New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1915-10-02
THE "GENIUS."
T7Ty 'GFSrrs" B5 Theodore Dreh''' i'm'' W
536 John Lane Company.

THY .'CFSrre" By Theodore Dresser i'n' W
736 John Lane COMPANY ,
Mr. Dresser takes his text from inc
marriage service: wilt thou love her'
comfort her. honor her, and keep her IN
sickness and in health; and forsaKing
all others keep thee only unto her so
long as We both shall liveF Inc
"oenius" makes the solemn promise ana
breaks II. not once, but habitually. lie
has temperament-th the artistic temper
ament but no character. no Will power
for good or evil. Beauty lures him, and
he follows bindly, cad and a bounder'
but never a cave man. In the SUI
preme moment, when ne should nave
dominated the situation and taken his
own ruthlessly, he temporizes, allows
himself TO be tricked, delayed, con
fused; and the protective instinct OF
organized society" defeats him. lie loses
ALI that he has insecurity made his
own by his unstable talents and hard
work and he loses the woman as wen.
This man, one supposes, Is meant oy
the author as the antithesis of his
Titan, the genius strong enough 70
challenge the moral law at all points
and defeat it. Hence the quotation
marks in the title.
This is prodigiously long novel -
over 700 closely printed pages. Mr..
Dresser is a master Of the ponderous
realism that piles fact upon fact, detail
upon detail, without ever losing con-
troll of the cumulative effect OF the
whole. He is n philosopher Of civil.
cation rather than Of life; the pheno-
mena, the symptoms, are more to HIM
than the causes, which he accepts, than
the verities, which ne leaves UNI
plumbed. Still, this genius" Of his.
without the training of home or
formal education, uncultured beneath
.he thin social veneer he acquires, un-
able TO think logically. his mind jun
Bile of unsystematic, fragmentary occa-
sional reading which leads him TO thlnk
that he thinks, gropes in his confused
way toward Christian Science. lie au-
thor leaves him subdued rather than re-
claimed by the price he has paid, the
suffering he has undergone and caused,
with a daughter who awakens in him a
deeper feeling.
Beneath all the inconsistencies Of such
a character there is an admirable con-
sistency of treatment. The man is
never in revolt against society; he
merely follows mis- own impulses, un-
able TO reason from cause TO conse-
auences. He has no theories of a
higher" moral law; he runs after
youth and beauty as puppy runs after
chickens. In the same uncalculating,
impulsive way he pursues material sue
cess in the business world and attains
il, TO see the results of all his weak
nesses converging in the great crash.
IL is his art, which has kept itself alive
with only intermittent nourishment
from him, that gives him, sobered and
Gained down by the storms of his early
years, his final chance of rehabilita-
ton.
Long as it is, the book is crowded.
There is constant change of scene
and interests. From the little Illinois
town of the "genius's" birth TO the art
school in Chicago and the life of its
students; thence to New York and the
struggle for a footing, with the youths
first glimpses of the citys artistic and
professional life, of keen. alert, cult
waited men and women. Then his prog
ress from an advertising agency to the
Offices of great Philadelphia publish
ing house, and back to New York again
as the editorial manager of an even
more ambitious venture-all this throbs
with the busy life of the day, and is
closely linked TO actual enterprises and
real leaders. There is more than a