Talk:Twelve Men

Reviews
(Extract from) "Some of the Notable Among Current Novels," The Literary Digest, 11 Oct 1919: Where does fiction end and reality begin? Theodore Dreiser is so much of a realist that his fictitious characters might well have been drawn directly from life. In "Twelve Men" (Boni & Liveright), he has given us a remarkable series of character studies of his friends that make no pretense at being anything more dramatic and that yet are fascinating, one and all, and far more impressive than if any attempt had been made to make them adorn a tale. We do not need even the vicarious interest of an attempt to ferret out the names of the originals of the sketches and to link them up with what we knew of these people in real life, tho some references are obvious and others obscure rather because the men were obscure than because the author has made any effort to disguise them. We are apt to think of Mr. Dreiser in much the way in which he describes his Peter: "To me he illustrated the joy that exists in the common, the so-called homely and what some might think ugly side of life,—certainly the very simple and ordinarily human aspect of things"—but here he shines forth as a sentimentalist. It is significant that reactions to sex play almost no part in the records of the life of these men, especially since Mr. Dreiser's own books usually reek with sex, and one is struck with the obvious reason. " I t has been one of my commonest experiences," he says frankly, "and one of the most interesting to me, to note that nearly all of my keenest experiences intellectually, my most gorgeous rapprochements and swiftest developments mentally, have been by, to, and through men, not women."