Note 25 — Chapter IV · Theodore Dreiser as a Bio-Chemist

A more awkward and clumsy way to express one’s self in writing than this passage cannot be easily imagined, and there are, unfortunately, too many passages like this one in Dreiser’s books. This pseudo-scientific jargon could be endured in Haeckel but it is difficult to be, at the same time, a bio-chemist and an artist. This groping through mysticism, science or triviality, toward literary expression seems to be the curse of the new American writers.