Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    McTeague: A Story of San Francisco
    Unavailable
    McTeague: A Story of San Francisco
    Unavailable
    McTeague: A Story of San Francisco
    Ebook406 pages5 hours

    McTeague: A Story of San Francisco

    By Frank Norris and Jonathan Evison

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    First published in 1899, this graphic depiction of urban American life centers around McTeague, a dentist” practicing in San Francisco at the turn of the century. While at first content with his life and friendship with an ambitious man named Marcus, McTeague eventually courts and marries Trina, a parsimonious young woman who wins a large sum of money in a lottery. It is not long before the jealousy and avarice of the majority of the characters in the novel sets off a chain of inevitable and increasingly horrific events. Norris' work, so strikingly different from that of his contemporaries, is an admirable example of social realism, which provided America with a shocking reflection of its sordid sense of survival. From the opening description of San Francisco to McTeague's final desperate flight far from his 'Dental Parlors, ' this novel examines human greed in a way that still causes readers to pause and reflect.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCounterpoint
    Release dateJun 5, 2013
    ISBN9780988172531
    Unavailable
    McTeague: A Story of San Francisco
    Author

    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.

    Read more from Frank Norris

    Related to McTeague

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Case D’altri

      Jun 24, 2022

      Case D’altri
      8 min read

    • Article

      Baking Through a Plague

      Jun 12, 2020

      Baking Through a Plague
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un's Notes

      Feb 8, 2023

      The Old Un's Notes
      4 min read

    • Article

      How It All Began

      Feb 5, 2020

      How It All Began
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Cannabis Cup Odyssey

      Dec 3, 2019

      A Cannabis Cup Odyssey
      11 min read

    • Article

      Speedboat

      Mar 24, 2022

      Nobody died that year. Nobody prospered. There were no births or marriages. Seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. That was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I fi nd,

      14 min read

    • Article

      Tripping the Late Capitalist Sublime

      Jan 28, 2022

      If our religion is capitalism, then our theology is consumerism and our God is the Invisible Hand. Our prayers are "Have it Your Way," "Think Different," and "Just Do It;" our avatars are Ronald McDonald, Mr. Peanut, and the Kool-Aid Man The post Tri

      18 min read

    • Article

      To The Manure Born

      Jun 1, 2020

      To The Manure Born
      5 min read

    • Article

      Restaurants

      Dec 13, 2023

      I've won an argument. At last. The only way to travel into the West End of an evening is by tube. For years, I've been losing this argument while watching angry high heels clatter down the escalator as if entering purgatory, while ranting that ‘It's

      2 min read

    • Article

      Meat Mad Road Trip Of The American South

      Jul 1, 2019

      Clint the chef is quite drunk. It’s late, dark, and we’re stood with him at a totally lightless junction somewhere on the outskirts of Kansas City. The three men who he’s just questioned – the only other people on the deserted road – cross over to ou

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Hang-Up

      Jan 24, 2019

      The Hang-Up
      1 min read

    • Article

      Stonehenge

      Jul 11, 2023

      Stonehenge
      7 min read

    • Article

      1990s Notebook

      Oct 5, 2022

      AS a tearful Margaret Thatcher was driven from Downing Street on a chilly November morning in late 1990, Britain’s first female Prime Minister seemed to reflect the national mood of foreboding: the BSE crisis, the devastating bombing campaigns in Nor

      4 min read

    • Article

      Atlanta on My Mind

      Jul 27, 2022

      Atlanta on My Mind
      10 min read

    • Article

      Newspaper Kid

      Sep 7, 2021

      Newspaper Kid
      5 min read

    • Article

      Aughts

      Sep 11, 2017

      Aughts
      23 min read

    • Article

      1181 Durfee Avenue

      Jan 5, 2021

      1181 Durfee Avenue
      4 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      May 18, 2023

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      7 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Feb 2, 2023

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      8 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Feb 2, 2023

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      8 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The Editor

      May 3, 2023

      JONATHAN NOTLEY (Letters, April 12) reminded me of a memorable church service in the 1950s. We were on a family holiday in Scotland, with a few days in Braemar. My father imagined he could get us into Crathie Kirk to attend a service with the Royal H

      4 min read

    Reviews for McTeague

    3.5/5

    205 ratings14 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      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 characters' descent into madness.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 1/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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!
    • 3/5
      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 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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      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 possibly because I had no sympathy for the characters - and neither did the author.
    • 4/5
      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 to overcome his brute, animalistic urges. I read it for an American Literature class and LOVED it. The teeth imagery is fascinating.
    • 2/5
      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 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 $5,000 in a lottery jackpot, and is a complete miser about the winnings. Trina is really a likeable character until she becomes more twisted as the book goes on and her frugality turns to avarice. By the end, she's lost many of her fingers, is abandoned by her lout of a husband, and lives in abject poverty, but finally pulls all of her gold coins from the bank and strips down naked to sleep with her money pressed to her skin.Many of the other residents described on Polk Street are also obsessed with money, including the stereotypical Jew obsessed with finding gold. The book is very much a product of its time period, and even includes a reference to a stove shining like a Negro's skin. Starr's introduction notes, though, that the biggest controversy when the book came out wasn't the horrid abuses committed by McTeague, but a small scene towards the beginning where a little boy wets his pants in public. This was regarded as so outrageous that it was removed in later editions, though the Penguin Classics version stays with the original text.So on one hand, the book was very useful for my purposes, and on the other it's filled with foul characters and period racism that makes me wince. It's not a book I ever want to read again--and I'm relieved to be done with it! It will stay on my shelf for period references only.
    • 4/5
      The tale is a bracing immersion in the language and material culture of turn of the 20th C. San Francisco. I would normally have trouble understanding how much of a windfall Trina Sieppe's 5,000$ would be in current dollars, but Norris' close attention to the acquisition and selling off of 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.
    • 1/5
      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 finished.
    • 2/5
      A 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.
    • 3/5
      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 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.