by Frank Norris
After his four rather unsatisfactory years at Berkeley, where he did not graduate, he decided upon a literary career, and took a one-year course at Harvard with that end in view. He was sent to South Africa by a newspaper syndicate at the time of the Jamieson raid and was ill there of a fever from the effects of which he never really recovered.
On his return to San Francisco in 1896 he worked at a small salary on a society and literary paper called the Wave, now extinct. For that journal he wrote many short stories, including some of real power and purpose. They were nearly all in the Kipling manner, with sometimes a flavor of Du Maurier. One of them, the tale of a duel with baseballs, showed much strength of the kind called “brutal.” It was during the Wave days that he wrote “Moran of the Lady Letty,” his first published long story, a rattling sea yarn of that mysterious and delightful “Treasure Island” quality, which lays violent hold upon the reader’s interest. “Moran” has been unsparingly criticised because of its technical defects from a marine standpoint, but I cannot help loving the book and have defended it jealously in and out of print. To my mind it is the best thing Norris ever did in fiction, as it is simple, direct and wrought with a wonderful clarity that contrasts strongly with the prolixity that weakens the interest in some of his other books.
Then came “McTeague,” the story of a San Francisco dentist, in which the Zola-esque medium, upon which Norris had come to count so confidently, was employed throughout. The story was crudely informed, and while it flowed along with a wonderfully realistic sweep, it was infused in many places with obviously inferior matter.
The young writer went east, and was for several years reader for a New York publishing house. From New York came “Blix” and “A Man’s Woman,” both of which novels his literary friends opened with large expectations, which, unhappily, were in each case deferred. He married the beautiful young woman on whom he had modelled the character of “Blix,” and after that there was a long book-publishing pause. Then appeared “The Octopus,” that tremendously formidable volume on Californian ranch life, which is regarded by some of our best literary judges as a great novel. It contains passages that are full of vivid color and fine feeling. “The Octopus” was the first in a “trilogy of the wheat,” and was to be followed by “The Pit,” which was to tell the tale of the marketing of the grain, and by “The Wolf,” which was to take the breadstuff to European mouths. After “ The Pit” was finished, in August of this year, Norris, who was not in good health, came to California and bought the hill ranch and log cabin which is near Mrs. Robert Stevenson’s country place, with the idea of settling down there and writing “The Wolf” and other stories. But of a sudden came Death, who said “No; not in this life, but in another shall your work go.” The bright spirit passed on October 25th, after a painful illness, followed by a desperate operation for appendicitis.
Norris was gradually creeping away from the Zola influence, though he still believed that life was more than literature. He had written some essays for the Critic, in which he maintained the idea of life as opposed to books. As an essayist he wielded a stout pen, and in each paper could be relied upon to force his point of view throughout.
All his life he had been a city man, of city habits and of city thought, but as he attained intellectual stature there came the inevitable yearning for Nature. With his power of observation, his keen appreciation of life, what would Nature not have done for him? What artistic growth might he not have reached? What soul-growth awaited him there in the hills by that log cabin, where, listening close, he might have heard “the beatings of the hearts of trees” and been led to “think the thoughts that lilies speak in white.” Yes, great is the log cabin idea in the literary life, and I am glad that it came to Norris, even though too late. It was that idea that made the strength of Thoreau, of nearly every great writer from the country Chaucer to the poor Warwickshire peasant who gave us the priceless “Lear,” on down to Tolstoy, Hardy, our own Maurice Thompson and sweet old John Muir. The idea had come to Norris, and it is the idea that makes the man and the literary artist. Years of life may be passed by the artist in that artificial state which we call civilization, and for a long time he may contemplate with approval the march of that malady which manifests itself to us as “progress,” but dissidence, followed by open revolt, will come in time. He will see, as Norris saw, that a protracted period of literary effort in a great urban center, full of urban ideas — which find their most conspicuous expression in rampant, blood-consuming commercialism — must work an atrophy of the intellectual sympathies and appreciations, and thus enfeeble the creative faculty. As a vital and necessary part of his spiritual and artistic growth, he must at the last come to see, as Norris saw, that the sham social life found in such Babels of self-assured greatness as London and New York, and the club-life — the pride of their vain gregariousness — must be abandoned for long periods of time; that one must step from the deoxygenated atmosphere out into the open; that to renew the creative current and keep it at high voltage, one must remain for long seasons in close connection with Nature’s great storage batteries.
Our young artist was denied the life that gives — the life he had come to long for — and all that it would have meant to him; but at the end he might have said with Browning,
“What I aspired to be
And could not comforts me.”
Then, too, there remains the good work he really did, which will not soon be forgotten. But above all there remains the characterful influence, the strong example of rigorous and unstinted endeavor which must be tonic to the minds of writers young and old. That influence was wide, and to those of us who knew the man familiarly, it was helpful and should inspire us all. For one, I thank whatever gods there be that I knew Frank Norris, the man and the artist. What we of today may think or say of his books signifies little. For that full senate of serene intellects, the scholars of the future, will debate upon and weigh his work — and they will decide.
From: The World’s Work, V.5, No. 4, February 1903, p.3133-3134
“‘The Pit — A Story of Chicago’ The Last And Best Novel of the Late Frank Norris
By: Owen Wister
Two hearts, that should beat as one, estranged by prosperity, and by adversity united in the happy and solemn end: this, stated in its simplest terms, is the theme of “The Pit” — a theme as old as the hills, and all the better for being so. Ingenuity, surprises, novel twists of plot, these also belong to legitimate art; but it is never upon them that the soundest art relies; great artists always concern themselves with the usual, not with the unexpected; with the familiar rather than with the exceptional; and are recognized by their simplicity, not by their complexity. Mr. Norris has chosen a situation that belongs to all time, and has given it a treatment which belongs entirely to himself. This is what we ask of the strong writer, and it is only the strong writer who can do it.
A man of action, shrewd, self-made, and successful in affairs, to whom speculation has so far been no more than a distrusted and occasional pastime, meets and marries the first woman who has seriously interested him. He outstrips his competitors with ease; he conquers her with no very great difficulty. She is not sure how much she loves him, and her own words, “Do you suppose you can say ‘ no’ to that man ?” summarize the quality of his wooing, which is but little presented on the scene. That both are large enough natures for a fine and understanding union is shown by one simple and beautiful page after they have come out from church after being married.
But a friend has recently drawn him into certain transactions in wheat so profitable that his latent relish for such excitement is awakened. This starts the crack in their happiness.
“If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange
And be all to me? Shall I never miss
Home-talk and blessing?”
Her heart, like every natural woman’s, had asked this of her husband, and the answer is — his deepening preoccupation in his wheat gambling ventures, his increasing abs
ences from her. He was rich already when he married her, rich beyond need of greater wealth; but the lust of the chase is on him, and hence he gives her more and more the luxurious things she does not want and less and less the only thing she craves — the home-talk and blessing. Sometimes her appeals for his companionship (she makes but few, being proud) bring him to her for awhile, filled with desire to make amends; but his brief resolves evaporate like mist in the hot glare of speculation. Repeated triumphs lead him on, flatter his vanity, stimulate his sense of power and his thirst for more power. Each new campaign is on a scale more huge; to see his enemies out-generaled, to graze ruin and make half a million instead, all this gives him sensations so poignant and delicious that he grows to require it like some hypodermic injection. Deprived of it, his powers sink flaccid and unelastic. Especially after one victory, when he comes home declaring it shall be his last — that he is done with this debauch of nerves — is the abstinence shown to be a strain greater than his endurance can any longer sustain. He fidgets in idleness; tries books, driving, the theatre, his country place, all quite in vain. These things cannot hide him from his ennui, do not bite sharp enough to stimulate him. He goes back to the wheat pit, and this is the beginning of the end.
Presently the markets of the world are throbbing with his vast operations. The fortune that still attends him makes the annihilation of those who stand in his way; he himself becomes the storm centre, while through his brain sweep the vertiginous currents of trade and strategy which he has set going and could not stop if he would.
To such demands mortal strength is unequal. His judgment grows bloodshot, his human feelings grow bloodshot, his sleep deserts him, and his appetite; and whenever he is not in action, night or day, the words “wheat, wheat, wheat” sing perpetually in his head; so that he goes flying forward through the weeks with the dread of illness coming behind him and the beckoning illusion of his omnipotence in front. These pages are so powerful that they drag the reader in their sweep even as the wheat drags the hero, even as Dickens and Zola and Tolstoi drag one with an interest and a suspense that are like a joyful riot of pain.
And the man’s lonely wife meanwhile? She sits deserted in her uptown magnificence, sharing in her husband’s life no longer, knowing nothing of his thoughts, his doings, his hopes or his fears, not even seeing his face any more, but keeping company with empty, expensive furniture. He has ceased to come home at all, but makes his visits to her by telephone, sleeping in a hotel room as close to the Board of Trade as he can get. So for her also a pit opens — a pit of desperation, that she struggles back from. The end is happy.
Stripped of accessories, such is the story; nor do accessories seem to count for much in looking back upon this book. It belongs to a group of financial novels certain of which are familiar to most of us—” Mammon and Company,” for instance, and “The Market Place” and Mr. Hope’s new story. Very different from each other, all in their way take up the same thread of modern speculation and thus furnish a proper measure by which to gage “The Pit.”
I think Frank Norris has outstripped them all. I do not think any one of them compares with him in emotional interest or in grasp of the subject. His study of the quite special technicalities presented seems far more thorough than any of theirs, even Harold Frederic’s, whose book has strength. Mr. Frederic’s pirate financier is a success; Mr. Benson’s is a failure, though he tried hard; Mr. Hope does not try at all, but plays more on the surface; and it is the speculating woman who is the object of his brilliant attention.
When it comes to the accessories, to drawing-room small talk, to a certain light sureness of touch in presenting men and women of the world, we have nobody, except Edith Wharton, who can do it right. Hope and Benson do it very right. Harold Frederic is clumsy at it, and Frank Norris is behind Harold Frederic. From this inadequacy in accessories may be excepted one comedy scene where a young girl and grown man discuss love, literature and themselves. It is very pleasant.
Concerning the art of “The Pit” certain other reserves are to be made; but if they are all made they will leave still untouched the great main story, strong, passionate, vivid – livid, I had almost written — with interest The author’s firm hand and long reach stretch into tragic depths of the human soul far beyond the compass of the other financial novels I have named.
You have noticed, have you not, how many novels we read, how few we remember? They are little pleasure-bridges by which we cross a mental gap and go on, and that’s all. This is one sort of novel, and a good sort, too. Have you noticed how, even though we may think of these stories during the hour that we read them, we never think of their authors for a minute? Their existence does not occur to us.
But there is another, a rarer kind of novel, the kind written by what we call a master. The sure symptom of such a novel is not so much that you remember it, but that you think of its author. You feel the force, the personality the attitude toward life, that lie behind the printed words; the story is but a medium through which you have met somebody. Frank Norris is somebody. In his first novel, the sea story, this was evident at once. In “McTeague” his strength had grown; in “The Pit” he has risen on stepping-stones to higher things. Such a raw device as (for example) the recurrent descriptive phrase is no longer employed; and his last word to us shows him on the road to have become a master.
There is a marble group called “Death Arresting the Hand of the Young Sculptor.” When I think of this group I think of Frank Norris and lament the great loss to our national literature that his death has brought.
From: The Outlook, V. 73, No. 3, January 17, 1903, p.152-154
“A Significant Novel”
Those who keep in touch with the life, not of a section, but of the country as a whole, and are sensitive to the stirrings of the spirit over the length and breadth of the continent, have felt for several years past that we are approaching another and more comprehensive expression of American life in books. One of the results of the journalistic treatment of literature, now so prevalent, is the attempt to take account of stock every week and to measure accurately the rise and fall of the tide of creative power from year to year. In the nature of things this is impossible; but the fact that it is impossible does not deter a great many people from pronouncing final judgments on literary conditions and prospects. When the tide recedes, these critics are sure that the artistic impulse in America has spent itself, or that the country has ceased to produce the material of which art is made. They are confident that commercialism, or the practical spirit, or the decay of the love of the beautiful, or absorption in material activities, has drained the springs of inspiration, and that nothing can be hoped from America in the future except a civilization which is content to work with its hands and leave other civilizations to work with the soul.
Nothing could be more short-sighted or lacking in the historical spirit than these predictions. Again and again in literary history the rise and the fall of the tide of creative power have left their marks; again and again, when the vital force which blossoms in every art has receded and left the earth bare and bleak, it has come back with a rush and sweep unknown before, while the elegists were chanting its funeral dirges. No one can feel deeply the tremendous forces which are at work in the life of this country to-day without being confident that, sooner or later, those forces will find their expression in literature. Such a tide of energy as that which has been steadily mounting since the Civil War cannot find utterance for itself in material activities. Sooner or later, it reaches the higher levels of the soul, and intensity of action is translated by men of genius into intensity of aspiration.
At the very time when the press finds it difficult to keep the record of the material growth of the country, so rapid and so vast is it, there has come and gone a man with the original insight, the profound sympathy, the touch with his kind, which are the prime elements of power in a great man of letters. It is easy to overestimate the significance of a writer, like Frank Norris, who dies at t
he very beginning of his career ; and it is too soon to pass final judgment upon the work which he has left; but it must be quite clear, even to those who differ widely from the young novelist in his methods and his point of view, that the author of “The Octopus “ and “ The Pit “ brought to the study of American life that power of looking beneath the surface, of touching the great realities, of seeing the dramatic and ethical aspects of contemporary movements, which constitute original force in literature. While other men were saying that there can be no poetry or romance in a country so engrossed in business affairs, so absorbed in gigantic practical enterprises, Frank Norris fastened upon one of the most engrossing, colossal, and in a sense tyrannical of these activities, saw how every great outgoing of energy relates itself to many forms of life, and how impossible it is for men to work lavishly and with sublime forgetfulness with their hands without engaging their souls; and, equipped with this insight, guided by this sympathy, Norris was artist enough to seize the dramatic aspects of the raising of wheat, its transportation, and its final distribution. It was an immense theme, demanding the energy of a Zola and the genius of a Tolstoi.
It is not surprising that a man who died at thirty-two should not have shown a complete mastery of his material, and should have failed perfectly to coordinate all the parts of his great design. What is significant is the fact that he saw under the surface of American life the deep and inexhaustible human interest; and that he had the genius to recognize the epical quality, not of life in Russia or in France, but on the wheat-fields of the Far West and in the exchange in Chicago.
That he had the faults of a young writer is clear enough. “McTeague” was the book of a very young man, who could not discriminate clearly between what was essential and what was nonessential, and, in his attempt to tell the truth as he saw it, was willing to drag in incidents which were not only disagreeable but absurdly out of place in any formal study of character. The book was significant, not as a finished piece of art, nor as a faultless piece of workmanship, but as disclosing a determination to see things as they are, and to deal with them, not only from first-hand knowledge, but with firsthand directness and power. When “The Octopus” appeared, it registered an immense advance on all its predecessors. It was far from being a finished piece of work. The influence of Zola was evident on almost every chapter; it lacked concentration; there were departures from good taste in it, and there was lack of restraint; but, on the other hand, there were the tread and swing of a powerful man, exploring, with open mind and heart, a great new field.