McTeague
By Frank Norris, Eric Solomon and Vince Passaro
3.5/5
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About this ebook
McTeague is the story of a poor dentist scraping by in San Francisco at the end of the 19th century, and his wife Trina, whose $5,000 lottery winning sets in motion a shocking chain of events. Fans of Jack London and Theodore Dreiser will appreciate the richly crafted prose and the historically accurate portrayal of 19th century America. Few works have captured the seamy side of American urban life with such graphic intensity.
Frank Norris
Frank Norris was an American author who wrote primarily in the naturalist genre, focusing on the impact of corruption and turn-of-the-century capitalism on common people. Best known for his novel McTeague and for the first two parts of his unfinished The Epic of the Wheat trilogy—The Octopus: A Story of California and The Pit, Norris wrote prolifically during his lifetime. Following his education at the Académie Julian in Paris, University of California, Berkeley, and at Harvard University, Norris worked as a news correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, and covered the Spanish-American War in Cuba for McClure’s Magazine. Norris died suddenly in 1902 of peritonitis, leaving The Wolf: A Story of Empire, the final part of his Wheat trilogy, incomplete.
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Reviews for McTeague
236 ratings15 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frank Norris (1870-1902) is comparable with other turn of the century American writers such as Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser and Harold Frederic. Like Crane he died at a young age (32), but not before producing an impressive body of work that anyone twice his age would have been proud of. He is best known for three novels: McTeague (1899), Octopus (1901) and Vandover and the Brute (posthumously published 1914), the last critically his best. All three are now in a single volume by the Library of America ensuring Norris a place in the American literary canon.Norris was mainly influenced by Charles Dickens and Emile Zola. McTeague, written while Norris was in college taking sophomore level grammar classes on how to write, was a conscious attempt at bringing the "European style" of Zola, in particular Zola's masterpiece L'Assommoir (1877), to American literature. With its focus on the poor working class who "degenerate" into alcohol, sex, violence and greed - it was thought poor people were naturally (genetically) disposed to these vices - Norris copies and imitates Zola's Naturalism, but set in the city of San Francisco. Critics generally hated it and saw it as cheap genre titillation of the sense hardly worthy of review, but a few saw it as a groundbreaking entry of European style into American literature.Norris is incredibly easy to read, he was originally a journalist and wrote simply to get the facts across, considering himself an "anti-stylist" without using complex sentences or fancy words. His intention was to get to the truth of the thing and such a simple writing style is very effective aesthetically for the novels subject. At the same time it lacks the depth and scope of Zola; the characters often feel contrived and one-sided, the secondary characters are right out of Dickens complete with sentimentality which jars with the Realism. The novel starts out slow but picks up pace in the last third, maintaining a gripping narrative up to the surprise last sentence that left me hooting for joy.Norris had seen early cinema and many of the scenes are described in a way that is reminiscent of early film. McTeague had such an impact on director Erich von Stroheim that he made it into an epic 10-hour long film Greed (1924), the most exspensive film ever made at the time, today it is one of the most famous films in history.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A large, lumbering, "hopelessly stupid" unlicensed dentist in 1890s San Francisco marries a woman who turns out to be miserly in extreme. They both eventually fall victim to her greed. The story is a cautionary tale of greed and mistrust. It reads dated at times - more tell than show - but picks up significantly at the end.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Generally I liked this portrait of early nineteenth-century San Francisco, a story of a couples life together, and what happens, goes where you don't expect, into the gritty dirty streets of poverty and eventually into Death Valley.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Here is a lesser-known novel by this classic author that I enjoyed a lot more than Norris's more well-known novel, The Octopus. Steinbeck's East of Eden reminded me a lot of this novel.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This was a book read for school. I've had classes where I have read some amazing books, but this wasn't one of them.
I didn't hate it or anything, and I found it interesting. The main characters all felt very real and flawed (in some cases VERY flawed). The story follows the life and marriage, and downfall of a couple in San Francisco. Seriously, McTeague and his wife are horribly matched and basically sprint towards a harrowing, fiery ending.
There is some good social and political commentary to be found here and most of the side characters are also really interesting. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The tale is a bracing immersion in the language and material culture of turn of the 20th C. San Francisco. I would normally have trouble understanding how much of a windfall Trina Sieppe's 5,000$ would be in current dollars, but Norris' close attention to the acquisition and selling off of possessions kept me well up on the value of a dollar at the time.The whole thing is sort of Zola in America, and maybe a touch of Hermann Broch in mood. Heck--it's a weird little book, and Jack London always seems just out of frame, only to come into full view at the end. Setting is as much foreground as the characters and story that begins in a world of melodeons, steel portraits and lace curtains, only to end in Landscape; the kind that is itself and crushes people, which I guess is a relief after watching people crush people. In America, there was a lot of landscape between a melodeon on the west coast and a melodeon on the east coast. I alway enjoy that distance in American literature and love best those books which brood as this distance moves west and gets filled up.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This classic novel by Frank Norris is a rather complex one to review. I read it for research purposes, as I'm writing a novel set in 1906 in San Francisco, and McTeague takes place there in 1900. In that regard, it was an invaluable resource on the details of the day--what people did for fun, what they drank (steam beer!), the structure of a full-day picnic outing, the racial demographics on a common street, etc. The book is also highly readable. It's smooth and very straightforward, much more so than Norris's The Octopus which I read last year.The back cover description notes this is a work of "American realism," and the introduction by Kevin Starr goes into greater detail on that subject. This book was highly controversial when it was released. At heart, it's a story revolving around the American dream and its corruption by greed. The main characters are the dentist, McTeague, and his wife, Trina. By "realism," it means the characters are mostly unlikeable, and are designed to be so. From the start, McTeague is described as rather dense, a big man with few brains. In the course of the book, he becomes a depressed, abusive drunk. The scenes of domestic abuse are disturbing even by today's standards, as McTeague bites his wife's fingers to the point of infection and amputation, even as he steals her horde of money and abandons her.Gold is really the theme of the book. McTeague in his younger days mined in the Sierras, and in middle age is a non-licensed dentist in San Francisco. He yearns for a massive gold tooth for his sign. His fiancee, Trina, wins $5,000 in a lottery jackpot, and is a complete miser about the winnings. Trina is really a likeable character until she becomes more twisted as the book goes on and her frugality turns to avarice. By the end, she's lost many of her fingers, is abandoned by her lout of a husband, and lives in abject poverty, but finally pulls all of her gold coins from the bank and strips down naked to sleep with her money pressed to her skin.Many of the other residents described on Polk Street are also obsessed with money, including the stereotypical Jew obsessed with finding gold. The book is very much a product of its time period, and even includes a reference to a stove shining like a Negro's skin. Starr's introduction notes, though, that the biggest controversy when the book came out wasn't the horrid abuses committed by McTeague, but a small scene towards the beginning where a little boy wets his pants in public. This was regarded as so outrageous that it was removed in later editions, though the Penguin Classics version stays with the original text.So on one hand, the book was very useful for my purposes, and on the other it's filled with foul characters and period racism that makes me wince. It's not a book I ever want to read again--and I'm relieved to be done with it! It will stay on my shelf for period references only.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book lends itself to examination and an interesting exchange of views in a classroom setting, but it is not one that I recommend for pleasure reading. Norris created a world in which working class San Franciscans lived under the conditions he set up in his "literary laboratory" where the inside forces of biological instinct battled with the outside forces of poverty and social persecution. His unrelenting attention to detail and repetition of descriptions of the narrowly constructed characters made this book increasingly unpleasant for me to read.There was much stereotyping of ethnic groups and emphasis on greed leading to revenge. The demasculation of the brawny McTeague diminished his humanity to the point where I knew there could be nothing hopeful about the end of this book. Let's just say that I ended up caring more for the canary in the cage than I did for any of the characters.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I read this for an American Literature class, and liked it. The characters are difficult to relate to, but it is a very interesting take on lower-class, turn-of -the-century America. Frank Norris writes wonderfully, and paints a very realistic, though sometimes melodramatic, portrait of his characters' descent into madness.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Absolutely one of the finest American novels I've ever read. Compelling characters interacting in a maelstrom of emotions set in turn-of-the-century (20th) San Francisco climaxing with as unforgetable an ending in literature!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/510/20, class book. Read this for a class on turn of the century America, in which case it's quite interesting. As a study of society, I mean. And it's well written, and the moral fall that occurs is good, but overall, I was unable to enter into the book deeply in any significant way - quite possibly because I had no sympathy for the characters - and neither did the author.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I hated this book so much that I blocked out the title and had to search "dentist, American literature" in the tagmash feature to find it. I had to read this for a Film and Literature class in college and absolutely hated every second of it. One of the weirdest, most terrible books I've ever finished.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Dreadful book written to illustrate the author's classist and racist notions. Can be read to get a sense of thought (or lack thereof) of the times, but not really entertaining as a novel.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ah, McTeague. The quintessential turn-of-the-century novel of American realism/naturalism. McTeague is a large, rather dense man who becomes a dentist and marries the frail but beautiful object of his affection, Trina. The story tells of his unraveling, which is fueled by his greed and his failure to overcome his brute, animalistic urges. I read it for an American Literature class and LOVED it. The teeth imagery is fascinating.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Written at the end of the 19th century, the pacing and language is certainly not modern. But the people and events, and their inexorable road to disaster, still hold true in current times. Today's "lost people" might take slightly different routes but the people's strengths and failings are universal. I kept thinking about how the removal of the safety net for the poor and helpless may lead soon to a variation of the end of this book. Very sad.
A shame that Frank Norris, Brett Harte, and Jack London are so little read these days. They're still timeless even if it does take a minute or two to adapt to the older style.