Editing Theodore Dreiser (section)

===Literature===
Dreiser had an enormous influence on the generation that followed his. In his tribute "Dreiser" from ''[[Horses and Men]]'' (1923), [[Sherwood Anderson]] writes (almost repeated 1916 article<ref>Anderson, Sherwood. [https://library.brown.edu/cds/repository2/repoman.php?verb=render&view=pageturner&task=jump&id=1293024870968000&pageno=7 Dreiser], Little Review, 1916, No. 2 (April), p. 5.</ref>):

{{blockquote|Heavy, heavy, the feet of Theodore. How easy to pick some of his books to pieces, to laugh at him for so much of his heavy prose ... [T]he fellows of the ink-pots, the prose writers in America who follow Dreiser, will have much to do that he has never done. Their road is long but, because of him, those who follow will never have to face the road through the wilderness of Puritan denial, the road that Dreiser faced alone.<ref name="Baxter">{{cite book|editor-last1=Baxter|editor-first1=Charles|last=Anderson|first=Sherwood|title=Sherwood Anderson : collected stories|date=2012|publisher=Library of America|location=New York, N.Y.|isbn=978-1598532043|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5eg7t7x7QP8C&pg=PT472|access-date=28 June 2016}}</ref> }}

[[Alfred Kazin]] characterized Dreiser as "stronger than all the others of his time, and at the same time more poignant; greater than the world he has described, but as significant as the people in it,"<ref name="Kazin">{{cite book|last1=Kazin|first1=Alfred|title=On native grounds : an interpretation of modern American prose literature|date=1970|publisher=Harcourt Brace Jovanovich|location=New York|isbn=978-0156687508|page=89|edition=Fiftieth Anniversary|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gfSST-366oMC&pg=PT117|access-date=28 June 2016}}</ref> while Larzer Ziff (UC Berkeley) remarked that Dreiser "succeeded beyond any of his predecessors or successors in producing a great American business novel."<ref name="Hillstrom">{{cite book|last1=Hillstrom|first1=Kevin|last2=Hillstrom|first2=Laurie Collier|title=The industrial revolution in America|date=2005|publisher=ABC-Clio|location=Santa Barbara|isbn=978-1-85109-625-1|page=227|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fUIbzBymAjIC&pg=RA1-PA227|access-date=28 June 2016}}</ref>

Renowned mid-century literary critic [[Irving Howe]] spoke of Dreiser as ranking "among the American giants, the very few American giants we have had."<ref name="Rodden">{{cite book |title= Irving Howe and the Critics: Celebrations and Attacks|last= Rodden|first= John|year= 2005|publisher= Nebraska U.P.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ptwYkKVyx5QC&pg=PA100|page=100|isbn= 0803239335}}</ref> A British view of Dreiser came from the publisher [[Rupert Hart-Davis]]: "Theodore Dreiser's books are enough to stop me in my tracks, never mind his letters—that slovenly turgid style describing endless business deals, with a seduction every hundred pages as light relief. If he's the great American novelist, give me the [[Marx Brothers]] every time."<ref name="Lyttelton">{{cite book|last1=Lyttelton|first1=George|editor-last=Hart-Davis|editor-first=Rupert|title=The Lyttelton Hart-Davis letters : correspondence of George Lyttelton and Rupert Hart-Davis.|volume=4|date=1982|publisher=John Murray|location=London|isbn=978-0-7195-3941-1|chapter=Letter dated August 30, 1959}}</ref> The literary scholar [[F. R. Leavis]] wrote that Dreiser "seems as though he learned English from a newspaper. He gives the feeling that he doesn't have any native language".<ref name="Mackillop">{{cite book|author-last=Leavis|author-first= F. R.|editor-last1=Mackillop|editor-first1=Ian|editor-last2=Storer|editor-first2=Richard|title=F.R. Leavis essays and documents|date=2005|publisher=Continuum|location=London|isbn=1847144578|page=77|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IYHoy8YohAIC&pg=PA77}}</ref>

One of Dreiser's strongest champions during his lifetime, [[H. L. Mencken]],<ref name="Mencken">{{cite book|last1=Riggio|first1=Thomas P.|title=Dreiser-Mencken letters : the correspondence of Theodore Dreiser & H.L. Mencken, 1907-1945|date=1986|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press|location=Philadelphia|isbn=0812280083|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/dreisermenckenle01drei}}</ref> declared "that he is a great artist, and that no other American of his generation left so wide and handsome a mark upon the national letters. American writing, before and after his time, differed almost as much as biology before and after [[Charles Darwin|Darwin]]. He was a man of large originality, of profound feeling, and of unshakable courage. All of us who write are better off because he lived, worked, and hoped."<ref name="Riggio">{{cite web|last1=Riggio|first1=Thomas P.|title=Biography of Theodore Dreiser|url=http://www.library.upenn.edu/collections/rbm/dreiser/tdbio.html|website=University of Pennsylvania|publisher=Penn Libraries|access-date=27 June 2016}}</ref>

Dreiser's great theme was the tremendous tensions that can arise among ambition, desire, and social mores.<ref name="Cassuto">{{cite book|editor-last1=Cassuto|editor-first1=Leonard|editor-last2=Eby|editor-first2=Clare Virginia|title=The Cambridge companion to Theodore Dreiser|date=2004|publisher=Cambridge university press|location=Cambridge|isbn=9780521894654|page=9|url=http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521894654&ss=exc}}</ref>