Although otherwise ignorant and ineffectual, McTeague has managed to eke out a meager career as an unlicensed dentist. His dreary existence rapidly improves upon meeting and marrying Trina, whose possession of a winning lottery ticket further brightens their lives. But Trina's lust for money and parsimonious habits arouse a latent brutishness in her husband, as the couple’s happiness gradually curdles into a quagmire of suspicion, jealousy, and corruption. Inspired by a real-life crime that the San Francisco tabloids eagerly exploited, McTeague created a literary sensation upon its initial 1899 publication. Frank Norris's riveting depiction of avarice and moral degeneration ranks among the earliest works in American literature to offer a compelling, realistic view of human nature at its most basic level. Critic Alfred Kazin praised the novel as "one of the great works of the modern American imagination," and it was the inspiration for Erich von Stroheim's groundbreaking 1924 silent film, Greed.

McTeague: A Story of San Francisco by Frank Norris

When housewife Trina McTeague wins the lottery, her comfortable life with her dentist husband, John, is slowly destroyed, in part by her own increasing paranoia and in part by the machinations of a villainous friend, Marcus. Director Erich von Stroheim shot the film, based on the Frank Norris novel "McTeague", on location in and around San Francisco, an extravagance unheard of in the 1920s. His original version, since lost, ran for nearly 10 hours.

McTeague is a novel by Frank Norris, first published in 1899. It tells the story of a couple's courtship and marriage, and their subsequent descent into poverty, violence and finally murder as the result of jealousy and greed. The book was the basis for the films McTeague (1916), Erich von Stroheim's Greed (1924), and Slow Burn (2000). It was also adapted as an opera by William Bolcom in 1992.