Frank Norris
Paperback | Pages: 688 pages Rating: 3.81 | 1569 Users | 145 Reviews
Particularize Containing Books The Octopus: A Story of California (The Epic of the Wheat #1)
| Title | : | The Octopus: A Story of California (The Epic of the Wheat #1) |
| Author | : | Frank Norris |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 688 pages |
| Published | : | August 1st 1994 by Penguin Classics (first published January 1st 1901) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Classics. Historical. Historical Fiction. Novels |
Relation Toward Books The Octopus: A Story of California (The Epic of the Wheat #1)
Like the tentacles of an octopus, the tracks of the railroad reached out across California, as if to grasp everything of value in the state Based on an actual, bloody dispute between wheat farmers and the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1880, The Octopus is a stunning novel of the waning days of the frontier West. To the tough-minded and self-reliant farmers, the monopolistic, land-grabbing railroad represented everything they despised: consolidation, organization, conformity. But Norris idealizes no one in this epic depiction of the volatile situation, for the farmers themselves ruthlessly exploited the land, and in their hunger for larger holdings they resorted to the same tactics used by the railroad: subversion, coercion and outright violence. In his introduction, Kevin Starr discusses Norris's debt to Zola for the novel's extraordinary sweep, scale and abundance of characters and details.Declare Books Supposing The Octopus: A Story of California (The Epic of the Wheat #1)
| Original Title: | The Octopus: A Story of California |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | The Epic of the Wheat #1 |
Rating Containing Books The Octopus: A Story of California (The Epic of the Wheat #1)
Ratings: 3.81 From 1569 Users | 145 ReviewsJudge Containing Books The Octopus: A Story of California (The Epic of the Wheat #1)
This is not a well written book, but historically it was important for getting people to hate the railroad barons um....more than they already did.At one point a woman starves to death for something like twenty pages. That's almost all I can remember. This whole fucking book has little point other than RAILROAD BAD. The railroad expands and people go about their piddly lives and then a bunch of people get screwed over but it's sooo hamfisted. Norris was not a fan of subtlety. Too bad a greatI read this novel years ago after an undergraduate English professor kept mentioning it in a survey class I took on American literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was not an assigned text, though it was one that he clearly favored. I liked the professor very much; he was an impressively learned old school man who lectured with confident ease on a broad canvas about philosophical, political, and social currents that formed the backdrop of whatever works we happened to be reading.
Has anyone identified a genre of fiction called "California Disillusionment"? In other words, where California Dreaming becomes California Screaming? "The Octopus: A Story of California" would be a centerpiece, along with The Grapes of Wrath and a book I read while I was reading this one: The Circle. And of course there are all those Hollywood novels, such as The Day of the Locust.The book that I kept being reminded of when I was reading this was "The Grapes of Wrath". The sense of place and the
A great American epic, written by a twentysomething; my word, I thought I was too old to just find a book by chance from a second hand stall, one I had never heard of and having my mind BLOWN. My great hero John Steinbeck will read like Mills and Boon to me now, this is the top shelf stuff. Maybe it needs time to give my real judgement but at the moment this does not feel a great American novel, but THE great one.An ex journalist attempting to write the great ambitious novel of its time, part of
Congratulations, Norris, you wrote an epic. It was one of the most clumsy, pointless, and bloated epics I've ever read, but it was still an epic. Seriously, I would have cut this book down to 1/3, maybe even 1/5. The words all joined, but everything was completely foreseeable from the beginning. From the first few pages I was just looking to get it done. It said what it had to say quickly and then went on and on and on. I expected a great, great deal more after having read McTeague. This was so
This book merits three stars based on historical interest alone. It's not Norris's best writing by a long shot, that honor belonging to "McTeague" (in this writer's never-humble opinion), and it's further evidence if any was needed that the loss to American letters that Norris's death at 32 was immense.The imagination that Norris evidenced in his six-book career is sharp. He saw clearly the world around him, and wasn't about to let the Great Unwashed fail to see it with his clarity. His
Based on a true story of a violent conflict between the railroad and California wheat ranchers in the San Joaquin valley, The Octopus is a big, baggy amalgam of naturalism, regionalism, sentimental novel, political novel and historical dramatization. Just because you may have heard of it being associated with "naturalism," don't be fooled. This turn-of-the-20th-century book has more in common with Dickens or Stowe than, for instance, Richard Wright or even Stephen Crane. It's really striking how
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.