arm, and so the author
leaves his hero in the wastes of Death's Valley, a hundred miles
from water, with a dead man chained to his arm. As he stands there
the canary bird, the survivor of his happier days, to which he had
clung with stubborn affection, begins "chittering feebly in its
little gilt prison." It reminds one a little of Stevenson's use of
poor "Goddedaal's" canary in "The Wrecker." It is just such sharp,
sure strokes that bring out the high lights in a story and separate
excellence from the commonplace. They are at once dramatic and
revelatory. Lacking them, a novel which may otherwise be a good one,
lacks its chief reason for being. The fault with many worthy
attempts at fiction lies not in what they are, but in what they are
not.

Mr. Norris' model, if he will admit that he has followed one, is
clearly no less a person than M. Zola himself. Yet there is no
discoverable trace of imitation in his book. He has simply taken a
method which has been most successfully applied in the study of
French life and applied it in studying American life, as one uses
certain algebraic formulae to solve certain problems. It is perhaps
the only truthful literary method of dealing with that part of
society which environment and heredity hedge about like the walls of
a prison. It is true that Mr. Norris now and then allows his
"method" to become too prominent, that his restraint savors of
constraint, yet he has written a true story of the people,
courageous, dramatic, full of matter and warm with life. He has
addressed himself seriously to art, and he seems to have no ambition
to be clever. His horizon is wide, his invention vigorous and bold,
his touch heavy and warm and human. This man is not limited by
literary prejudices: he sees the people as they are, he is close to
them and not afraid of their unloveliness. He has looked at truth in
the depths, among men begrimed by toil and besotted by ignorance,
and still found her fair. "McTeague" is an achievement for a young
man. It may not win at once the success which it deserves, but Mr.
Norris is one of those who can afford to wait.

_The Courier_, April 8, 1899

If you want to read a story that is all wheat and no chaff, read
"Blix." Last winter that brilliant young Californian, Mr. Norris,
published a remarkable and gloomy novel, "McTeague," a book deep in
insight, rich in promise and splendid in execution, but entirely
without charm