McTeague

Frank Norris published this grim San Francisco novel in 1899, a landmark of American literary naturalism. McTeague is a slow-witted, unlicensed dentist who marries Trina, a modest young woman who then wins five thousand dollars in a lottery. The money curdles everything it touches. Trina’s growing miserliness and McTeague’s brutish resentment poison their marriage, and when he loses his practice through a jealous friend’s betrayal, the couple sinks into poverty, drink, and violence. Norris traces their ruin with unblinking force, treating greed and heredity as animal appetites that override reason, and driving the story toward a famous ending in the heat of Death Valley. The novel later inspired Erich von Stroheim’s silent film Greed. A free PDF and EPUB edition is available.