Norris, Frank

(US 1870–1902)

Born to well-off and supportive parents, Frank Norris made a huge contribution to American literature with his journalism (he covered the Boer War and the Spanish-American war), with the novels he wrote and with the theories he developed to describe them. After a spell in Paris studying painting, he wrote his first and perhaps most powerful novel, McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (1899), which traces the spectacular downfall of a brutish young dentist. His other two important novels, The Octopus (1901) and The Pit (1902), were planned as part of an unfinished trilogy dealing with wheat production in modern America, and dramatize the conflict between the small farmer and relentless, profit-hungry business symbolized by the new railroads. Norris died of peritonitis before he was able to complete the third volume.

Stephen Crane, Theodor Dreiser, John Steinbeck  BH