McTeague

McTeague is a slow, powerful, dull-witted man who practises dentistry without a licence on San Francisco’s Polk Street. His life is small and contented until his friend Marcus brings in a cousin, Trina Sieppe, to have a tooth repaired — and McTeague is overwhelmed by a desire he can neither name nor govern. He wins her; and on the eve of their engagement, Trina buys a lottery ticket and wins five thousand dollars.

The money is the hinge on which everything turns. Trina, once sweet and pliable, discovers in herself a miserliness that hardens into mania — she hoards her gold, starves her household, and comes to love the metal itself more than husband or safety. Marcus, soured by the sense that the fortune should have been his, turns informer and ruins McTeague’s trade. Stripped of his work and ground down by want, the dentist sinks into drink and brutality, and the marriage curdles toward murder and a final, pitiless flight into the furnace of Death Valley.

First published in 1899, McTeague is the founding masterpiece of American literary naturalism — Émile Zola’s method carried whole into a San Francisco idiom. Norris treats his characters as creatures shaped by heredity, appetite, and environment, and turns gold into a symbol of terrible weight. In 1924 Erich von Stroheim filmed it as the legendary silent epic Greed, sealing its place among the unforgettable American tragedies.

This edition pairs the complete text with an editor’s foreword on the novel’s composition, technique, and meaning, a biographical note, a guide to further reading, and questions for reflection.