Final Years

The final phase of Dreiser's career began in late 1938 with his decision to move to Los Angeles both to rejoin Helen, who had moved to the West Coast in the summer of 1937, and to work, unhampered by the hectic New York social scene, on his book of philosophy and his novels The Bulwark and The Stoic, all of which had remained unfinished despite his many efforts over many years to complete them. By the spring of 1944, however, he had made little progress in these attempts to tidy up the loose ends of a long career.Dreiser's trip to New York, in May 1944, to receive the Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, not only revived his spirits, but provided him with an opportunity to persuade Marguerite Tjader to come to Los Angeles in order to help him finish the two novels. She had aided him for several weeks during the summer of 1938, when they had renewed the personal and editorial rapport of their relationship of the late 1920s and early 1930s. The recollections by Tjader, Helen Dreiser, and Esther McCoy reprinted in this section deal with the final 20 months of Dreiser's life from May 1944 to his death in late December 1945, during which period Dreiser and Tjader completed The Bulwark and he and Helen almost completed The Stoic. (A major event of this period not present in these recollections is Dreiser's decision in the spring of 1945 to join the Communist Party. For this event, see pp. 194–200.)There are elements of both tragedy and domestic farce in the make-up and dynamics of the Dreiser household in this final year and a half of his life, elements well caught by McCoy in her account of his death. Tjader, as her recollections make clear, was not only helping Dreiser complete a long-delayed project but also vigorously supporting his effort to express in these final works a belief in a divine spirit pervading all life. As both amanuensis and spiritual guide she felt that she was playing a major role in the climactic stage of his life and thought.