The mind of America at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century was controlled by elderly maiden aunts and hired men of privilege; and it seemed that behind the scenes of our national life some evil jinx was operating to keep us in this double thrall. There arose five independent and original-minded artists, and here is what happened to them: Stephen Crane died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-nine, Frank Norris died of appendicitis at the age of thirty-two, David Graham Phillips was killed by a lunatic at the age of forty-four, O. Henry died of alcoholism at the age of forty-eight, and Jack London killed himself at the age of forty. Frank Norris was born in California in 1870, the son of well-to-do parents. All through his childhood and boyhood he liked to tell stories and make sketches; he wasn’t sure which he liked to do best. He studied art in Paris for a couple of years, and published a long narrative poem at the age of twenty. Then he came home and tried to learn something about writing at the University of California, but without success. He took a graduate course at Harvard, and here he wrote “McTeague,” his first successful novel. He had been absorbing Zola, and set out to apply the Zola method to America. He is going to give you the brutal reality of life, he is going to write about big animal men with heavy muscles and prominent jaws, and broad-bosomed women with large quantities of alluring hair. He is going to give you the great open spaces, and also the sordidness and smells of cities--as much as America can be got to stand. The theme of “McTeague” is avarice, and we see a dentist’s office with a big gold tooth for a sign, and all through the tragic story we run upon the motif of gold in everything from sunsets to decorations. Then came “The Octopus,” and here we are in outdoor California, dealing with crude people and nature on a large scale. “The Octopus” has two themes. It is the Epic of the Wheat, and we see the great unfenced plains upon which wheat is raised wholesale, and the golden flood of grain on its way to feed the millions in the cities, a torrent of food so vast and heavy that it symbolically suffocates a man on its way. And then there is the railroad, the Octopus which has seized the wheat country and is devouring the settlers. I read this novel before I read anything of Zola’s, and so I got the shock of a great discovery. I was one of many youngsters who were set on fire. Here was power, here was a new grasp of reality; this was the way to write novels!