Back Novels & Essays

Frank Norris: Novels & Essays

Vandover and the Brute | McTeague | The Octopus | Collected Essays More

Edited by Donald Pizer

“…one of the trailblazers in American literature”— The New York Times

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

News Richard White on Frank Norris, The Octopus, and the Southern Pacific Railroad
February 9, 2018

Story of the Week Frank Norris, “Grettir at Thorhall-stead”
October 30, 2017

This Library of America volume contains three novels and the collected essays of the most promising of the American naturalist writers. Inspired by the “new novel” developed by Zola and Flaubert, Norris adapted its methods to American settings, adding his own taste for exciting action and a fascination with the emergent sciences of economics and psychology.

Born in Chicago in 1870, Norris moved with his family to San Francisco in 1885. After studying art in Paris and literature at Berkeley and Harvard, he worked as a journalist and foreign correspondent, was expelled from South Africa in 1896, and reported on the Spanish-American War from Cuba in 1898, where he met Stephen Crane. Joining the publishing firm of Doubleday & McClure in 1898, he met William Dean Howells, Hamlin Garland, and Theodore Dreiser, and published six novels between 1898 and 1902. He died following an attack of appendicitis in October of 1902.

Vandover and the Brute (1914) was published posthumously but written in 1895 during Norris’s year at Harvard. Drunkenness, sensuality, gambling, and debauchery reduce young Vandover, once a fashionable playboy and aspiring artist, to virtual bestiality. His dissipation is described with shocking realism, as Norris paints each level of San Francisco society he encounters in his descent.

The novel McTeague (1899) represented a radical departure for American fiction of its era in its frank treatment of sex, domestic violence, and obsession. McTeague is a huge, simple dentist who dreams of having a giant tooth to hang outside his office and who carries his pet canary wherever he goes; Trina is his gentle, diminutive wife, who wins a lottery and compulsively hoards her money. They live on Polk Street in San Francisco, where the new middle class struggles with its pathological underside. Erich von Stroheim based his classic film Greed (1924) on this immensely powerful and grimly realistic novel.

The Octopus (1901), the first work in Norris’s unfinished trilogy “The Epic of the Wheat,” is a novel about the ranchers and wheat producers of California. Pitted against the railroad monopoly and political machine, the members of the ranching community are forced to take up arms against the state. Inspired by the Mussel Slough Massacre of 1880, it depicts a band of strong ruthless Westerners who are crushed by inexorable forces of nature and capital they had sought to control.

The twenty-two essays in this volume cover the years 1896–1902. They include book reviews, articles, literary columns, and parodies of popular authors in the hilarious “Perverted Tales.” They address theories of literature, the state of American fiction, and the social responsibilities of the artist.

Donald Pizer, volume editor, is Emeritus Professor of English at Tulane University. He is the author of The Novels of Frank Norris, The Novels of Theodore Dreiser: A Critical Study, and Twentieth-Century American Literature Naturalism: An Interpretation.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

This volume is available for adoption in the Guardian of American Letters Fund.
Table of Contents

Vandover and the Brute

McTeague

The Octopus

Essays
Theory and Reality (1896)
Zola as a Romantic Writer (1896)
The “English Courses” of the University of California (1896)
An Opening for Novelists (1897)
Fiction Is Selection (1897)
Perverted Tales (1897)
Frank Norris’ Weekly Letter (June 22, 1901)
Frank Norris’ Weekly Letter (August 3, 1901)
Frank Norris’ Weekly Letter (August 24, 1901)
The True Reward of the Novelist (1901)
Novelists of the Future (1901)
The Need of a Literary Conscience (1901)
The Mechanics of Fiction (1901
A Plea for Romantic Fiction (1901)
Fiction Writing as a Business (1902)
“The Literature of the West” (1902)
The Great American Novelist (1902–1903)
The Frontier Gone At Last (1902)
Story-Tellers vs. Novelists (1902)
The Novel with a “Purpose” (1902)
A Neglected Epic (1902)
The Responsibilities of the Novelist (1902)

32.00 List Price: $40.00 (Save: 20%) Free shipping on orders $50 and over

Or buy from our partners

Phone orders: 1-800-964-5778 Request product #200339

ISBN: 978-0-94045040-0 1232 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

N° 33 Library of America Series

Subscribers can purchase the slipcased edition by signing in to their accounts.

Related Books

Stephen Crane: Prose & Poetry LOA N°18

William Dean Howells: Novels 1886–1888 LOA N°44

William Dean Howells: Novels 1875–1886 LOA N°8

Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, Twelve Men LOA N°36

Theodore Dreiser: An American Tragedy LOA N°140

Library of America

CURATOR

A champion of America’s great writers and timeless works, Library of America guides readers in finding and exploring the exceptional writing that reflects the nation’s history and culture.

Learn More

PUBLISHER

From poetry, novels, and memoirs to journalism, crime writing, and science fiction, the more than 300 volumes published by Library of America are widely recognized as America’s literary canon.

Browse our books Subscribe

NON-PROFIT

With contributions from donors, Library of America preserves and celebrates a vital part of our cultural heritage for generations to come.

Support our mission

Frank Norris: Novels & Essays

Related Books

Get 10% off your first Library of America purchase.