Norris, Frank. (1870 - 1902).
W o r k
- a naturalist and critical realist
< influenced by Emile Zola > his early determination to portray life with a photography-like fidelity
< Social Darwinism > his conviction individuals must be sacrificed to the ongoing inevitable human progress
M a s t e r p i e c e s :
- the masterpieces he failed to published in the 1890s
McTeague (1899):
- an amateur San Francisco dentist experiences a sexual awakening and marries his patient x but: his wife becomes a greedy monster and he kills her in emotion
- attempts to escape from his guilt and dies in a desert
- the rather bombastic conclusion contributed to the success of a film version (called Greed, 1924)
- greed, lust, rage, and envy = no longer sins x but: inherited traits
=> McTeague = a victim of determinism by heredity
Vandover and the Brute (1914):
- a physical and mental decay of a man allowing for his brutish impulses to master him
P o p u l a r F i c t i o n :
- pieces to satisfy popular taste and win audience for his next achievement
Moran of the Lady Letty (1898):
- Moran = an ‘amazon’, comes to master the crew of her father’s ship after her his death
Blix (1899):
- a partly autobiographical love-story
A Man's Woman (1900)
‘ T h e E p i c o f t h e W h e a t ’ :
- the unfinished trilogy ‘The Epic of the Wheat’
The Octopus (1901):
- concerned with the production of grain
- based on an actual issue: California wheat farmers x the Southern Pacific Railroad
- the author remains detached from the object of his study x but: includes a symbolic incident when the wheat buries the entrepreneur who gained it by unsound methods when it is being loaded by a machine on a ship
The Pit (1903):
- concerned with the commercial marketing of grain
- based on the speculation of the Chicago stock market
The Wolf (unfinished):
- would have been concerned with the world-wide distribution of grain
Basics
(Source: Wikimedia Commons).
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Author
(Benjamin) Frank(lin) Norris. (1870 - 1902). American. -
Work
Novelist. Author of "The Epic of the Wheat". -
Genres
Realism. Naturalism. Social novel.
Literature
Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995.
Bercovitch, Sacvan, ed. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Cunliffe, Marcus. The Literature of the United States. London: Penguin, 1991.
Lauter, Paul, ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1994.
McQuade, Donald, gen.ed. The Harper American Literature. New York: Harper & Collins, 1996.
Ruland, Richard, Malcolm Bradbury. Od puritanismu k postmodernismu. Praha: Mladá fronta, 1997.
Vančura, Zdeněk, ed. Slovník spisovatelů: Spojené státy americké. Praha: Odeon, 1979.
Quote
"'Legitimate profit, legitimate profit', he broke out. 'Can we raise wheat at a legitimate profit with a tariff of four dollars a ton for moving it two hundred miles to tide-water, with wheat at eighty-seven cents? Why not hold us up with a gun in our faces, and say, "hands up", and be done with it'"?
From The Octopus (1901).