Download or read book Frank Norris written by Joseph R. McElrath and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in Chicago in 1870, Frank Norris led a life of adventure and art. He moved to San Francisco at fifteen, spent two years in Paris painting, and returned to San Francisco to become an internationally famous author. He died at age thirty-two from a ruptured appendix. During his short life, he wrote an inspired series of novels about the United States coming of age. The Octopus was a prescient warning about the threat of monopolies, and The Pit exposed the intrigues and dirty dealings at the Chicago grain exchange. Extensively reprinted, Norris's works have also found their way into popular consciousness through film (Erich von Stroheim's Greed), and even an opera based on his portrait of the huge, dumb, and murderous dentist, McTeague.Interest in this dynamic writer was wide and sustained, but Frank Norris and his family did biographers no favours. Norris burned most of his correspondence, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire devoured more, and his brother and widow dispersed his surviving papers as gifts. As a result, it was thought impossible to assemble enough material to surpass the single existing biography, published in 1932. Authors Joseph R. McElrath Jr. and Jesse S. Crisler, acknowledged as the leading experts on Norris, have spent have spent over thirty years overcoming these obstacles, devotedly amassing the material necessary to at last fashion a truly full-scale portrait of the artist. Anyone familiar with the breezier existing accounts of the man and hungering for the real story will agree that Frank Norris, A Life was worth the wait.
Download or read book Frank Norris Revisited written by Joseph R. McElrath and published by New York : Twayne Publishers ; Toronto : Maxwell Macmillan Canada ; New York : Maxwell Macmillan International. This book was released on 1992 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The renown Frank Norris attained in his brief lifetime sprang from his compelling--and to many Americans startling--novels about people whose lives have escaped their control and have become grotesquely warped by the confluent forces of hereditary and environment. In the decades after his death in 1902, though, this broad appeal fossilized to some degree, and Norris's Naturalistic novels entered the domain of the literary historian, serving as benchmarks in the genre's evolution. Fortunately for this author of such masterpieces as McTeague (1899), The Octopus (1901), and The Pit (1903), a long-overdue critical interest in his writing materialized in the 1970s, since which time Norris has been regarded as not only an experimenter in many voices and types of writing, but also as a chronicler of a culture in flux. In "revisiting" Frank Norris--and appropriately so as America nears another fin de siecle and reflects on its sociocultural identity--Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., takes as a starting point Warren French's 1962 volume in this series and provides a complementary portrait of the artist. McElrath assesses the spate of relatively recent "historical reconstructions" of Norris's canon and finds a writer who, though at times transcendent in the Naturalistic vein, was pragmatic in his choice of subject matter and "not always grandly serious". It is in part the delight Norris took in parody, McElrath argues, that makes him still so readable. Norris is fittingly remembered as a Literary Naturalist, McElrath concedes, but only if this school of writing is understood as a continuum of the Humanist tradition, not a pseudoscientific aberration. McElrath contends that Norris's questioning of "Whoare we?" and "Where are we going?" puts him in league with Thomas More, Erasmus, Rabelais, and Shakespeare--as well as with Emile Zola, whose novelistic trouncing of Victorian cultural values so influenced Norris's writing. McElrath concurs foremost with estimations of Norris as a touchstone of the changes in art and thought that made the 1890s such a paradoxical decade. Norris kept his finger on America's pulse, McElrath observes--from his luridly thrilling adventure-romance, Moran of the Lady Letty (1898); to Blix (1899), his partially autobiographical contribution to the period's love idylls, in which good young people triumph over adversities to know happiness; to his most widely read novel, McTeague, a frank, post-Darwinian portrait of greed, sexual arousal, brutal violence, and psychopathology among the denizens of society's underside. When Norris died at the age of 32, his contemporaries mourned the loss of, potentially, the Great American Novelist. In his insightful exploration of this complex writer, Joseph McElrath holds a mirror up to the world Norris depicted with such immediacy, and the images we see look much like the America of today.
Download or read book Novels and Essays written by Frank Norris and published by Library of America. This book was released on 1986 with total page 1270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vol. 33.
Download or read book The Pit written by Frank Norris and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like his more famous contemporary Upton Sinclair, American author BENJAMIN FRANKLIN NORRIS, JR. (1870-1902) also highlighted the corruption and greed of corporate monopolies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries... themes that continue to make his work riveting reading more than a century later. The Pit, first published in 1903, is a fictional narrative of the dealing in the Chicago wheat pit, focusing on speculator Curtis Jadwin, who is so addicted to his own greed that it becomes his downfall. The second part of Norris's projected "Trilogy of the Epic of the Wheat," *The Pit is preceded by 1901's The Octopus, also available from Cosimo. (Norris died before he could write the third volume, The Wolf.)
Download or read book Babylon Revisited written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and published by Modernista. This book was released on 2024-02-27 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: »Babylon Revisited« is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, originally published in 1931. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD [1896-1940] was an American author, born in St. Paul, Minnesota. His legendary marriage to Zelda Montgomery, along with their acquaintances with notable figures such as Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway, and their lifestyle in 1920s Paris, has become iconic. A master of the short story genre, it is logical that his most famous novel is also his shortest: The Great Gatsby [1925].
Download or read book The Best Short Stories of Frank Norris written by Frank Norris and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Publishers Weekly: Those who know Norris (1870-1902) through his muckraking novels, The Pit and The Octopus, will be interested in these 14 stories culled by the editors from among more than 60 tales that he published in his brief life. They include strong evidence of Norris's naturalism and his sense of the primal, the healthy, the rural, as opposed to the corrupt, the urban, the effete. In "His Sister," Norris describes a magazine writer "knowing he'd be more apt to find undisguised human nature along the poorer unconventional thoroughfares." In the autobiographical "Dying Fires," he writes of an author: "he lived in the midst of-a life of passions that were often elemental in their simplicity and directness." The gold in "Judy's Service of Gold Plate" foreshadows the use of that element as a symbol for greed in McTeague. In such stories, one anticipates Norris's influence on John Steinbeck. Even in the more journalistic tales, precursors of Jim Thompson-esque noir, Norris's favored themes, particularly of injustice and class consciousness, persist. Three of the stories have never been collected in book form before, including the experimental "Man Proposes," written in five parts for a literary weekly. These somewhat mannered short pieces describe five couples who decide to get married: the ways they come to and act on their decisions reflect their varying social strata and cultural sensibilities.
Download or read book Delphi Complete Works of Frank Norris Illustrated written by Frank Norris and published by Delphi Classics. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 4009 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Regarded as the first important naturalist writer of the United States, Frank Norris wrote modern masterpieces such as ‘McTeague’ and ‘The Octopus’, adopting a humanitarian ideal and utilising the novel as an agent for social betterment. Norris strove to free American fiction from the prevalent historical romance of his times, seeking instead more serious themes, while presenting an authentic and highly readable picture of life in turn of the century California. For the first time in digital publishing, this comprehensive eBook presents Norris’ complete works, with numerous illustrations, informative introductions and a treasure trove of Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Norris’ life and works * Original introductions to the novels and other texts * ALL 7 novels, with individual contents tables * Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts * Excellent formatting of the texts * Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the short stories * Rare short stories from ‘The Wave’ and other periodicals, appearing in digital print for the first time * Easily locate the short stories you want to read * Features the rare verse saga YVERNELLE – available in no other collection * Includes Norris’ non-fiction - spend hours exploring the author’s varied articles and sketches * Special ‘Contextual Pieces’ section, with contemporary articles, reviews and essays evaluating Norris’ works * Features a bonus biography by the author’s brother - discover Norris’ literary life * Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles CONTENTS: The Novels MORAN OF THE “LADY LETTY” MCTEAGUE BLIX A MAN’S WOMAN THE OCTOPUS: A STORY OF CALIFORNIA THE PIT VANDOVER AND THE BRUTE The Shorter Fiction A DEAL IN WHEAT AND OTHER STORIES OF THE NEW AND OLD WEST A JOYOUS MIRACLE THE THIRD CIRCLE AND OTHER STORIES UNCOLLECTED SHORT STORIES The Short Stories LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER The Poetry YVERNELLE The Non-Fiction THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE NOVELIST: AND OTHER LITERARY ESSAYS ARTICLES AND SKETCHES The Contextual Pieces LIST OF ARTICLES, ESSAYS AND REVIEWS The Biography FRANK NORRIS by Charles G. Norris Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles or to purchase this eBook as a Parts Edition of individual eBooks
Download or read book McTeague written by Frank Norris and published by BoD - Books on Demand. This book was released on 2023-06-09 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: McTeague is an enormously strong but dim-witted former miner now working as a dentist in San Francisco towards the end of the nineteenth century. He falls in love with Trina, one of his patients, and shortly after their engagement she wins a large sum in a lottery. All is well until McTeague is betrayed and they fall into a life of increasing poverty and degradation. This novel is often presented as an example of American naturalism where the behavior and experience of characters are constrained by “nature”—both their own heredity nature, and the broader social environment. McTeague was published in 1899 as the first of Norris’s major novels.
Download or read book Ironweed written by William Kennedy and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-12-22 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, basis of the film starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. Francis Phelan, ex-big-leaguer, part-time gravedigger, full-time bum with the gift of gab, is back in town. He left Albany twenty-two years earlier after he dropped his infant son accidentally, and the boy died. Now he's on the way back to the wife and home he abandoned, haunted at every corner by the ghosts of his violent life. Francis; his wino ladyfriend of nine years, Helen; and his stumblebum pal, Rudy, shuffle their ragtag way through the city's bleakest streets, surviving on gumption, muscatel, and black wit. estiny is not their business. 'The premise of Ironweed was so unpromising, that in marketing terms the writer still to this day finds it funny: the story of a bunch of itinerant alcoholics, knocking around Kennedy's hometown, falling out, having visions, trying to pass for sober to cadge a bed for the night in the homeless shelter.' Guardian 'But for all the rich variety of prose and event, from hallucination to bedrock realism to slapstick and to blessed quotidian peace, ''Ironweed'' is more austere than its predecessors. It is more fierce, but also more forgiving.' Quoted from the classic New York Times review of Ironweed, which made it an overnight sensation.
Download or read book McTeague written by Frank Norris and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a reissue of the previous 'World's classics' edition in the new, larger format and with the series name changed to 'Oxford world's classics'.
Download or read book A Companion to the American Short Story written by Alfred Bendixen and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-08-24 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Octopus written by Frank Norris and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on an actual bloody dispute in 1880 between wheat farmers and the Southern Pacific Railroad, this tale of greed, betrayal, and a lust for power is played out during the waning days of the western frontier.
Download or read book The Complete Idiot s Guide to American Literature written by Laurie E. Rozakis and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1999 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at American authors from Washington Irving to John Updike and provides brief biographical sketches, excerpts and summaries of major works, and explanations of major literary movements
Download or read book Combating Injustice written by Jon Falsarella Dawson and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2022-05-04 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Combating Injustice, Jon Falsarella Dawson approaches American literary naturalism as a means of social criticism, exploring the powerful economic arguments and commentaries on labor struggles presented in novels by Frank Norris, Jack London, and John Steinbeck. Making use of extensive archival research, Dawson considers many of the original periodical sources that fueled books from McTeague to The Grapes of Wrath, as Norris, London, and Steinbeck transformed contemporary materials into illustrations of the socioeconomic forces that shape American life. By depicting the operations of powerful individuals and institutions, these naturalist writers offered audiences a greater awareness of the plight of labor so that readers might find the inspiration to become agents of change. Works such as The Octopus, The Iron Heel, Martin Eden, and In Dubious Battle illuminate many of the central economic issues at play in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including the rise of commodity culture, labor disputes involving industrial and agricultural workers, widespread poverty, extreme inequality, and the concentration of resources and land ownership. Norris, London, and Steinbeck highlighted the dangers of these developments by charting their impact on central characters whose fates result from the predatory tactics of corporate monopolies, wealthy individuals, and large financial establishments. Dawson’s lucid analysis shows how all three writers, drawing on contemporary events, accentuated the need for reform and stressed the potential for change by human action. Each author took inspiration from notable events in California, ranging from the Mussel Slough tragedy of 1880 to the agricultural strikes in the Central Valley during the 1930s, presenting the state as a microcosm for conditions throughout the nation during a period of tremendous upheaval. Combating Injustice: The Naturalism of Frank Norris, Jack London, and John Steinbeck provides carefully contextualized readings of three major writers whose works express both the necessity for and the possibility of creating a more egalitarian society.
Download or read book A Man s Game written by John Dudley and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2004-04-08 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonstrates how concepts of masculinity shaped the aesthetic foundations of literary naturalism A Man’s Game explores the development of American literary naturalism as it relates to definitions of manhood in many of the movement’s key texts and the aesthetic goals of writers such as Stephen Crane, Jack London, Frank Norris, Edith Wharton, Charles Chestnutt, and James Weldon Johnson. John Dudley argues that in the climate of the late 19th century, when these authors were penning their major works, literary endeavors were widely viewed as frivolous, the work of ladies for ladies, who comprised the vast majority of the dependable reading public. Male writers such as Crane and Norris defined themselves and their work in contrast to this perception of literature. Women like Wharton, on the other hand, wrote out of a skeptical or hostile reaction to the expectations of them as woman writers. Dudley explores a number of social, historical, and cultural developments that catalyzed the masculine impulse underlying literary naturalism: the rise of spectator sports and masculine athleticism; the professional role of the journalist, adopted by many male writers, allowing them to camouflage their primary role as artist; and post-Darwinian interest in the sexual component of natural selection. A Man’s Game also explores the surprising adoption of a masculine literary naturalism by African American writers at the beginning of the 20th century, a strategy, despite naturalism's emphasis on heredity and genetic determinism, that helped define the black struggle for racial equality
Download or read book The Undergraduate s Companion to American Writers and Their Web Sites written by Larry G. Hinman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2000-12-15 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An outstanding research guide for undergraduate students of American literature, this best-selling book is essential when it comes to researching American authors. Bracken and Hinman identify and describe the best and most current sources, both in print and online, for nearly 300 American writers whose works are included in the most frequently used literary anthologies. Students will know exactly what information is available and where to find it.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of the American Novel written by Abby H. P. Werlock and published by Infobase Learning. This book was released on 2015-04-22 with total page 3854 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praise for the print edition:" ... no other reference work on American fiction brings together such an array of authors and texts as this.
