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.

McTeague is a famous novel by Frank Norris, first published in 1899. This is the story of a couple's courtship and marriage and their subsequent descent into poverty and violence because of growing jealousy and greed. The book was the basis for several adaptations, like the films McTeague and Erich von Stroheim's Greed.

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McTeague: A Story of San Francisco by Frank Norris: Set in San Francisco, this gripping novel follows the tumultuous life of McTeague, a dentist who marries his cousin's former fiancée, Trina. As their lives intertwine, greed, jealousy, and the pursuit of wealth take center stage, leading to tragic consequences. Frank Norris's masterful storytelling and keen observation of human behavior make "McTeague" a compelling exploration of human nature and the destructive power of materialism. Key Aspects of the Book "McTeague: A Story of San Francisco": Psychological Character Study: The novel delves into the complex psychology of its characters, portraying their motivations and flaws. San Francisco Setting: The city of San Francisco serves as a backdrop, contributing to the story's atmosphere and cultural context. Social Commentary: "McTeague" offers commentary on the impact of society, money, and ambition on individuals and their relationships. Frank Norris was an American author and journalist known for his contributions to naturalism and his insightful portrayals of society. Through "McTeague," Norris reveals his talent for crafting compelling narratives and capturing the complexities of human behavior.

New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.

In Facing Facts, David Shi provides the most comprehensive history to date of the rise of realism in American culture. He vividly captures the character and sweep of this all-encompassing movement - ranging from Winslow Homer to the rise of the Ash Can school, from Whitman to Henry James to Theodore Dreiser. He begins with a look at the antebellum years, when idealistic themes were considered the only fit subject for art (Hawthorne wrote that "the grosser life is a dream, and the spiritual life is a reality"). Whitman's assault on these otherworldly standards coincided with sweeping changes in American society: the bloody Civil War, the aggressive advance of a modern scientific spirit, the emergence of photography and penny newspapers, the expansion of cities, capitalism, and the middle class - all worked to shake the foundations of genteel idealism and sentimental romanticism. The public developed an ever-expanding appetite for concrete facts and for art that accurately depicted them. As Shi proceeds through the nineteenth century, he traces the realist impulse in each major area of arts and letters, combining an astute analysis of the movement's essential themes with incisive portraits of its leading practitioners. Here we see Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., shaken to stern realism by the horrors of the Civil War; the influence of Walt Whitman on painter Thomas Eakins and architect Louis Sullivan, a leader of the Chicago school; the local-color verisimilitude of Louisa May Alcott and Sarah Orne Jewett; and the impact of urban squalor on intrepid young writers such as Stephen Crane. In the process of surveying nineteenth-century cultural history, Shi provides fascinating insights into thespecific concerns of the realist movement - in particular, the nation's growing obsession with gender roles. Realism, he observes, was in part an effort to revive masculine virtues in the face of effeminate sentimentality and decorous gentility. By the end of the nineteenth century, realism had displaced idealism as the dominant approach in thought and the arts. During the next two decades, however, a new modernist sensibility challenged the fact-devouring emphasis of realism: "Is it not time", one critic asked, "that we renounce the heresy that it is the function of art to record a fact?" Shi examines why so many Americans answered yes to this question, under influences ranging from psychoanalysis to the First World War. Nuanced, detailed, and comprehensive, Facing Facts provides the definitive account of the realist phenomenon, revealing its essential causes, explaining why it played so great a role in American cultural history, and suggesting why it retains its perennial fascination.

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