McTeague - (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Frank Norris (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

McTeague is the story of a poor dentist scraping by in San Francisco at the end of the 19th century, and his wife Trina, whose $5,000 lottery winning sets in motion a shocking chain of events. Few works have captured the seamy side of American urban life with such graphic intensity.

From the Back Cover

McTeague (1899) chronicles the demise of a San Francisco couple at the end of the nineteenth century. Inspired by an actual crime that was sensationalized in the San Francisco papers, it tells the story of charlatan dentist McTeague, his wife Trina, and their spiralling descent into moral corruption. Norris is often considered to be the 'American Zola', and this is one of the most purely naturalistic American novels of the nineteenth century. With its compelling portrayal of human nature at its most basic level, McTeague is a gripping and passionate tale of greed, degeneration, and death. It is also one of the first major works of literature to be set in California, and it provided the story for Erich von Stroheim's classic of the silent screen, Greed.

Review Quotes

"One of the great works of the modern American imagination."--Alfred Kazin

About the Author

Alfred Kazin (1915-1998) was one of the most distinguished literary critics of the twentieth century. His numerous books include the highly acclaimed On Native Ground: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature.