Search Type
  • All
  • Subject
  • Title
  • Author
  • Publisher
  • Series Title
Search Title

Download

The Octopus

A Story of California

The Octopus( )
Author: Norris, Frank
Introduction by: Starr, Kevin
Series title:The Epic of the Wheat Ser.
ISBN:978-0-14-018770-0
Publication Date:Aug 1994
Publisher:Penguin Publishing Group
Imprint:Penguin Classics
Book Format:Paperback
List Price:USD $30.00
Book Description:

Like the tentacles of an octopus, the tracks of the railroad reached out across California, as if to grasp everything of value in the state Based on an actual, bloody dispute between wheat farmers and the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1880,The Octopusis a stunning novel of the waning days of the frontier West. To the tough-minded and self-reliant farmers, the monopolistic, land-grabbing railroad represented everything they despised- consolidation, organization, conformity. But...
More Description

Book Details
Pages:688
Detailed Subjects: Fiction / Literary
Physical Dimensions (W X L X H):4.992 x 7.683 x 1.287 Inches
Book Weight:1.043 Pounds
Author Biography
Norris, Frank (Author)
Considered one of the leading pioneers in American Naturalism, Frank Norris is read and studied for his vivid and honest depiction of life at the beginning of a lusty and developing new century. Born in Chicago, he moved to San Francisco with his well-to-do family when he was 14 and went on to attend the University of California and Harvard University before becoming a war correspondent in South Africa and Cuba. His early apprentice work consisted mostly of rather unremarkable adventure stories, but with the long-gestating McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (1899), he struck a new note. That powerful study of avarice in a seedy section of the Bay Area may well be Norris's masterpiece.

The Octopus (1901), the first of Norris's projected Epic of the Wheat series, deals with the raising of wheat in California and the struggle of ranchers against the railroads, while The Pit (1903) is a novel about speculation on the Chicago wheat exchange. Unfortunately, Norris died suddenly after an operation for appendicitis.

Like Stephen Crane, a writer with whom Norris is frequently compared, Norris died too young to fulfill his considerable promise, but he has more than held his own ground among turn-of-the-century writers whose works have lived. One reason may be that he took his craft as a writer seriously, as is shown by his posthumously published Responsibilities of the Novelist and Other Literary Essays (1903) and The Literary Criticism of Frank Norris, edited by Donald Pizer.

020



Featured Books

What Have We Here?
Williams, Billy Dee
Hardback: $32.00
Prequel
Maddow, Rachel
Hardback: $32.00
Master Slave Husband Wife
Woo, Ilyon
Paperback: $19.99

Rate this title:

Select your rating below then click 'submit'.






I do not wish to rate this title.