Picture and a Criticism of Life : New Letters

Dreiser's captivating portraits of turn-of-the-century America's famous figures

Before coming to national attention for his novel Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser worked for nearly a decade as a magazine editor and freelance writer. Now in paperback, Art, Music, and Literature, 1897-1902 collects a rich selection of Dreiser's brief, colorful articles and interviews with American artists, musicians, and writers during this period. His profiles and interviews include such notables as Alfred Stieglitz, William Dean Howells, and legendary impresario Major James Burton Pond, as well as numerous women artists, novelists, and musicians. The volume is liberally seasoned with period illustrations reproduced from the original publications, and Yoshinobu Hakutani's notes provide biographical details about Dreiser's various subjects.

"A model of concision and clarity, this fine study explicates important aspects of its topic and promotes dialogue on a key issue of the period."---American Literary Realism

"Reprints thirty-three of Dreiser's articles [and] amounts to an informal survey of American arts and popular culture at the turn of the 20th century. . . . A particular strength of the collection is the material that reveals Dreiser's interest in talented women." --Choice

"Along the way, the letters cast light on Dreiser's prickliness, his narcissism and his deep-set prejudices. . . . Pizer's annotations are concise and useful."--Times Literary Supplement

“[Pizer’s] thematic overview in his introduction is the most lucid survey I know of Dreiser’s philosophical and political ideas, literary credo, practices as magazine editor, attitudes towards publishers and film producers, and capacity for enduring friendships.”--Studies in American Naturalism