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5.0 out of 5 stars
McTeague Review, Jun 15 2004
This book begins much like a work by Dreiser or Lewis, but soon turns cynical in a way that can only work if the style is also sneeringly funny. An acknowledgment of that wicked humor is what is missing from many of the other reviews here. The characters are all selfish in their own way rather than truly greedy. (The movie "Greed" took "McTeague" as its inspiration.) They are also grotesques, which allows for the humor to work its magic without alienating us; something keeps us from wholly identifying with them, thus, we don't really feel their pain, but instead shake our heads at their miserable actions, all brought about by deficiencies of character. They want love and happiness and imagine stupidly that it is through wealth that they can achieve or be worthy of such virtues. This is the theme: wealth and security as misplaced substitutes for love and happiness in the modern world. Indeed, the image of gold spins through the novel in various contexts. I am not going to repeat the plot outline because some other reviews here have done that well. When I finished this, I was convinced that it is one of the ten best American novels I have ever read, and that includes a lot of so-called "great" works. However, there is a reason this book is not mentioned in the same breath as "Huckleberry Finn" and "The Great Gatsby." There are truths here that high school teachers would perhaps not want their students to face; namely that acquisitiveness in its extremes can become a rather disturbing mental sickness. In our consumer culture, I think many are made uncomfortable by that possibility. I am reminded of the great Native American chiefs who stated that the pursuit of gold had made white men crazy. I forget who said that an author in his work should be like God in the universe: everywhere present but visible nowhere. This novel reaffirmed that for me after reading so many painfully overwrought-- and overpraised-- postmodernist failures of the last thirty years or so. Agree or not, I won't mention their names: if you've read them, you know what I'm talking about. They're not for me. McTeague is fresh, funny, meaningful, and plot-driven. Would that those qualities returned to contemporary American fiction, and the age of sententiousness, victimization, and "style" over substance would end.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Like a symphony, May 30 2004
To me this first realistic and naturalistic American novel is like a three-movement classical symphony, the first movement (chapters 1 - 12) being a relatively light-hearted Allegro picturing the friendship of McTeague and Marcus and McTeague's marriage to Trina. There would be a few dissonances foreshadowing the events to come. The second movement(chapters 13 - 19), a funeral march, Marcia funebre, would then represent the progressive souring of McTeague's relationship to Trina and his friendship to Marcus, beginning with McTeague's loss of his job as a dentist and ending with the terrible detection of Trina's body by a schoolgirl. A funeral march would express the initial catastrophe as well as the final death appropriately. The last movement (from chapter 20 to the catastrophic end) would be a Prestissimo ghost dance appropriate to the desolate scene of Death Valley, and dying away in pianissimo dissonances....What would I like this music to sound? There is one example I could think of, which is Prokofiev's ballet music to Romeo and Juliet. Everything is there---gaiety, love, hate, catastrophe, fate, death. Unfortunately, no living composer, American or otherwise, seems equal to the task, but perhaps in the future.....
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4.0 out of 5 stars
San Francisco's Greed, May 13 2004
McTeague is Frank Norris's first novel and was published in 1899. It is the tragic story of a man who practices dentistry without a license and marries a girl who won $5000 in a lottery but keeps it all to herself. The first few years of their marriage are pleasant; the only negative thing is that his friendship with Marcus is over. He wanted to marry Trina, McTeague's wife and Marcus' niece, but did not get her. He tells the authorities and then the life of Trina and McTeague goes down. Without ever using money of the $5000 McTeague loses his practice and they grow apart. He starts hitting and abusing her and in the end does the most horrible thing. First she is maimed, later killed. McTeague flees and in off all places Death Valley meets Marcus again. Things can now be settled once and for all..The book, though over a century old, is still very readable. The main theme seems to be greed, in fact a movie was made long ago called Greed, based on this novel. Set in San Francisco everyone is greedy and people even kill for money, everyone is suspicious that they are keeping secrets and are not telling everyone about the money they really possess. Greed leeds in the end to death. Also in Death Valley...
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