McTeague

McTeague by Frank Norris is truly a pre-cursor to what we now watch in movies or television.  The story is set in the late 1890s during the time of San Francisco’s gold rush and finding quick money.  Imagine being a dentist, well kind of, and losing your ability to practice after it is found out you self-taught yourself!  Then imagine this same “dentist” falling in love with his friend’s girlfriend, who is his cousin, and taking her away from your best friend.  This is really a pretty dark story.  Lots of violence and raw emotion from characters, who are singularly focused based on their emotions – love, anger, and despair.  McTeague, the lead character, is the self-proclaimed dentist who meets Trina as a patient when his friend Marcus brings her in with a series of issues with her teeth.  During his working on her mouth, McTeague falls in love with her and makes his move.  Marcus is furious, but gives in to McTeague’s overtures to Trina when he sees that she feels the same way.  McTeague and Trina do marry and simultaneously Trina learns she wins the lottery, a $5,000 win!  Marcus leaves town angry, having lost his love and also the access to a $5k lottery win.  McTeague and Trina live in a modest home as Trina becomes a miser after her winnings.  McTeague loses his dental practice when it is believed that Marcus (based on his anger of the situation) has told the local authorities that he has no educational credentials to be a dentist!  Trina and McTeague’s neighborly friends’ (an older married couple) relationship comes to a demise when the woman’s husband slits the throat of his wife over an argument and later the husband commits suicide by jumping into the river and drowning.  This theme of anger and violence continues throughout with McTeague and also Trina exhibiting unnatural and wild animalistic behavior.  As Trina becomes more miserly, she demands her husband to live more frugally until the point she throws him out of the home for not providing more money (she wanted him to live on pennies and she would then pocket the extra money for savings).  After the last blow-up between the two, Trina throws him out for good, but McTeague steals $400 from her hidden chest.  Trina gets more frugal by moving to an even smaller apt, cashes in her $5k lottery winnings and then refuses McTeague when he returns with no money and in total destitution.  McTeague goes crazy and brutally kills his wife and steals the money she hid from her lottery winnings.  He escapes out of the area but is chased down in Death Valley desert by none other than his nemesis… Marcus!  I won’t reveal the final battle!  The story reminded me of the movie No Country for Old Men, non-stop senseless violence.  The story was written by an aspiring author who died at a very young age and it is believed he drew upon a real life story in San Francisco for the story.  In any case, not my cup of tea.  Well written, but not the type of story that inspires me.  The characters were rather uninteresting while the storyline was a bit over the top.  A relatively quick read with a ton of reflections by other authors after the story.  I’d pass on this one…