SOURCE: Pizer, Donald. “‘True Art Speaks Plainly’: Theodore Dreiser and the Late Nineteenth-Century American Debate over Realism and Naturalism.” Nineteenth-Century Prose 23, no. 2 (fall 1996): 76-89.

In the following essay, Pizer addresses ethical aspects in the nineteenth-century debate regarding realism and uses Dreiser's arguments to present realism as a means for social progress and change.

Theodore Dreiser wrote little literary criticism, and what he did write is both little known and not highly rated. Throughout his career, Dreiser published book reviews and philosophical essays, but seldom exhibited in either form an interest in or capacity for literary criticism of the highest order. By “criticism of the highest order,” I mean criticism that contains a coherent body of belief expressed with conviction. Too often, however, Dreiser's reviews merely reflect his like or dislike of a specific kind of writing, and too often his philosophical essays careen into an impenetrable fuzziness.

A...