ABSTRACT
At the same time Theodore Dreiser was creating his robust and tireless capitalist Frank Cowperwood, he was also writing an autobiographical novel entitled The ‘Genius.’ At first glance the two works seem to have little in common. In the Cowperwood books, the male body is defined through the fruits of financial success and its commodification in an astonishingly powerful consumer culture. Cowperwood is a man of great energy and force, and the books record how smoothly that force is incorporated into the logic of a vigorous market capitalism. Eugene Witla, the protagonist of The ‘Genius,’ on the other hand, spends the majority of his time obsessed with his own weakened mental and physical condition. He is usually in a state of indecision, unable to sustain one career or one relationship. He is nervous, unsure, fearful, depleted of energy and unable to participate in any successful economic or social exchange.
