Review: "McTeague" by Frank Norris

I can’t imagine the cruel fate that befalls great minds who are ahead of their time, as is the case with Frank Norris and his most famous (if you can even use the term famous) novel McTeague. Reading it, I could not help but look forward to writers as varied as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway to the noir writers who emerged in the 1930’s and whose stories and novels became the basis for one of film’s most thematically rich genres. From the way it is written to the ideas it presents and the memorable scenes of grotesque and frightening human behavior, this novel, published in 1899, is painfully ahead of its time, and despite it being a clear precursor (at the very least) to some of America’s most signifying literature, rarely is he talked about or studied in high school or college English courses. There is a reason for that (which I will get too), but even with some valid points as to why Norris is confined to obscurity, his talent for storytelling, his gift for character and the timelessness of his work makes me believe some recognition in 2018 is overdue. The book begins with the eponymous character sitting alone in his Parlor where he provides dental work for the residents of Polk Street in San Francisco (the idea that this man, who we learn is a brutish slave to his desires could have a job as delicate as a dentist is one of the book’s many brilliant contradictions). He is has few goals and is not much for deep thought, but all that changes when his guileless friend Marcus comes in with his cousin Trina, who McTeague falls madly in love in. But this romance unknowingly spells doom for the couple and a select few of the rich cast of characters that inhabit the orbit of this tragic and disturbing tale. It has a detached quality to it that somehow makes what happens to everyone that much more sad and painful: they are not is much unwilling but unable to overcome their feverish desires and with the expectation of a select few characters, it directly causes their downfall. The book is filled with great set pieces, like the picnic and theater scenes where McTeague meets Trina’s Swedish family, whose dialogue is spelled phonetically, the wedding scene where desires, both romantic and malicious, are thinly veiled behind everyone’s speech, a short quiet scene between Miss Baker and Old Grannis, two people who are McTeague’s neighbors, where they share the book’s sweetest and hopeful moment, to the final scenes in the desert which oddly reminded me of Lovecraft and its infamous denouement. As I said before, Norris is very much out of favor with modern critics for the obvious Anti-Semitism in his fiction, represented here by the character Zerkow, whose greed makes him an almost vampiric character and the book’s most purely evil one. It is an ugly representation for sure and is worth demonizing, but it does not take away from the power of Norris’ novel. If you are looking to read something a bit old but also a bit different, this tragic tale of greed, selfishness and human misery is surely a book worthy of more attention than it is getting. 

Rating: 5/5