by Frank Norris
To such an earnest, eager man like Norris it was inevitable that something of his spirit should reveal itself in his work, no matter how hasty some of it was, and how short much of it fell of perfection. There was something at once noble and pathetic in his effort to express “whatever he had seen with the eye of the flesh, or the eye of his imagination.” You can read between the lines in his great consuming, feverish desire to write something actually worth while, something distinctive that should endure. His mental straining to express himself is apparent in almost everything that he wrote. The conscientious wish for distinctive utterance is a first characteristic sign of true genius.
He stuttered, he faltered, but he developed. He was no quitter. In those robust days, men were fearless, and Frank Norris had the courage of his convictions. In fact, it was the Puritan conscientiousness of Frank Norris that made him different and more worthy of being known than a whole mob of authors who look upon writing merely as a business transaction. Norris was a gentleman. He was always polite and considerate for the welfare of others. For instance, instead of calling a certain prize fighter “Lanky Bob,” Norris politely referred to him .as “Mr. Robert Fitzsimmons,” and the author of “The Pit” was once a journalist!
The best phase of Norris’ character is revealed perhaps more in his few later essays than in his short stories and novels. In the essays — especially that group in “The Responsibilities of the Novelist” — the man speaks out honestly, boldly, eloquently. Here he is Norris, the thinker, with the dreamer in him coming to the surface occasionally. Here we see what he was, what he stood for. It is from this broad viewpoint that we should judge him to-day.
“Not failure, but low aim, is crime.”
Norris aimed high. He was ambitious to write good stories and novels. Perhaps he fondly dreamed that he would write “The Great American Novel.” In “The Pit” and “The Octopus” he approached greatness, and when these books appeared, many people had hopes that he would ultimately “turn the trick.” Had he lived, who can tell what wonders he might not have achieved? Undoubtedly he showed plenty of promise.
Frank Norris’ message, as revealed in his later essays, was: “Be worthy of the great responsibilities of your profession. ‘Art for art’s sake’ is the true reward of the novelist.” Read his simple, glowing words at the conclusion of “The True Reward of the Novelist”: “‘I never truckled; I never took off the hat to Fashion and held it out for pennies. By God, I told them the truth. They liked it or they didn’t like it. What had that to do with me? I told them the truth; I knew it for the truth, and I know it for the truth now.’ And that is his reward — the best that a man may know; the only one really worth striving for.” This was exactly what Norris was “striving for,” and he told the truth as he saw it.
As an essayist he was at his best in “The Story Tellers vs. Novelists.” This little paper is replete with a fine beauty, and a simple, sincere eloquence that is highly suggestive to both the reader and the writer of fiction. Listen to these tender, gracious words: “Whatever the end of fiction may be, whatever the reward and recompense bestowed, whatever object is gained by good work, the end will not be gained, nor the reward won, nor the object attained by force alone — by strength of will or mind. Without the auxiliary of the little playmate of the old days, the great doors that stand at the end of the road will stay forever shut. Look once, however, with the child’s eyes, or for once touch the mighty valves with the child’s hand, and Heaven itself lies open, with all its manifold wonders.
“So that in the end, after all trial has been made and every expedient tested, the simplest way is the best and the humblest means the surest. A little child stands in the midst of the wise men and the learned, and their wisdom and their learning are set aside, and they are taught that unless they become as one of these they shall in nowise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Frank Norris will perhaps be forgotten, except for a pleasant, lingering memory, which may also pass away when those who knew him are no more. Jeannette Gilder said: “He never wrote carelessly, and he never wrote a line without a thought in it.” Here is a fine lesson from the life of Frank Norris that the modern author would do well to emulate if he would achieve true success in literature.
From: The Bookseller and Stationer, V. XIX, No. 3, March 1903, p.50
“The Author of To-day – The Late Frank Norris”
It is much to be deplored that Frank Norris did not live to enjoy the fame which his last book “The Pit” secured for him. “McTeague,” The Octopus” and his other books had all been well received, but they were in great measure immature and the failed to earn for him that universal approbation which “The Pit” called forth. To-day this important work takes rank among the most sought-after books, not only in Canada, but in the United States.
It is now four months and a half since Frank Norris died in San Francisco at the early age of 32 years. Sufficient time has elapsed for the mere sentimental grief at the death of one so young and so promising to have passed away. His work, incomplete as it is, can now be judged calmly for what it is worth.
Norris left Chicago for California at the age of 14. After spending three years there, he went abroad and studied art at Paris. Then he returned to California and spent four years at the university. His college course was rounded out by a year spent at Harvard, from whence he graduated in 1895. On his return to California he accepted the post of an assistant editor on The San Francisco Wave. For this paper he acted as special correspondent to South Africa at the time of the Jameson Raid. Later he served as war correspondent for McClure’s Magazine in Cuba, and on his return to New York he was made a reader for the Doubleday & McClure Company. Though he had written some fiction before this, notably “McTeague,” it was only now that he set himself seriously to the work of writing. The inspiration which set on foot the “Epic of the Wheat,” came to him shortly afterwards and “The Octopus” was the first fruits of his toil. This has been followed by “The Pit,” and it, in turn, was to have been followed by “The Wolf,” dealing with the problem of consumption in the countries of Europe. The novelist had been making extensive plans for the production of this work, when death came. He had purchased a ranch in California, where he was to have done his writing, and he had planned a journey to Europe to secure his material. However, all was in vain, and the projected novel was doomed never to see the light.
Norris, the man, was a lovable character. Kindliness and good-humor were never absent from his disposition. The finely-chiseled, boyish face, with its contrasting crown of white hair, inspired confidence in all with whom he came into contact. Sincerity was his personal habit as well as his literary creed, and no author ever wrote less for fame and more for truth than he. No difficulties, save those of lack of confidence, ever worried him, and no one ever heard an irritable word from his mouth. He was a frank and earnest seeker after truth.
From: The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, V.14, James T. White & Co., 1910, p.347
NORRIS, Frank, author, was born in Chicago, Ill., Mar. 5, 1870, son of Benjamin Franklin and Gertrude G. (Doggett) Norris. He studied art in the Julien Academy in Paris from 1887 to 1889, and literature at the University of California (1890-94) and at Harvard (1894-95). His first book, “Yvernelle,” a three canto poem of medieval France, was published in 1891. In 1890 the San Francisco “Chronicle” sent him to South Africa, where he was at the time of the Jameson raid. He enlisted in the British cavalry for the defense of Johannesburg and on the failure of the raid was ordered out of the Transvaal by the Boer government. In 1896 and 1897 he was connected with the San Francisco “Wave.” In 1898 he was sent by the Doubleday, McClure Co., of New York, to Cuba as a war correspondent, his articles appearing later in the “Century Magazine,” and in the same year attracted the attention of the literary’ public with a powerful realistic novel entitled “ McTeague.” In a review of this work the Washington “Times” said: “Since Bret Harte no one has written of California life
with the vigor and accuracy of Frank Norris, and the best of it is that he is not in the least like Bret Harter or very much like anyone but himself.” In 1899 appeared “Moran of the Lady Letty,” a story of the adventures of a shanghaied hero and a trousered ship-steering heroine with piratical outlaws off the California coast. In this, the author demonstrated his ability to draw characters, to create an atmosphere, and to hold the reader’s interest without interruption. “Blix” followed in 1900 and “A Man’s Woman” in 1901. The motive of the latter is the conflict of the ambitions of a man and woman each with a settled purpose and determination in life. In this case the man’s work in the world was the heroic task of Arctic exploration, affording many dramatic situations. Mr. Norris now planned a trilogy of novels, narrating consecutively “the epic of the wheat.” The first of the series was “The Octopus” (1901), dealing with an incident known in California as the “Mussel Slough Affair,” which was based mainly on fact. The story ends with one of the most striking and dramatic illustrations of “poetic justice” in literature, the oppressor’s vain struggle for life in a whirlpool of wheat in the hold of a wheat schooner. The second story of his trilogy is entitled “The” Pit,” and appeared posthumously in 1902. Its subject is gambling in wheat on the produce exchange of Chicago, and, its motive is the death grip which the fascination of speculation has upon its victims. “The hero,” says the “Arena,” “becomes as much a slave of the ‘pit’ as man ever becomes of drink, of opium, of the hallucinations of well-defined insanity. Seldom has the essential evil of stock gambling been more vividly portrayed than in this work. Barring Zola’s great novel entitled ‘Money,’ which is also concerned with stock gambling, we know of nothing in contemporaneous fiction more impressive than this work.” The last volume of the trilogy was never produced owing to Norris’ untimely death. His short stories and essays were subsequently collected and published in separate volumes entitled “A Deal in White” and “The Responsibilities of the Novelist,” respectively. The interest in his work was so keen that a demand for his earlier work in the San Francisco “Wave” (all the files of which were destroyed in the fire of 1900), induced a publisher to bring out in 1909 a collection of his short stories hitherto unpublished in book form, with the title “The Third Circle.” Since Norris fully lived up to his ideal of the function of a novelist, it is proper that this ideal should be here presented in final judgment of his work. “The people,” he said, “have a right to the truth as they have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is not right that they be exploited and deceived with false views of life, false characters, false sentiment, false morality, false history, false philosophy, false emotions, false heroism, false notions of self-sacrifice, false views of religion of duty, of conduct, of manners.” “Therefore,” he concludes, “the author should address himself to his task with earnestness, with soberness, with a sense of his limitations, and with all the abiding sincerity that by the favor and mercy of the gods may be his.” Mr. Norris was married in New York city, Feb. 12, 1899, to Jeanette Williamson Black, of San Francisco, and had one daughter. He died in San Francisco, Cal., Oct. 25, 1902.
From: Neale’s Magazine, V. III, No. 4, June 1914, p.415-418
“An American Zola”
By: Randolph Edgar
The recent discovery of an unpublished novel by Frank Norris, — a discovery that aroused anew the interest of the admirers of that brilliant young Westerner, — makes it timely to write of him now, twelve years after his death. Certainly no writer in the annals of American literature followed quite so consistently the constructive style of Zola and the novelists of his school, yet, in so doing, managed to combine the two rare qualities, — truth and sincerity. One feels instinctively that “veritas,” — even though at times it might be the unpleasant truth, — became his abiding influence. In his “Responsibilities of the Novelist” we read:
“Once more we halt upon the great word, — sincerity, sincerity, and again sincerity. Let the writer attack his…novel with sincerity and he cannot then go wrong. . . . His public may be small, perhaps, but he will have the better reward of the knowledge of a thing well done. Royalties on editions of hundreds of thousands will not pay him more to his satisfaction than that. To make money is not the province of the novelist. If he is the right sort, he has other responsibilities, — heavy ones. He of all men, cannot think only of himself or for himself. And when the last page is written and the ink crusts on the pen point and the hungry presses go clashing after another writer, — the ‘new man’ and the new fashion of the hour, — he will think of the grim, long grind, of the years of his life that he has put behind him, and of his work that he has built up volume by volume, sincere work, telling the truth as he saw it, independent of fashion and the gallery gods, holding to these with gripped hands and shut teeth — he will think of all this then, and he will be able to say: ‘I never truckled; I never took off the hat to Fashion and held it out for pennies. By God! I told them the truth. They liked it or they didn’t like it. What had that to do with me? I told them the truth; I knew it for the truth then, and I know it for the truth now.’ And that is his reward, — the best that a man may know; the only one worth the striving for.”
Frank Norris was born in Chicago in I870. On the 25th of October, 1902, while engaged in the preparation of the work that would in all probability have been his masterpiece, he died in San Francisco.
Despite his untimely end, before he had even remotely approached the maturity of his powers he had realized in fiction the Western type, — realized it as had no other writer. Bret Harte had drawn the pioneer, it is true; but the generation of the pioneer had passed away, to be succeeded by a new generation in which were to be found the capitalist, the railroad builder, the giant farmer, the speculator, the journalist, even the poet and painter. And each of these types, in the peculiar guise of our new Western civilization, Norris has embodied in his brilliant and realistic stories.
Norris, having come to San Francisco at an early age with his parents, was graduated from the San Francisco High School in 1887, and afterward went to Paris to study art. While there he wrote for various American papers a series of articles dealing with student life in Paris. Returning to America in I890, he entered the University of California, and while still a freshman there his first story of any importance,— “The Son of the Sheik,” — was published.
The story tells of a son of the desert, who, having received his education in Europe, had put on culture and civilization. In a moment of stress, however, he stands forth stripped of his training, with his untamed fighting spirit aroused, and the battle-cry of his race leaping unbidden to his lips. Rudyard Kipling later developed the idea of this maiden effort of Norris’s in “On the City Wall.”
Having graduated from the University of California in 1894, Frank Norris for a year took post graduate work in the English department of Harvard. Shortly afterward he departed for South Africa to act as war correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, and while there took part in the Jameson raid. During this time he wrote “A Californian in Cape Town.”
His visit terminating in his expulsion by the Boers, he returned to newspaper work in San Francisco, where he now took a position on the staff of The Wave. He remained on that paper for several years, contributing to it editorials, sketches, short stories, and essays.
Shortly after his novelette “Moran of the Lady Letty,” — written while on The Wave, — appeared, Norris left San Francisco and moved to New York, where he joined the editorial force of The World’s Work; but he soon abandoned magazine work and devoted his entire time to writing novels, the last of which, “The Pit,” was running as a serial in the Saturday Evening Post at the time of his sudden death from appendicitis.
The autumn of I902, — the last days of his life, — Norris spent with his wife and little daughter on his ranch at Gilroy, California, occupying most of his time in preparing the outline of a new book entitled “The Wolf.” The scene of the story wa
s to be laid in Russia, and Norris had contemplated a visit to that country the following spring in order to secure material.
Frank Norris’s first article of any sort,— “Ancient Armour,” — appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, March 31, 1889; and his first book, a long poem entitled “Yvernelle,” was published in 1892 by the Lippincott Company. This “Yvernelle,” a legend of Southern France, — as stirring as it was unusual, — Norris, long after the book had gone out of print, developed in prose, naming the tale “The Riding of Felipe,” and changing the scene to Lower California.
Although “Yvernelle” was Norris’s first published book, “The Third Circle,” which appeared seven years after his death, contained sixteen of his first stories and sketches, many of which had been written a year or so before “Yvernelle.” The greater number of these stories had been written for the San Francisco Wave and Chronicle and are of peculiar value, since in them one can trace the evolution of Norris’s mental qualities and can gradually see them increase in force and clarity. In nearly every story of this collection can be noticed the powers of close observation and vivid rendering that form a distinctive feature of his later works; and together they are like a complete collection of some famous artist’s early studio sketches. The full technique is not developed, but all the force is there, all the insight; and the book is an incomparable study in the making of a novelist.