SOURCE: "As Usual, Mr. Dreiser Spares Us Nothing," in Theodore Dreiser: The Critical Reception, edited by Jack Salzman, David Lewis, 1972, pp. 504-06.

In the following review of Chains, which was originally published in The New York Times Book Review on May 15, 1927, Stuart dismisses the collection as tedious and carelessly written.

One of those clever Frenchmen whose perceptions every one is glad to remember, but whose names every one is resigned to forget, has told us that, in literature, all styles are permissable except one—the boring style ("sauf l'ennuyeux"). No critic with any self-respect, it may be stated at once, is likely to take shelter behind any such aphorism. In the first place, it strikes at the root of his own reason for being. In the second, it leaves the judgment of what is possible or impossible writing too nakedly at the mercy of an individual appetite for...