From Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, Twelve Men
Published in 1919, Theodore Dreiser’s collection Twelve Men includes a dozen portraits of people the author admired. Little known today, the book was almost universally praised by the critics upon publication and is still highly regarded by many scholars. Many of the sketches were written in the first years of the century, after Dreiser had left his job as a reporter and during a period in which he was depressed by the sales of his first novel, Sister Carrie.
Fictionalized to various degrees, the twelve sketches depict both good Samaritans and individualists—and a few men who can be seen as both. The first six feature acquaintances who Dreiser regarded as successful; the final six are failures despite their virtues. Among the latter pieces is “A Mayor and His People,” a mix of fiction and biography that seems to have baffled editors and critics since Dreiser first submitted it for magazine publication in 1901.
Neither the city nor the mayor is named in “A Mayor and His People,” but the subject has since been identified as Thomas P. Taylor of Bridgeport, Connecticut, whom Dreiser first met in 1898 and subsequently interviewed after Taylor left office. One prominent biographer summarized the story as “a profile of the socialist mayor of Bridgeport, depicted as an honest and enlightened public servant who is cast out by powerful economic interests he has offended.” But our investigation into Taylor’s background and political history reveals that he was hardly a socialist and that, far from being cast out, he chose to leave office yet continued to play a major role in the city’s administration and development during the first decade of the twentieth century.
Dreiser’s fictionalized profile is available to read (free) at our Story of the Week site, and we have included an introduction that summarizes the career of the actual mayor who was the inspiration for the piece.
