McTeague
Subtitle: a story of San Francisco
By: by Frank Norris ; edited with an introduction by Kevin Starr.
Contributors: Starr, Kevin.
Series: The Penguin American library
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 1982
Place of publication: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England; New York, N.Y
Language: eng
Number of pages: 442
Subjects: Married people -- Fiction; Murderers -- Fiction; Dentists -- Fiction; Greed -- Fiction; San Francisco (Calif.) -- Fiction
Genres: Fiction.
Description: A couple's life and love are destroyed when they win the lottery in this tragic tale of turn-of-the-century San Francisco. McTeague and Trina are in love, and with the modest income from McTeague's dentistry office, their needs are few. But when Trina wins a small fortune from a lottery ticket, jealousy and distrust begin to unravel their happy home. As tension erupts between McTeague and Trina's cousin Marcus, Trina's impulse to save her winnings slowly gives way to a pathological obsession with hoarding money. Betrayed and destitute, the couple embarks on a journey down a path of violence, theft, and murder. Considered transgressive for its brutality and sordid subject matter upon first publication in 1899, McTeague has since served as the basis for the films Greed (1924) by Erich von Stroheim and Slow Burn (2000), starring Minnie Driver and James Spader.
Notes: Bibliography: p. xli-xlv.