_Norris’ Realism and McCutcheon’s Romanticism_
More than fifteen years have passed since Frank Norris died, yet no
one has yet come to take quite his place as an apostle of American
realism. Before he fell under the spell of Émile Zola, with “McTeague,”
and began his Trilogy of the Wheat, he had been the most ardent of
romanticists. His earliest ventures in literature were tales of
love and chivalry, written when he was a boy in his teens in Paris.
“McTeague” was begun in the undergraduate days at the University of
California. It began to assume shape in his year of student work at
Harvard; but was elaborated and polished for four years before the
public was allowed to see it. In the meantime “Moran of the Lady Letty”
had been dashed off in an interval of relaxation, and became Norris’
first published book. Then came to Norris what he considered “the big
idea,” that summed up at once American life and American prosperity. He
would write the Trilogy of the Wheat. In the first book, “The Octopus,”
he told of the fields and elevators of the Far West. “The Pit” showed
the wheat as the symbol of mad speculation. With “The Wolf,” to picture
the lives of the consumers in the Eastern States and in Europe, the
Trilogy was to end. But before the tale was written Frank Norris died,
at thirty-two years of age.
[Illustration: GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON]
A few years ago, Mr. George Barr McCutcheon was asked the question,
“Where is Graustark?” Whimsically he attempted to jot down on paper
directions for journeying to the imaginary mountain kingdom, starting
from a railway station in Indiana. Someone rather ill-naturedly
suggested that Mr. McCutcheon had originally discovered this country in
Anthony Hope’s “The Prisoner of Zenda.” But then someone else pointed
out that Anthony Hope in turn had found his inspiration in Stevenson’s
“Prince Otto,” and that R. L. S. himself had certainly owed something
to the Gerolstein of M. Eugène Sue’s “The Mysteries of Paris.” So
neither the exact whereabouts of Graustark nor its ultimate source is
of great importance. What really counts is that hundreds of thousands
of readers have found delight in following the adventures of Mr.
McCutcheon’s stately heroines and somewhat irreverent heroes.
[Illustration: BOOTH TARKINGTON