McTeague: A Story of San Francisco

This 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

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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.

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Absolutely 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!

Generally 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.

Dreadful 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.

I 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

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finished.

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10/20, 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

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possibly because I had no sympathy for the characters - and neither did the author.

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I 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

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characters' descent into madness.

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The 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

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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.

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Frank 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

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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.

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Here 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.

This 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

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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.

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Written 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

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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.

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Read this for my college Fiction class. Years later, I had a downstairs neighbor in my apartment that reminded me of McTeague, only I couldn't put my finger on it at the time. Scary.

A Book About the Gilded Age*

The only reason this book doesn't rate zero stars is because everyone gets the death they deserve by the end of the book. McTeague is a book filled with stupid, detestable characters who serve as caricatures for the evils Frank Norris sees in the world. The main

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character, McTeague, is too stupid to be believed, a hulking beast whose most memorable statements are "What? What?" and "I don't know. I don't know." If those two phrases don't hold your attention, don't read this book, because there's an unhealthy dose of them littered throughout the novel.

McTeague lacks a single likable character. His wife hordes money, going so far as to swindle McTeague out of his nickels and dimes and quarters, which, instead of spending, she hides in her trunk. There is a maid who constantly discusses a set of gold dishes her family once possessed, and a junk dealer who marries her solely for his lust to obtain the non-existent dishes. There are an old dressmaker and a veterinarian who live next to each other and spend every night sitting alone listening to the other person. The worst is Marcus, cousin of McTeague's wife, Trina, who feels cheated when Trina wins five thousand dollars after they have stopped dating and determines to exact his revenge on her beau, McTeague. Add to these characters the unbelievability of the events (e.g. a man and a mule trekking through Death Valley for three days on a single canteen of water) and you have an unpleasant narrative about greed and stupidity that is frustratingly dull and long-winded. If you don't have to read this book for school (as I did), don't read it at all.

* - I've had to set my themed reading list aside for now, as I'm taking a couple literature classes this summer through a state program that provides free tuition for Texas residents over 55. This novel is assigned for my 19th Century American Literature class focused on the Gilded Age.

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This is a book about what greed does to people. McTeague was raised by a miner in poverty conditions; he takes off with an itinerant dentist where he learns dentistry and settles in the late 1800's in San Francisco and builds up a practice. He meets Trina who right before they are married wins a

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$5000 lottery prize. He met Trina through her cousin, Marcus, who lived in McTeague's apartment building. Marcus was somewhat in love with Trina but "gives her over" to McTeague. The marriage is happy at first, but Trina refuses to use any of the $5000 and becomes ever more miserly. The greedier she becomes, things begin to fall apart. The marriage is eventually over, McTeague loses his position, and the ending is about as grim as it gets. A book about the stupidity, greed, and selfishness of humans.

A pretty good story, but the narrative is dated with long sentences, too much detail, etc.

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Probably not a bad read for its time but it hasn't aged well. Simplistic and very sad depiction of a couple's self-induced deterioration and collapse.

Ah, 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

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to overcome his brute, animalistic urges. I read it for an American Literature class and LOVED it. The teeth imagery is fascinating.

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A reread for me, but I got so much more out of it this time around. The characterization was entertaining: McTeague the brute and his wife Trina, Maria and Zerkow... these characters seemed to live their lives"like a candle in the wind," as Elton John would say. Motivated by greed, they fairly

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drive themselves towards self-destruction. The ending gave me a visual that I'll recall when remembering this book.

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