SOURCE: "Dithyrambs Against Learning," in Theodore Dreiser: The Critical Reception, edited by Jack Salzman, David Lewis, 1972, pp. 313-14.

In the following review of Free and Other Stones, which was originally published in Smart Set, Vol. 57, in November, 1918, Mencken asserts that the most successful of the stories in the collection are constructed as chapters of novels, and that the works which are self-contained, more traditional short stories are failures, because Dreiser's writing style does not lend itself to this form.

The eleven pieces in Free and Other Stories, by Theodore Dreiser, are the by-products of a dozen years of industrious novel-writing, and are thus somewhat miscellaneous in character and quality. They range from experiments in the fantastic to ventures into realism, and, in tone, from the satirical to the rather laboriously moral. The best of them are "The Lost Phoebe," "The Cruise of the Idlewild," "The Second Choice" and...