McTeague is an enormously strong but dim-witted former miner now working as a dentist in San Francisco towards the end of the nineteenth century. He falls in love with Trina, one of his patients, and shortly after their engagement she wins a large sum in a lottery. All is well until McTeague is betrayed and they fall into a life of increasing poverty and degradation. This novel is often presented as an example of American naturalism where the behavior and experience of characters are constrained by “nature”—both their own heredity nature, and the broader social environment. McTeague was published in 1899 as the first of Norris’s major novels.

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. Widely acclaimed as Frank Norris’s masterpiece, the novel was hailed as “a literary masterpiece” by the New York Times. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

McTeague is an enormously strong but dim-witted former miner now working as a dentist in San Francisco towards the end of the nineteenth century. He falls in love with Trina, one of his patients, and shortly after their engagement she wins a large sum in a lottery. All is well until McTeague is betrayed and they fall into a life of increasing poverty and degradation. This novel is often presented as an example of American naturalism where the behavior and experience of characters are constrained by “nature”—both their own heredity nature, and the broader social environment. McTeague was published in 1899 as the first of Norris’s major novels. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

It was Sunday, and, according to his custom on that day, McTeague took his dinner at two in the afternoon at the car conductors' coffee-joint on Polk Street. He had a thick gray soup; heavy, underdone meat, very hot, on a cold plate; two kinds of vegetables; and a sort of suet pudding, full of strong butter and sugar. On his way back to his office, one block above, he stopped at Joe Frenna's saloon and bought a pitcher of steam beer. It was his habit to leave the pitcher there on his way to dinner.

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