Adolescent Pachyderm*

DAWN--"Theodore Dreiser"--Liveright ($5)

Theodore Herman Dreiser, 60, has begun to take stock of himself. Dawn, An Autobiography of Early Youth, is a portentous beginning. Couched in inimitable Dreiserese, stamped on every page with his trademark of bewildered honesty, it begins thus: ''The average earthling, as I have reason to know, has frequently the greatest hesitation in revealing the net of flesh and emotion and human relationship into which he was born and which conditioned his early efforts at living and too often his subsequent place in life and society. I am free to say here and naw that I am in no way troubled by any such thoughts or feelings."

For Dreiser is not an "average earthling." Born in Terre Haute, Ind. of impoverished German parents, Theodore was one of 13 children. Late Songwriter Paul "On the Banks of the Wabash," "My Gal Sal" was the only one beside his younger brother to become famed. Franker than the average, Autobiographer Theodore tells of the religious mania of his father, the hell raising of his brothers, the amorous experiments of his sisters (whom he protects by pseudonyms). Himself very shy, young Theodore trembled when he first saw a girl in tights, but seems to have been in love with love as soon and as much as possible.

After finishing high school he went to Chicago to get a job, and there ran into an old teacher of his who managed to get him into the University of Indiana. But Dreiser's year there was a failure, left him with little respect for formal education, which he regards as "a serviceable means of passing the time." Back in Chicago he worked in a hardware store, drove a laundry truck, changed jobs usually for the worse. But then he entered the lists of love, acquitted himself not so badly. That perked him up. The book (and his youth, says Dreiser) ends with his discharge for "borrowing" money from his boss's funds. There is still a long way to go before this gangling 19-year-old becomes the ponderous, dewlapped author of An American Tragedy, the principal pachyderm of U. S. letters, unrebuked slapper of a Nobel Prizeman (TIME, March 30). Dreiserians will hail Dawn for its candor, its shouldering, uncompromising lengthiness; antis will raise their eyebrows for the same reasons.

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