SOURCE: "Ladies, Mainly Sad," in American Mercury, Vol. 19, February, 1930, pp. 254-55.

In the following review of A Gallery of Women, Mencken faults Dreiser's wordplay and narrative style, but praises his ability to capture the essence of his characters. Mencken asserts that A Gallery of Women is "not quite as interesting" as Twelve Men because "women themselves are considerably less interesting than men."

A Gallery Of Women is a companion to Twelve Men, published in 1919. There are fifteen sketches, each dealing with some woman who impinged upon the author at some time in the past; if the collection is not quite as interesting as its forerunner, then that is probably because women themselves are considerably less interesting than men. Not one of them here is to be mentioned in the same breath with Dreiser's brother Paul, the shining hero of Twelve Men, or with Muldoon the Iron Man, who...