by Frank Norris
But the Wheat remained. Untouched, unassailable, undefiled, that mighty world-force, that nourisher of nations, wrapped in Nirvanic calm, indifferent to the human swarms, gigantic, resistless, moved onward in its appointed grooves. Through the welter of blood at the irrigation ditch, through the sham charity and shallow philanthropy of famine relief committees, the great harvest of Los Muertos rolled like a flood from the Sierras to the Himalayas to feed thousands of starving scarecrows on the plains of India.”
And then, at the close of the story, sounds the ringing note of optimism that cheers the theme:
Falseness dies; injustice and oppression in the end of everything fade and vanish away. Greed, cruelty, selfishness, and inhumanity are short-lived; the individual suffers, but the race goes on. Annixter dies, but in a far distant corner of the world a thousand lives are saved. The larger view always and through all shams, all wickedness, discovers the Truth that will, in the end, prevail, and all things, surely, inevitably, resistlessly work together for good.
Such crude, untutored strength of expression as that of Mr. Frank Norris lies open to obvious criticism: he has, to be sure, no charm, no magic touch, but only mass and bulk; his observation is merely that of the man in the street, deliberately carried into greater detail; his vocabulary with all its technicology remains that of the average man, incapable of expressing subtleties with really artistic effect; he never finds just the right word, but with prodigious diligence fumbles for it through sentences of blurred description. In spite of his slovenly manner, however, by converging all his characters with masterly skill upon one focus, he has attained a wonderful kind of force. This force, indeed, may sometimes wrongly be conjured up — as, in the opinion of one reader, is the case in The Octopus — to point the moral of some frivolous or misunderstood theme. But it is always well-intended and wholesome and effective, and generally lies in the right direction.
In the case of Mr. Norris, then, as in the case of Mr. White, naturalism as a temperament modifying the treatment of American life is shown to be a thoroughly natural and justified refinement upon realism. Both writers have at their disposal a method of expression better organised and more powerful than that of the older generation of realists. Whether they can turn it to superior use will depend upon whether Mr. White continues to guard against relapses into uninspired realism, and whether Mr. Norris fulfills the promise of his already successful writings.
From: The Menorah, V. XXXVI, No. 1. January 1904, p.27-31
“The Jew of Frank Norris”
By: Joseph Lebowich
When Frank Norris, essayist and novelist, died, America lost one of its most promising literary forces. Cut down before the bloom of life, Norris, had, nevertheless wrought out sufficient work to stamp him as one of the greatest literary lights of our day. Norris was but thirty-two years when he died, yet within this youth of life, he has given us the powerful, but unfinished, Epic of the Wheat. He had already finished the first two. The Octopus, and The Pit of this Trilogy of the Wheat, and was about to begin on the last link — The Wolf — when his powerful hand was stayed by Death. But Norris had written books before “The Octopus,” and “The Pet,” books of which the world knew but little, but great books nevertheless, books pulsating with the throb of virile truth. And these books, the first offsprings of this wonderful literary genius will live, live as long as their more mature brothers. The Octopus, and The Pit, because they also bite into the life, not your flim-flam life of what we term Society, but into the very heart of our great American people. Norris was a disciple of Zola, a Realist; but he rarely ever allowed his realism to degenerate into Naturalism. Although not possessing the great mastery of detail that the great Frenchman had; Norris, on the other hand, outshone his Master in ingenuity of plot and wealth of imagination Like the French Master, Norris never allowed the Mammon of Wealth to debase the Goddess of his choice — Truth. He always strove hard for the true reward of the novelist, which in his own words, was to 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 now.” Such was the goal, — Truth as he saw it — that Norris strove for with all his great strength. That he reached his goal most of us will concede. But here lies the danger; Norris strove to put down on paper what he thought was the truth. But is it not possible that what Norris thought to be the truth, many of us, would have taken for the untruth. The divinity of Christ is Truth for the devout Catholic, and untruth for the Jew.
Norris tells us that “every novel must do one of these things, it must (1) tell something, (2) show something or (3) prove something.” Continuing he says, “The third, and what we hold to be the best class proves something, draws conclusions from a whole congenes of fames, social tendencies racey impulses, devotes itself not to a study of men but of man.” And the reason we decide upon this last is the highest form of the novel is because that, though setting a great purpose before it as its task, nevertheless includes, and is forced to include, both the other classes.
All of Mr. Norris’s novels conform to his idea of the highest form of novel — the novel with a “purpose.” And perhaps in no one of his novels does the purpose stare the reader so much in the face as in his “McTeague, “A Story of San Francisco.”
“McTeague” is a story of the “common” people of San Francisco and is therefore a story of the “common” people of all nationalities, San Francisco is probably the most cosmopolitan city in this country. There is McTeague, Old Grunner, the Englishman, Supper and Schaulu, the Germans, Miss Baker, Nario Macapa, the Spanish American, and Zerkow, the Polish Jew. The characters are mostly vital, but despite Norris’ dictum that the writer should never really and vitally become interested in his “purpose,” we feel in “McTeague” that the story is subordinate to the “purpose” which the book preaches — the modern curse of Money. We feel that Norris set out with this purpose in view, and chose his characters to represent his “purpose” like the characters in “Everyman.” We can almost follow the train of Norris reasonings as he sat before paper. “I am to write a story; this story must have a purpose; the purpose, the keynote of the novel, shall be the modern curse of Money, the materialism of the American people. But there must be a story, a plot, full of interesting characters as also my readers will not be interested in my ‘purpose.’ But the characters must conform to the ‘purpose.’ Which people are known to be most material, whose eyes bulge from their heads on the sight of gold. Surely the Jew. Presto, must therefore put a Jew in my story.”
This, or something like this, must have been the reasoning of Frank Norris while writing “McTeague,” which although crude, is by all means more virile than either The Octopus or The Pit. The Jew is not the principle character of the book, in fact feels that he is an isolated figure, a manikin brought in to perform his unlife-like gymnastics, absolutely unnecessary to the story as such, but in the mind of Norris of uncalcuable benefit to the “purpose” of the novel. But Zerkow is not a Jew, he is the Jew, for as Norris himself says the true novelist does not denote himself to a “study of men, but of man.” But in treating one character as a type of a class, according to the teachings of Norris, the novelist must be true to that character and to that type. In his McTeague Norris takes Zerkow as a Jew and as the type of the Jew. Is he true to either; is he true to both? Here is the description of Zerkow.
Mona found Zerkow himself in the back room, cooking some sort of a meal over an alcohol stove. Zerkow was a Polish Jew — curiously enough his hair was fiercy red. He was a dry, shrivelled old man of sixty odd. He had those eager, cat-like lips of the covetous ; eyes that had grown keen as those of a lynx from searching amidst muck and debris; and claw-like, prehensile fingers — the fingers of a man who accumulates, but never disburses. It was impossible to look at Zerkow and not know instantly that greed — inordinate, insatiable gree
d — was the dominant passion of the man. He was the man with the rake groping hourly the muckheap of the city for gold, for gold, for gold. It was his dream, his passion; at every instant he seemed to feel the generous solide weight of the crude fat metal in his palms, the glint of it was constantly in his eyes; the jangle of it sang forever in his ears as the jangle of cymbels. This is Zerkow, the Jew. This is Israel with “claw-like, prehensile fingers,” which “accumulates, but never disburses” This is the picture of the Jew, the “Man with the Rake,” groping not for wisdom, virtue and knowledge, but “for gold, for gold, for gold.” “Gold,” cries Norris with his powerful voice, “is the dream, the passion of the Jew.” This is the picture of the Jew, the true picture as he, Norris, saw it. But is it true that thing that has been inculcated into the hearts of the American children, into Norris for one, that the dominant tract of the Jew is his greed “for gold, for gold, for gold.” We, among others, doubt that what Norris thought was the truth, is the truth.
Enough for the type, now for the individual Zerkow. Is he a Polish Jew, is he painted true to life, or is he merely a painted picture? Is he a Polish Jew transplanted to America, or is he an American with a Jewish name? Did Frank Norris, the realist, the man who painted nothing but the Truth, picture a Jew of his eyes, or of his mind? Zerkow, it seems to us, is a Jew that has never existed, and in this instance it appears to us that Norris did not toe his own mark — Truth.
Throughout the book Zerkow, outside of his inconsiderate greed, for money — (Norris’ idea of the Jew’s uncommon life) is never once Jewish in feeling, action, or manners. Were it not for the fact that we are told on all possible occasions that Zerkow is a Jew, we would never recognize him as such. Even his speech is not the weakly, deformed English of the transplanted foreigner, but the native American. Thus speaks the poor Jewish ragman:
“Five thousand dollars,” he whispered, “five thousand dollars. For what? For nothing, for simply buying a ticket; and have worked so hard for it, so hard, so hard. Five thousand dollars, five thousand dollars. Oh, why couldn’t it have come to me?” he cried, his voice chocking, the tears starting to his eyes; “why couldn’t it have come to me? To come so close, so close, and yet to miss me — me who have worked for it, fought for it, stormed for it, and dying for it every day. Think of it, Mona, five thousand dollars, all heavy pieces—”
Could any well educated American in intense excitement have spoken his mother tongue with more accuracy than this Polish Jew ragman? I doubt it. That a Polish Jew might have spoken English like a native is possible, but highly improbable, but that a Polish Jew who is, undoubtedly, orthodox in belief, should marry a Christian, without even once mentioning the strangeness of such a marriage, is almost impossible. Zerkow, thinking that he will be able to extract from Mona her secret of the buried treasures, marries her. But this extraordinary occurrance is consummated without even a mention, as if such a course, the marriage of a Jew to a Christian, was the most ordinary thing in the world. Is that Truth? We believe that the unprejudiced reader will say not that it is, on the contrary, decidedly the Untruth.
It is quite needless for us to point out the blemishes in Norris’s drawing of Zerkow, the Jew; to show that if we once strip Zerkow of his name there is absolutely nothing Jewish in his makeup. The simple fact that Zerkow is entirely material without one ghost of spirituality is enough to stamp him as un-Jewish.
Beneath all the gross, materialism of the Jew in Zangwill, there shines that glow of spiritualism which we believe to be present in nearly all Jews, especially in the Russian and Polish. There remains, it seems to us, for a Gentile writer yet to catch of Zangwill and other Jewish writers that combination of materialism and fine spirituality which stamps the Jew. And because Norris did not see this combination, or seeing, took no notice of it, we believe that Zerkow, his Jew is no Jew. If he saw only the materialistic side of the Jew then he saw not what we all know is true, and therefore Norris truth was not our truth On the other hand if he saw this combination of materialism and spirituality in the Jewish makeup, but only painted the materialistic side of Zerkow, and we must not forget that to Norris Zerkow stood for the type, than he was guilty of a Lie. But we do not accuse him of a lie; we believe, as we said at the beginning of this article, that Norris always strove for the Truth; we are ready to believe that Norris only saw the materialistic side of the Jewish nature. But what we do condemn Norris for is this. He did not investigate to see that the Truth he saw was the Truth, that consciencious, honest novelist that he was, he painted a picture which was to him unknown, a picture which we believe he never saw, unless it was in the world of his imagination, but not in the world of his eye. In other words that Zerkow the typical Jew, as Norris paints him, is not the true type of the Jew.
From: Great Companions, by Edith Wyatt, D. Appleton and Company, 1917, p.48-58
“Vandover and the Brute”
What makes a good novel?
For this reader whatever piece of fiction gives her genuine news about human life. For this taste or bent in reading, whichever it may be considered, one of our most excellent writers of “a good novel” is Frank Norris.
“Vandover and the Brute,” first published in 1914, and written by Frank Norris in 1894-5, twenty years before, lives up to its classification as a novel, a word which must, I think, have implied to the originators of that title the presentation of something new.
In this definition the publication of novels is extremely rare in this country. Yet, instead of thanking fortune wisely for the fact that the present book was ever printed, the admirers of Frank Norris’ fiction are far more likely to ask why its publication was delayed for twenty years.
I
The “Vandover” preface by Charles G. Norris tells us that the manuscript was laid aside while Frank Norris was writing and publishing “MacTeague,” was left in a San Francisco warehouse, was then supposed for many years after the author’s death to have been lost in the earthquake and the fire, was then found by the warehouse company, though without the author’s name attached to it, and left unread for seven years, and was then read and recognized though not published for another year.
While all these causes remain valid excuses for delay one cannot help suspecting that they were not the underlying reason for such a long overlooking of a vital book. One cannot help remembering that most of the book world and the magazine world of Frank Norris’ career, and of the years following it, was occupied with the activities which culminated throughout our land in the flowering of knighthood, and in what may be called the movement for suppressing all news about human life in fiction.
While one may have no quarrel with knighthood, and indeed may respect the muscular control of those who can remain awake through its flowering, one cannot help thinking that if Frank Norris had written an early novel more like it than this is, or had written, let us say, a bad imitation of Anthony Hope, somehow this work would not have been lost to us for twenty years.
It not only would have been promptly published, but much with us late and soon. And, whatever the immediate causes, one cannot help feeling that the historical reason why “Vandover and the Brute” has been so long overlooked has been that it would naturally possess, in the field occupied by the great movements described, the unimportance inevitably attaching under these conditions to all fiction animated by a genuine human interest.
One cannot help knowing that if Frank Norris had been an English and not an American realist, a novel of his would somehow not have undergone such an amount of jugglery and postponement before its publication as it has before its American appearance.
II
The novel is the dramatic story of the struggle between the brute on one hand, a man’s tendency to self-indulgence — and Vandover on the other, his character, his will, his heart, his resolution to “make something of himself” in the course of his existence upon earth.
The tale is told in terms of a knowledge of the actual world of its scene. Here is San Francisco — i
ts beautiful bay, its treacherous coast voyages, its high, splendid sky, its society both vulgar and gentle. In this respect, in its evocation of a city atmosphere, the book is one of Norris’ best, far better than “The Pit,” with its more perfunctory and unrealized Chicago, far better than “The Octopus,” whose landscape imposed on the theme of wheat always seemed, to the present reader at least, to contain really almost too much wheat to be borne.
But in “Vandover” the San Francisco of “before the fire” is simply there. You seem to be walking its pleasant cosmopolitan-peopled streets, so warm in the sun, so cool in the shade.
However, before San Francisco, or after it has been barely mentioned, is the account of Vandover’s Harvard years: and these, too, are described not only with the sincerity which always belongs to Frank Norris, but again without the insistence and hyperbolic heightening characteristic of some of his later work.
Here is the beginning of the struggle in which Vandover is engaged so early and unhappily in the temptations of his college days:
“He passed the next few days in a veritable agony of repentance, overwhelmed by a sense of shame and dishonor that were almost feminine in their bitterness and intensity. He felt himself lost, unworthy, and as if he could never again look a pure woman in the eyes, unless with an abominable hypocrisy.”