Evening star., 1955-05-08

hand book stores. But their
on. transformed but still
potent.
This is the conclusion which
Kenneth S. Lynn, a young
critic who is an assistant pro-
fessor Of English at Harvard,
establishes. beyond much dis
pute in "The Dream of Sue
cess" (Atlantic-Little, Brown;
S4).
Actually the book is an off,
beat. provocative study of five
turn-of-the-century novelists
who rate space in every literary
history. They are Theodore
Dresser. Jack London, David
Graham Phillips, Frank Norris
and Robert Herrick.
The AIger Influence
But the effect Of Alger on
Americas success myth went
far beyond these and other
writers Of the period, as Mr..
Lynn points out.
"And If the Alger stories
have long since disappeared
from the family library,
Alger's name and his i'm
mortal image of the ragged
newsboy are still very much
with us-with all of us. The
American Schools and Col
leges Association annually
presents a series of "Horatio
Alger Awards" to Americans
whose success stories are con-
crete evidence that America
is still the land described by
our forefathers as the place
where equality and opportu-
nifty are synonymous"
Perhaps even those who
never read Alger will not need
to be reminded, since his name
Is part of the language, that
Ragged Dick and the other
boys he described always rose
to success by pluck, initiative
and sterling honesty. They
often grew up to marry the
boss daughter and eventu-
ally take over the factory or
store. In 1858. Mr.. Lynn
cites. there was a song hit
called Rags to Riches" and
a recent biographer of Herbert
Hoover said his was an Horatio
Alger story such as Alger
never dared to write"
Literary Dollar Signs
Even in their youth-and
Dresser wrote on, somewhat
feebly, into the 1940s-the
writers whom Mr.. Lynn dis
sects-an apt term-probably
would have been indignant if
told the naive Alger had
shaped their literary philoso-
ply. They were vastly more
sophisticated. And yet, this
critic contends, most of their
novels were concerned, in one
way or another. with success
as it was generally interpreted
and still is-a big income,
luxury, power.
Some of them were troubled
with this simple conception and
tried to negate it in various
ways. Dresser, starting out as
an intense individualist, who
wanted more than anything to
efface his fathers financial
failure. turned to communism
in his last years. Jack London,
the first millionaire novelist"
who had come up from poverty,
rsS4ved the dilemmas of sue
cess by becoming a Socialist.
Phillips attacked political
corruptions and the sharp
practices of Eastern" busi-
nessmen, but enshrined success
in what he called the clean,
honest West-meaning Indi-
ana. Norris, who had failed as
a football player and a painter
and been repudiated by his
aff1uent father, wrote of men
who made fortunes and when
faced with sitting complica-
tions of power and position,
turned to the real West (San
Francisco, where Norris grew
up) or some exotic foreign
place where such troubles
would vanish. Herrick en-
shrined the professional man
as an antidote for the business
leader who dominated the
American scene in the sos and
'90s, but his novels still were,
IN their way, Alger stories.
None of these novelists
could get away from what Will
liam James called "the bitch
goddess Success"
A Brilliant Essay
AS in all such studies, Mr..
Lynn's effort to develop from
all the diverse writings of
these men a unifying theme
sometimes throws his conclu-
sions out of balance. And he
is apt, in his enthusiasm for
reducing these figures to lit
erary fragments, to underesti-
mate such striking novels as
Drieser'S earliest and Gas some
OF us think his best, Sister
Carrie" and Jennie Ger
hard" He has, too, swept into
the psychoanalytic scrap heap
such a landmark as Norris
"McTeague."
But he was not writing
conventional literary criticism.
And Mr.. Lynn has written an
original and brilliant essay
more readable, more absorb
ing than most of the novels
I've read in the last year.
Another nonfiction book
which deserves the attention