by Frank Norris
These recollections have their only justification in the evidence that they afford of the influence of the works of Frank Norris over young and vigorous minds, and may serve to introduce a few general considerations that arose from several lively discussions with regard to his merits. The influence of Zola and the other so-called French realists upon Norris in his middle phase, as shown in McTeague, is so obvious that it is worth pointing out the direction of that influence. The true realists, those who have depicted life as it really is and men and women as they really are, can hardly include Zola and his like among their number. Wealth of detail, got up with all the care of a man of science collecting and tabulating his observations, especially when the machinery of observation is plainly revealed, does not give the effect of reality, still less does it portray the truth. Painstaking as Zola, to use the most famous of these French realists for the whole school, ever showed himself to be, the obviousness of his preparation and the artificiality of his combination of the details he had laboriously acquired take away all sense of reality. The true realists, whose books are as convincing of the truth of their portraits and their scenes as the most artistic photographs, introduce their detail so naturally that it is not until the effect is analyzed that the touches of truth are seen to be in the perfection of the details themselves. De Foe and Jane Austen, for instance, are far truer realists than Zola, though they make no such parade of carefully studied detail. Frank Norris was for a time a pseudo-realist of the Zola type, but even in McTeague the resemblance is not complete, while in The Octopus the natural genius of the author has almost entirely surmounted the search after unnecessary minuteness of detail. In this latter book, as in some of his earlier stories, he approaches more nearly to Kipling’s method, the method which implies sometimes by a single word an immense knowledge of detail while refusing to obtrude that knowledge. It may be that the influence of Zola was no bad thing in the evolution of the young writer’s method, for it must be remembered that training in minute observation is as necessary for the novelist who would tell the truth as for the man of science, and the oft-told story of Flaubert’s careful training of Guy de Maupassant illustrates the need of such an experience before an author truly finds himself. But Frank Norris had graduated from this school in his later works, and was clearly showing at the last that he was no longer an apprentice but a master worker.
In the construction of his novels Norris shows that he had caught one of the most remarkable phases in Zola’s art, and it was probably an intimate sympathy between his dramatic love of basing his stories upon the repeated influence of some particular central field of observation that led to his peculiar affinity to Zola’s methods. The one marked feature of all Zola’s books as apart from their oppressive detail is the way in which he works from and to his central field of observation. The descriptions of the markets in Le Ventre de Paris, of the Bourse in L’Argent, of the low-class drinking place in L’Assommoir, occur readily to the memory of all readers of Zola’s novels, and the way in which Norris handles the dentist’s office in McTeague and Annixter’s ranch in The Octopus is strikingly like the method of the French master. There is no indication here, and it is a pure surmise, that the delight of the young American in one artistic feature of Zola’s work may have led him under the influence of the less admirable practices of the French novelist during the period of apprenticeship. The opening chapters of Norris’s last book, The Pit, which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, led up naturally to a picture of the Chicago wheat pit in which the great scene in L’Argent is rivalled.
The criticism was made during the lifetime of Frank Norris and has been made in most of the summaries of his work that have appeared since his death, that he was led toward the unpleasant themes of his novels by a belief that realism meant brutality of subject and of description. It is possible indeed that affinity with what was most artistic in Zola’s method above mentioned may have led him in his middle period to the unpleasant subjects in McTeague and A Man’s Woman, but that he had no absorbing love for the coarse or the hideous is clearly shown in such later works as The Octopus and The Pit. It is a common error to suppose that the name realist applied to the French writers of the school of Zola refers to their subjects rather than to their treatment of them, for Zola’s attraction towards the unlovely grew rather from the nature of the topics that he preferred to treat. Had Norris not been spared to write The Octopus and The Pit it is possible that his critics might have been justified in declaring him the disciple of the French realists in what was worst in the matter of their stories as well as in an approach to their method, but his later work showed that such books as McTeague were not the limit of Norris’s aspirations. It is not necessary to go into the age-long argument as to whether vigor of style can gild a repellant subject, for the works of Norris’s latest phase show clearly enough an admiration for what is good and beautiful.
The form that this appreciation has taken has been based on the many discussions upon Norris in which, as was said in an earlier paragraph, the debate turned rather upon Norris as the American writer of genius most akin to the French so-called realistic school, than upon his place in literature apart from this special consideration. Something needs to be said, however, from the general point of view. The most striking feature in the progress of his work was the growing breadth of his conceptions of the sphere of his art. His last notion of writing a trilogy of wheat had something grandiose about it. He was no miniature painter, desirous of producing his effects by the minuteness of his workmanship, and it may not be wholly fanciful to see in him a reaction from the exquisite miniature effects successfully followed by such writers as Miss Mary E. Wilkins. The reaction against the perfection of minute work which had been steadily developing through Henry James and W. D. Howells has on the one side showed itself in the blood-splashed canvasses of Winston Churchill and Miss Mary Johnston, but in nothing so clearly as in the work to which Mr. Norris devoted his latest days. Throughout The Octopus there is a sense of breadth and it is not to be doubted that The Pit will give the over-powering sense of bigness which hangs about the transactions of Chicago, as the earlier novel did about the vast wheat fields of the San Joaquin Valley. From this point of view it would be conventional to say that the prevailing sense of great size which permeates Norris’s latest work is due to his being a Western writer, just as the more restricted life of New England may be held partly answerable for the prevailing tone of the New England writers. It is easy to generalise after this fashion, for the future alone can show the truth or falsity of such generalisations, and it is more to the point to dwell upon the real vastness of Norris’s ideals than to speculate on their origin. Owen Wister alone among modern American writers shows this prominent characteristic and in his case despite birth in Philadelphia. The likeness between the two might be pushed yet further, and it is not too much to say that since Frank Norris is gone, Owen Wister alone is left to realise in the future among men at present writing that sense of giant size which is so characteristic in all the fields of American politics and American enterprise.
Can it be said that Frank Norris shows in his work any special characteristic due to his life in California? That the scenes of his most famous novels were laid in California does not meet the question. The influence of provincialism in modern American literature is to be seen on every side. The Indiana authors seem to be building a little hall of fame for themselves — in Indiana; the New England writers have long prided themselves on their fidelity to special New England standards; the South is priding itself on the birth of the new Southern literature; most States have their favorite sons in literature as well as in politics. Local patriotism may be a very good thing, but exaggerated local patriotism is gross provincialism. Now Norris was far from being a product of California in this restricted sense; no one felt or described the special charm of California scenery or California life better than he; but in no degree was he so enslaved by his native State that he could not see the larger things that make hu
manity. His residence in Paris, most cosmopolitan of cities, may have had some influence in widening his point of view and in preventing him from bounding his vision by purely local limits, and yet California has a right to be proud of him as one of her sons although he had the courage to look beyond her. Local critics might have the right to comment upon his special aptitude in describing Californian scenes or Californian life, but to the present writer one of the striking things that proves the greatness of our loss in losing Norris is the fact that in him California had a son who could appreciate her and yet see that she was but a part of a larger world. Though the first part of his trilogy of wheat was devoted to the California wheat fields, his subject is even there treated upon the larger scale, and it was an integral part of his purpose to follow up his first act in California with the second act in Chicago and the third in some European or Asiatic country. It is fascinating to note the part California has already played in American literature and how much that is not provincially Californian or even American she has inspired in modern literature. The living quality of Bret Harte’s best work was due to more than the fact that its scenes were laid in California mining camps; the poems of Edward Rowland Sill, even when confessedly the outcome of Californian surroundings, deal with the larger problems of human life; and Frank Norris, Californian though he was, had attained unto the greater breadth of view and thus won a place in the larger world of literature.
In a periodical published by the University of California an appreciation of Frank Norris’ s work written by a member of its faculty might be expected to say something of the part taken by the University in moulding the character and career of its brilliant son. And this topic might have been fairly treated by some one of those professors who had Frank Norris in their classes. His student life was adequately dealt with in the last number of the UNIVERSITY CHRONICLE by one of his student friends, and it would have been more fitting if one of the older professors had from the personal side undertaken the task which has here been attempted. But as was said in the opening paragraph, it was thought better by the editor to leave the duty of appreciating his work to one who had never known him. This duty has now been fulfilled, in how halting a way the writer well knows, and he can best conclude by voicing the special grief of the University of California, and adding her lament over the lost son from whose early promise she expected so full a fruition, to the universal sorrow of all lovers of literature, not only in California but on both sides of the Atlantic and wherever the English language is read, at the untimely and abrupt quenching of so fair a promise of future fame.
From: The Bellman, Volume VII, No. 157, July 17, 1909, p.862-863
“Studio Sketches of a Novelist”
By: Randolph Edgar
“Don’t write a colonial novel. Don’t write a Down East novel. Don’t write a Prisoner of Zenda novel. Don’t write a novel. Try to keep your friends from writing novels.” – From “The Volunteer Manuscript,” by Frank Norris.
The author of these lines of advice, had he lived to reach the full development of his powers, undoubtedly would have attained a position among the greatest of American novelists. For this reason, his “Third Circle,” a posthumous collection of short stories and sketches, is of a peculiar value, since in its sixteen tales one can trace the unfolding of his mental qualities and gradually see them increasing in force and clarity. In nearly every one can be seen those powers f close observation and vivid rendering that made distinctive his later works.
Frank Norris, it will be recalled, died seven years ago, a comparatively young man, preparing what in all probability would have been his masterpiece. Despite his untimely end before he had remotely approached the maturity of his powers, he had realized in fiction, as no one had yet done, the Western type. Bret Harte had drawn the pioneer, but that generation had passed away to be succeeded by the capitalist, the railroad builder, the speculator, the journalist and even the poet and painter. And each of these types in the peculiar guise of our new Western civilization, Norris had embodied in his brilliant and realistic stories.
Altogether the list of his works, including novels, poems, short stories and essays, numbers over a hundred, only one quarter of which has, until the recent publishing of “The Third Circle,” found its way into book form. “The Third Circle” is composed almost entirely of Norris’s earliest work written for such papers as the San Francisco Wave and the Argonaut. They are, with a few exceptions, taken from life in San Francisco, though one of the most notable of the collection, “Son of a Sheik,” written by Norris while yet a student in the University of California, has for its hero a son of the desert who, having received an education in Europe, has become cultivated and civilized. In a moment of stress he stands forth stripped of his education, his untamed fighting spirit aroused and the battle-cry of his race leaping unbidden to his lips.
In the brief preface, which is a pleasing tribute to Frank Norris’s genius, Will Irwin writes: “It used to be my duty as sub-editor of the old San Francisco Wave to ‘put the paper to bed.’ We were printing a Seattle edition in those days of the gold rush and the last form had to be locked up on Tuesday night, that we might reach the news stands by Friday. Working short-handed, as all small weeklies do, we were everlastingly late with copy or illustrations or advertisements; and that Tuesday usually stretched itself out into Wednesday. Most often, indeed, the foreman and I pounded in the last quoin at four or five o’clock Wednesday morning and went home with the milk wagons — to rise at noon and start next week’s paper going. For Yelton, most patient and cheerful of foremen, those Tuesday night sessions meant steady work. I, for my part, had only to confer with him now and then on a ‘caption’ or run over a late proof. In the heavy intervals of waiting I killed time and gained instruction by reading the back files of the Wave, and especially that part of the files which preserved the early, prentice work of Frank Norris. It was a surprising study of the novelist in the making. ‘The studio sketches of a great novelist,’ Gillett Burgess had called these ventures and fragments. Burgess and I, when the Wave finally died of too much merit, stole into the building and took away one set of old files. A harmless theft of sentiment we told ourselves. When we had them safe at home we spent a night running over them marveling again at these rough creations of blood and nerve which Norris had made out of that city which was the first love of his wakened intelligence, and in which, so woefully soon afterward, he died.”
Mr. Irwin compares this work of Frank Norris to a complete collection of Rembrandt’s early sketches, the full technique and co-ordination is not yet developed but all the basic force and vision is there. “The Third Circle” affords the reader an incomparable study of the way a genius takes to find himself.
From: Overland Monthly, Volume LX, No. 6, December 1912, p.533-534
“A Lesson from Frank Norris”
By: Harry M. East, Jr.
Today Frank Norris is known mostly as the author of two novels, “The Pit” and
“The Octopus— “the epics of the wheat,” as they have been fittingly described. Of the man himself, what he was, what he stood for, the present generation of readers know little and care less. Why should they care? Norris showed promise — yes; and some of his work is still readable, but why consider him at this late day?
There were certain sterling qualities in Norris’ character that make him a man worth considering and remembering. Such a claim to distinction does not come wholly from the books which he wrote. It comes rather from the high principles and ideals in life and in literature that he championed. When a man has faith in himself and in his fellow men he is bound to exert a good and lasting influence. Such a faith had Frank Norris.
A few people still remember him, and lest you think that I am writing in extravagant eulogy, listen to those who knew him well: “He was a hero to us all in those days,” said Will Irwin, “as he will ever remain a heroic memory — that unique product of our Western soil, killed for some hidden reason of the gods before the full tim
e of bloom.” “The far-seeing eyes, the sensitive mouth, and the artistic hands of Frank Norris,” is Jeannette Gilder’s delineation.
He was young, enthusiastic, serious and conscientious. Too serious, perhaps. Certainly a greater sense of humor would have taken him safely over many a bald place in his work.
For a young man he was a cosmopolitan. He saw San Francisco, “the third circle” — as he called it — of that city before the great fire. He had a spirit of the vagabond in him, and journeyed to Africa and Europe, writing many descriptive articles of those places. In fact, he had a journalist’s sense of what is interesting, unique and colorful in human nature and in Dame Nature. That was in 1896, when so many picturesque phases of life and types of men and women were in old San Francisco town. These he described with a sympathetic insight into character; crude at times, but quite remarkable, nevertheless, for one so young. Then San Francisco was a city of mystery and romance, grewsome and weird, with the spell of the mystic Chinaman; the adventure of the robust, swaggering, heroic air of the miner from the Klondike; the careless freedom of the Bohemian artist and poet, ever making itself felt. It was a city where things happened, and Norris saw it all in his own way. To the San Francisco Wave he contributed most of his early work, while the Chronicle, the Argonaut, Overland Monthly, and others printed his short stories and articles. A few titles are suggestive of those stirring times which are now past history: “Hunting Human Game,” “The Passing of Little Pete,” “Types of Western Men,” “The Wife of Chino,” and “The Third Circle.”