and thereby serve to enlarge his influence. Such genius for controversy
as his may be neither expected nor advised to look for quieter paths; it
feels, with Bernard Shaw, that "if people are rotting and starving in
all directions, and nobody else has the heart or brains to make a
disturbance about it, the great writers must." It is fair to say,
however, that certain readers heartily sympathetic toward Mr. Sinclair
observe in him a painful tendency to enjoy scandal for its own sake and
to generalize from it to an extent which hurts his cause; observe in him
a quite superfluous gusto when it comes to reporting bloody incidents
not always contributory to any general design; observe in him a frequent
over-use of the shout and the scream. He has himself given an
example--_100%_--on which such critical strictures are based; in that
best of his novels as well as best of his arguments he has avoided most
of his own defects.

A revolutionary novelist naturally finds it difficult to represent his
world with the quiet grasp with which it can be represented by one who,
accepting the present frame of life, has studied it curiously,
affectionately, until it has left a firm, substantial image in the mind.
The revolutionist must see life as constantly whirling and melting under
his gaze; he must bring to light many facts which the majority overlook
but which it will seem to him like connivance with injustice to leave in
hiding; he must go constantly beyond what is to what ought to be. All
the more reason, then, why he should be as watchful as the most watchful
artist in his choice and use of the modes of his particular art. It
requires at least as much art to convert as to give pleasure.


5. THEODORE DREISER