Rolling around naked on gold

I am an academic rock star. I blew the crowd away with my presentation. I am sure the job offers will be pouring in.*

* Or, more precisely, I read a paper in front of eight people while 100 other people did the same thing in other rooms.

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I just finished reading McTeague, an 1899 novel by Frank Norris (whose appendix killed him at age 32!). Until last year I had never even heard of McTeague, but last year in one of my film classes, we watched the silent film Greed, which is based on this novel.

Anyway, this novel is very fun. Unlike a lot of late 19th-century American fiction, this one flies by, cruising along toward its tragic, ironic, and twistedly funny conclusion. It is basically the story of a big, stupid oaf of a man who marries the world's most miserly lottery winner, and then disaster ensues.


This book needs a renaissance (or probably more precisely, a naissance) in American Literature classes. It does get a bit description-heavy at times, making parts of it highly skimmable, but students will love it just for the ending. The story involves dentistry, whiskey, money, domestic violence, gold sucking (and the activity mentioned in the title of this post), Death Valley, finger gnawing, and donkey shooting -- all of the elements of great literature.