278
PARTISAN REVIEW
with himself. He doesn't have a problem with work, except when
the Depression comes, because his father owns his own business
and Studs knows that he has a future. Again and again in the
book the characters say, directly or in variation, "What do we
do?" A sociologist of literature, Leo Lowenthal, made a study of
the heroes of popular biography in 1900 and 1945, in magazines
like
Collier's
and the
Saturday Evening Post.
In 1900 there were
many men of affairs, but few entertainers. In the biographies of
1945 there was less talk of achievement and more about what the
subjects consumed. Instead of saying that they achieved
something, these men, largely entertainers, would say, "I got a
break." That's a striking documentation emphasizing the
change . It was a prophecy of the idea of the "Beautiful People"
-and of the rest of us, who admire the "Beautiful People"
because they
are
the "Beautiful" and do all the glamorous things
we can't afford to do .
The "American
Drea~"
tends to change from success by
achievement to success by connections. Dreiser's works illustrate
this change. The earlier heroes-Eugene Witla in
The «Genius,"
Frank Cowperwood in the "Trilogy of Desire," and Carrie
Meeber in
Sister Carrie-are
successes in a material sense; their
successes represent something in their nature, some capacity,
some ability. Cowperwood has a financial genius and a double
genius in skinning people; Carrie has an emotional nature that
helps her to become an actress; Witla is born a gifted artist. In
An
American Tragedy
this changes. Dreiser probably didn't figure it out
this way, but this is the story: Clyde Griffiths is as capable in his
work as his cousin, who has a high executive job in the factory,
but Clyde's only way of succeeding is through connections, not
through his work. His work is not valued because he is a poor
relation. He is looking for a "break."
So there is this great change . And one mask for this change
is the new notion that everyone has an insoluble problem of
personal identity; that you've got to find some mystical way of
getting along with yourself. But I think that happiness is a
by-product of achievement, a matter of moments . It's the by–
product of activity and of effort, particularly of cooperative effort.
