaotic" nature of much of the novel. Other literary critics were less kind. As a fan of Dreiser's work for many years I recognize the flaws but would nonetheless recommend this novel to any who have first enjoyed the best of his novelistic efforts. The greatness within The "Genius" is easier to perceive with that reading as your background. show less

300 pages into this 750 page tome, and I've suddenly decided I've had enough. I loved sister Carrie and an American tragedy, but this book just seemed to repeat itself over and over again. this dude is obsessed with young, pretty women, and repeatedly becomes enraptured with them. the first 300 pages show little character or plot development. they were good enough, but I had no desire to read on.

300 pages into this 750 page tome, and I've suddenly decided I've had enough. I loved sister Carrie and an American tragedy, but this book just seemed to repeat itself over and over again. this dude is obsessed with young, pretty women, and repeatedly becomes enraptured with them. the first 300 pages show little character or plot development. they were good enough, but I had no desire to read on.

300 pages into this 750 page tome, and I've suddenly decided I've had enough. I loved sister Carrie and an American tragedy, but this book just seemed to repeat itself over and over again. this dude is obsessed with young, pretty women, and repeatedly becomes enraptured with them. the first 300 pages show little character or plot development. they were good enough, but I had no desire to read on.

300 pages into this 750 page tome, and I've suddenly decided I've had enough. I loved sister Carrie and an American tragedy, but this book just seemed to repeat itself over and over again. this dude is obsessed with young, pretty women, and repeatedly becomes enraptured with them. the first 300 pages show little character or plot development. they were good enough, but I had no desire to read on.

I don't know what to think, the book is really good. Eugene the Genius. Lots of talent lots of lust for beauty. Angel-face stayed till the end, cajoling, threatening, pleading. Well, Angela Won.

Amazon: This was Theodore Dreiser's favorite of his own novels - and his most autobiographical. Although Eugene Witla, the main character, is a painter, Dreiser modeled him so closely after himself that some critics have used incidents from the book as evidence for things in his own life. Much of the novel is an examination and criticism of the sexual mores of the time, which Dreiser felt restrictive and counter-productive.
In the initial section of the novel, after moving to Chicago to pursue a career as an artist, Witla meets Angela Blue; after enjoying much of what the city has to offer (including other woman), Angela and Witla marry.
The next part of the book is concerned mainly with Witla trying to make it as a struggling artist. show more Like Dreiser himself, Witla works for a while as a manual laborer and then as an illustrator in an advertising agency, where he shows some success.
But Witla can't control his restless sexual impulses and much of the last section of the novel concerns his affair with the very young Suzanne Dale, who is too immature and controlled by her mother to return Witla's affections. Angela also becomes pregnant at this time; after Suzanne is dragged off to Europe by her mother, thus ending anything that existed between her daughter and Witla, Angela delivers a baby girl but dies in the process. The book ends with an apparently wiser Witla caring for his daughter, also named Angela. show less