Joseph Hergesheimer, an Essay in Interpretation

Now this non-employment of time-approved devices seems even the more remarkable when you consider how intensely Joseph Hergesheimer realizes the sensuous world of his characters and, in particular, the optic world. He is the most insistently superficial of all writers known to me, in his emphasis upon shapes and textures and pigments.

His people are rendered from complexion to coat-tail buttons, and the reader is given precisely the creasing of each forehead and the pleating of their under-linen. Mr. Hergesheimer's books contain whole warehousefuls of the most carefully finished furniture in literature; and at quaint bric-à-brac he has no English equal. It is all visioned, moreover, very minutely. Joseph Hergesheimer makes you observe his chairs and panelings and wall-papers and window-curtains with an abnormal scrutiny. The scenery and the weather, too, are "done" quite as painstakingly, but these are indigenous to ordinary novels.