Evening star., 1923-09-04
NEW BOOKS
. AT RANDOM

| THE "GEyIUS." Theodore Dresser.
Boni & Liveright.
We shy away. even from this title.
| For genius. either at large or set
| within the confines OF art, is a par
! lous thing. The good villagers of
New Rochelle recently gave word and
action to their sure instinct for this
danger when they refused lodgings,
even for the night, to "Venus and
Adonis." promptly evicting this pagan
pair from the purlieus Of their pious
demesne.
| A general count against genius,
either in the open or shut up in art,
is That 1t is given to unexpected be-
! haViors and to appearances that have
no place in an accepted seemliness.
And what. l ask you. could be more
trying in world whose days have
become deep parallel grooves of
| routine than to find thrown athwart
them obstructing lines of conduct
| that refuse TO slip into the familiar
ruts of conventional action. Again,
genius is, more often than otherwise,
spiritually alien in inspira tion-pagan
even. and quite commonly unorthodox
and un-Christian. Clearly a demoral-
izlng force in All arranged and ordered
world: 1t is lawless too. this genius,
or. what is worse, 1t claims to be a
danger. It is nuisance as well--a
prod to the honorable inertia of
countless years of lazy acceptance,
disturber of the peace, a challenge to
the safe conventions within which
caution has sought to safeguard hu-
| manity.
Notwithstanding these counts against
genius, we must give credit to Mr.
| Dreiser's book. "The Genius" proves,
upon reading. to be no story at all.
That is, it is no story If 95 per cent
of current fiction are stories. 1t is
not, like the majority of these, bent
upon the uses of entertainment. Its
| purpose is not to produce, by fair
means or foul. some happy ending to
an incredible number of urgent situa-
+; tions, in whose combined essence
there is no hope for happy climax,
| save by resort to brute force or clear
miracle. Nor does its purpose seek
of character. when the full sixty
minutes of each of the ten antecedent
hours contain nothing but the ele-
ments of moral defeat. This novel
points no moral. Indeed, in this
work Mr.. Dresser appears to be quite
unconscious of outsiders, quite in
diherent to external effects. He is,
theme, that of the genius" Eugene
Witla. And, beyond a few initial
! pages of the book, one loses sight of
Mr.. Dresser, just as he himself has
lost sight of everything outside the
subject in hand. For Eugene Wftla
proves, almost at once. to be a self
contained, self-projecting personal
! lty. Mr.. Drefser's work, therefore,
| becomes as impersonal as that of any
| other machine whose business il is
to register accurately what passes be-
fore 1T. All this-except for the orig
inal act of creation. That stands out
distinctly as Mr. Dreiser's own. And
that creation has, folded within it,
the very nature and feature of what
ever subsequently unfolds here.
| X = x
Eugene Witla, when we see him
| first, is a boy OF the middle west
"a slender. engaging lad of a GER
tain quiet charm. He might easily
have been, at this first meeting, any
one of the thousands of young boys
of that locality and that common
place level of life. But, unlike those
other thousands, he had added quail
ties that set him apart from the
rest. Deep down within him. drawn
from some far source of inheritance
was yearnng after beauty that
some day, might break into a de-
ivouring passion and some other day
maybe. into q purifying flame. That
Unborn hunger for beauty is the key
to Eugene Witla. And as the early
years go by, there steps out beside
OF the boy, an element bound to
bear markedly upon this dominant
love of beauty. This is a certain
pagan freedom in choosing happiness
outside the walls Of religious precept
and social convention. This boy had
drawn from God knows where a
light regard for the institutions that
man has so laboriously built for his
own safek eeping. The personal
charm of Eugene Witla, his passion
for beauty, his Indifference to social
law-these three account. wholly. for
the development of The Genius"
j: X ::
And we follow Witla to Chicago
| then to New York, where the whole
I matter ends. We go with him into
the streets of the western city both
by day and by night, under clouds
and storm, under sun and fair
weather. And out of his words as
!
strange corners, we catch a shadow
of his own rapture over the beauty
of it all, and feel something of his
clearing certainty as to many of its
meanings. A passion to catch it up
and to hold it seizes him. So he be-
gins TO draw and to study in the art
schools. In no time at all there is
an original touch in his work that
attracts, quick capture of the heart
of scene that appeals. He is beside
himself with love for the big city.
of women overtakes him. This too
he must reach out for and possess.
And here follows his quest of beauty
in happy brigandage that holds no
sense of sin, that rouses no dormant
conscience. On the one hand are un-
doubted talent. hard work, and a
Puritan honesty in all the ordinary
affairs Of life. On the other there is
a pagan joy in free amours, and
successive conquests, and careless de-
partures, and new -adventurings over
and over again, each underta ken in
a fresh transport of joy that con-
tains no alloy of conscious sin. A
marriage is one of the episodes in
this long love adventure. climax
which he, unwilling to reach. accepts,
tains throughout many attendant in
fidelities. Vicissitudes of fortune
follow his course. They would.
Here is pagan at large in Christian
world. He is subject to its moral laws
in so far these can touch him.
And. in material ways they do touGh
shoulder toward him he becomes an
artisan, displaying courage and good
nature, capacity and initiative here,
so that he lifts again and again
toward the career of art, So the