McTeague
Subtitle: a story of San Francisco
By: Frank Norris.
Publisher: Modern Library
Published: 1996
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 485
Subjects: Married people -- Fiction; Murderers -- Fiction; Dentists -- Fiction; Greed -- Fiction; San Francisco (Calif.) -- Fiction
Genres: Fiction.
Description: McTeague created a literary sensation when it first appeared in 1899. Critics hailed Frank Norris as the "American Zola" for his gritty tale of greed and violence set in turn-of-the-century San Francisco. Yet the novel's ultra-realistic portrayal of the rise and fall of a simpleminded dentist and his grasping wife shocked many readers with its candid depiction of sordid behavior right at the edge of insanity.

It remains a searing indictment of human weakness and selfishness in a rapidly evolving America that battled to reconcile city life with the mores of the Wild West.