According to James Schroeter examples of Cather’s anti-Semitism (xenophobia) can be gleaned from short stories such as “The Old Beauty” (1948), hinting at Jewish vulgarity and viciousness (rather than saying it blatantly): one of the scoundrels is depicted as a banker who is “vulgar,” “repulsive,” and “foreign-looking
Fitzgerald presents Meyer Wolfshiem as a fictional representation of Arnold Rothstein 1 (The Brain): a notorious racketeer and the bigwig of the Jewish mafia. By the same token, unlike Cather, Dreiser is highly vocal regarding his stereotypic labeling, connecting “the Irishman” or “the Swede” with revoltingness and vulgarity. Jerome Loving sees Dreiser with his racist remarks denouncing liberalism and considering it futile as American society is already imperiled, being taken over by countless “types,” among which are Jews, Arabs, and blacks. What is more, he regards the Jews as the most intimidating “type,” suggesting the creation of a “separate Jewish state” instead of “their integration of other countries” (368–369). ” Along the same lines, Hutchins Hapgood’s response after getting a letter from Dreiser containing such declarations was: “if Dreiser hadn’t signed the letter, I might have thought it was written by a member of the Ku Klux Klan or a representative of Hitler” (Loving, 2005 , p. 370). Continue reading “These remarks are irreversible, Loving claims, and he brands Dreiser as “a racial conservative, if not a racist”