SOURCE: Hug, William J. “McTeague as Metafiction? Frank Norris' Parodies of Bret Harte and the Dime Novel.” Western American Literature 26, no. 3 (fall 1991): 219-28.

In the following essay, Hug compares McTeague with the Western fiction of American writer Bret Harte.

Whenever literary critics and historians discuss Frank Norris' McTeague, they generally dwell upon the first four-fifths of the novel. With rare exceptions, scholars have given its curious finale—the dentist's flight into the California hinterlands and, finally, Death Valley—rather short shrift, largely because it seems so removed from and inferior to the heart of the story, especially in terms of the ending's frantic narrative pace and heavy melodrama. Granted, the novel's conclusion has been effectively defended as the logical culmination to Norris' treatment of settings throughout the novel (Graham 61 ff.), and to McTeague's atavistic descent into instinct (Dillingham 181 ff., Hochman 74, Pizer 81). Yet its blatant melodrama often goes undiscussed...