1. Hapgood, Hutchins, “Is Dreiser Anti-Semitic?” Nation, 04 17, 1935, p. 436.Google Scholar My thanks to The Nation magazine, The Nation Company, Incorporated, for permission to quote extensively from this article; Nathan, George Jean et al. , “Editorial Conference (With Wine),” American Spectator, 09 1933, p. 1.Google Scholar The research for this essay was supported in part by a minigrant from East Texas State University.

2. Elias, Robert H., Theodore Dreiser: Apostle of Nature (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), p. 264.Google Scholar

3. Elias, Robert H., ed., Letters of Theodore Dreiser: A Selection (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959), vol. 2, p. 648.CrossRefGoogle Scholar My thanks to the University of Pennsylvania Press for permission to quote extensively from this volume.

4. Riggio, Thomas P., ed., Dreiser-Mencken Letters: The Correspondence of Theodore Dreiser and H. L. Mencken: 1907–1945 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), vol. 2, p. 558.Google Scholar

5. Swanberg, W. A., Dreiser (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1965), p. 408.Google Scholar

6. Moers, Ellen, Two Dreisers (New York: Viking, 1969), p. 296 n.Google Scholar

7. Liptzin, Sol, The Jew in American Literature (New York: Bloch, 1966), pp. 159–66.Google Scholar

8. Nathan, et al. , “Editorial Conference,” p. 1.Google Scholar

9. See “George Nathan Dies,” New York Times, 04 9, 1958.Google Scholar

10. Nathan, et al. , “Editorial Conference,” p. 1.Google Scholar

11. Hapgood, , “Is Dreiser Anti-Semitic?” p. 436.Google Scholar

12. Hapgood, Hutchins, A Victorian in the Modern World (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939), p. 270.Google Scholar

13. Hapgood, Hutchins, The Spirit of the Ghetto (1902; rept. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967).Google Scholar

14. Hapgood, , Victorian in the Modern World, p. 270.Google Scholar

15. The letters were slightly abridged for publication in the Nation. More complete texts may be found in Letters of Theodore Dreiser, vol. 2, pp. 649–53 and 657–64.Google Scholar Hapgood's letter to the editors of the American Spectator is vol. 2, pp. 648–49.Google Scholar

16. Hapgood, , “Is Dreiser Anti-Semitic?” p. 436.Google Scholar

17. Rodman, Selden, “Common Sense Protests,” Nation, 05 15, 1935, p. 572Google Scholar; Newman, Louis I., “Dreiser and Haman,” Nation, 05 15, 1935, p. 572Google Scholar; Rottenberg, Abraham, “Dreiser's Chauvinism,” Nation, 05 15, 1935, p. 572Google Scholar; Weil, Leonard D., “The Logical Solution,” Nation, 05 15, 1935, p. 572Google Scholar; Schoenberg, Philip, “Making the Jews Responsible,” Nation, 05 15, 1935, pp. 572–73Google Scholar; Serwer, Harry, “Racial Solidarity — a Myth,” Nation, 05 15, 1935, p. 573Google Scholar; and Trachtenberg, Joshua, “Anti-Semites Both!” Nation, 05 15, 1935, p. 572.Google Scholar My thanks to The Nation magazine, The Nation Company, Incorporated, for permission to quote from and use these letters.

18. Hapgood referred explicitly to this article, but he gave no date, implying that the article appeared after Mike Gold's, and did not name the author (Victorian in the Modern World, p. 272).Google Scholar

19. Blumenthal, Walter Hart, “Dreiser Lays a Square Egg: Novelist Says American Barnyard Should Have Only Plymouth Rocks,” American Hebrew and Jewish Tribune, 04 19, 1935, p. 482.Google Scholar

20. For a treatment of Dreiser's relationship with the American Communist Party up to the time of the Spectator controversy, see Swanberg, , Dreiser, pp. 379– 405.Google Scholar Dreiser finally actually joined the party in 1945.

21. “Greetings to Dreiser,” New Masses, 09 1931, p. 6.Google Scholar

22. Gold, Michael, “Six Open Letters,” New Masses, 09 1931, p. 5.Google Scholar

23. See Klehr, Harvey, The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade (New York: Basic Books, 1984), p. 383.Google Scholar

24. “Dreiser Denies He Is Anti-Semitic,” New Masses, 04 30, 1935, pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

25. Dreiser, Theodore, “Dreiser's Statement,” New Masses 04 30, 1935, p. 10.Google Scholar

26. Gold, Michael, “The Gun is Loaded, Drieser!” New Masses, 05 17, 1935, p. 14.Google Scholar Just how “sensitive and compassionate” The Hand of the Potter: A Tragedy in Four Acts (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1918)Google Scholar is questionable. Moers, Ellen, Two DreisersGoogle Scholar, writes that Dreiser's Jewish characters “are studied with respect and sensitivity, notably in The Hand of the Potter, where Dreiser's portrayal of Jewish family life is remarkable for accuracy, sympathy, and lack of self-consciousness” (p. 296). Yet Liptzin, , Jew in American LiteratureGoogle Scholar, says that the play contains “hoary medieval bugaboos” in its portrayal of Jews (p. 160). Ellen Schiff, moreover, calls the play “one of the few blatantly anti-Semitic works in the American repertory” (“Shylock's Mishpocheh: Anti-Semitism on the American Stage,” in Anti-Semitism in American History, ed. Gerber, David A. [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986], p. 88).Google Scholar In the play a mentally disturbed Jewish man, Isadore Berchansky, molests little girls and finally kills one. Schiff is not upset by Berchansky's being Jewish, and she does not mention that his family destroys evidence and lies under oath in an attempt to cover up his hideous murder of a little Irish girl, a murder of which they know he is guilty. What bothers Schiff is the depiction of Samuel Elkas, whom she calls “a contemporary Shylock complete with winsome daughter.” Berchansky commits suicide in a room he rents from Elkas. As Schiff interprets the play, “This niggardly landlord protests vigorously when he is refused the reward posted for Berchansky, begrudges the very gas his tenant had used to do himself in, and demands that the bereaved, indigent father settle his son's unpaid rent on the spot.” She concludes,

By incorporating the stalest of stereotypes into his cast of naturalistic Jewish wrecks and cripples, Dreiser suggests that Jews cannot escape the forces which have traditionally impoverished them spiritually, physically, and psychologically, and disqualified them as positive characters in literature. (p. 88)

I have no argument with Schiff's assessment of the play, except that perhaps she is too easy on Dreiser.

Incidentally, whether Dreiser is sympathetic and respectful toward his Jewish characters in other works is also debatable. Dobkowski, Michael N., The Tarnished Dream: The Basis of American Anti-Semitism, Contributions in American History 81 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1979)Google Scholar, labels him “an anti-Semite, who, coming from Terre Haute, probably had known few Jews when he wrote The Titan,” a work that Dobkowski demonstrates to be anti-Semitic (p. 101). Even though Dreiser may have known few Jews in 1914, when The Titan first appeared, and in 1918Google Scholar, when The Hand of the Potter first appeared, he certainly knew many by 1935.Google Scholar

27. See Gold, Michael, “Go to Hell With Art Young,” review of Art Young's InfernoGoogle Scholar, by Art Young, New Masses, 02 6, 1934, p. 25.Google Scholar

28. See for example Kunitz, Joshua, “Jews in the Soviet Union,” New Masses, 08 28, 1934, pp. 19–21Google Scholar; Metlin, Gregory, “Solving the Jewish Problem,” review of Where the Ghetto Ends: Jews in Soviet RussiaGoogle Scholar, by Dennen, Leon, New Masses, 10 30, 1934, p. 23Google Scholar; and “Anti-Semitism: What to Do About It,” editorial, New Masses, 12 4, 1934, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

29. Gold, , “The Gun is Loaded,” p. 15.Google Scholar

30. Elias, , Letters of Theodore Dreiser, vol. 2, p. 742.Google Scholar

31. Dreiser, to Yost, Charles, Los Angeles, 05 17, 1935Google Scholar, Letters of Theodore Dreiser, vol. 2, pp. 742–43.Google Scholar Incidentally, Elias's edition of the selected letters does not identify the source of the comments attributed to Rabbi Wise; instead, it only refers to Hapgood, 's NationGoogle Scholar article and to “Dreiser Denies He Is Anti-Semitic” (p. 743).Google Scholar

32. Hutchinson, Perry, “Theodore Dreiser's Poetry in Prose,”Google Scholar review of Moods: Philosophic and Emotional, Cadenced and Declaimed, by Dreiser, Theodore, New York Times, 07 7, 1935Google Scholar, sec. 6; “No ‘Sitting in Shade’ for Dreiser, at 63: Author Takes Birthday Fling at Millionaires, ‘Hams of Purest Ray,’” New York Times, 08 28, 1934Google Scholar; and “Books, American Tragedy and Genius, Banned by Munich Police,” New York Times, 02 9, 1935.Google Scholar

33. “Jews are Warned of Foes' Agitation: Dr. Newman and Dr. Sachar See Signs of Anti-Semitism in Some National Trends,” New York Times, 04 29, 1935.Google Scholar The “even” seems rather peculiar to a reader in the 1980s and 1990s.

34. Dreiser, to Dinamov, Sergei, Los Angeles, 06 27, 1935Google Scholar, in Elias, , Letters of Theodore Dreiser, vol. 2, p. 747.Google Scholar

35. Elias, , Letters of Theodore Dreiser, vol. 3, p. 764.Google Scholar

36. Dreiser, to Bround, Heywood, Mt. Kisco, N.Y. 01 7, 1936Google Scholar, in Elias, , Letters of Theodore Dreiser, vol. 3, p. 765.Google Scholar

37. Liptzin, , Jew in American Literature, pp. 165–66.Google Scholar