McTeague

"This is one of the first realist novels. It’s about the slow moral deterioration of the central character, an oafish and amoral dentist who begins a downward spiral when his fiancée wins the lottery. It’s a dark novel, with one of the darkest endings I’ve ever read. Norris locates McTeague ’s dental parlour on Polk Street in San Francisco. The descriptions of the area are wonderfully spare and yet vivid. It feels like time travel whenever I pick up the novel, and yet it’s stunningly modern. Characters say “outta sight” and mean it in the same way it was meant in the 20th century. Norris writes his dialogue in a naturalistic vernacular that is true to his times and yet easy on our ears. The whole town was built on greed. It’s no accident that [actor and director] Erich von Stroheim named his [1924] film adaption Greed . People who came here in ships looking for gold up at Sutter’s Mill were so confident of their impending success that they actually dragged their ships ashore and left them there. The vessels that brought the gold diggers became buildings, jails, brothels – anything needed was made out of those old ships. I always thought this was a wonderful metaphor for the way the city grew. It was literally built on the vestiges of the gold rush."