The Octopus: A Story of California

The Epic of the Wheat #1

by Frank Norris, Kevin Starr (Introduction)

Like the tentacles of an octopus, the tracks of the railroad reached out across California, as if to grasp everything of value in the state Based on an actual, bloody dispute between wheat farmers and the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1880, The Octopus is a stunning novel of the waning days of the frontier West. To the tough-minded and self-reliant farmers, the monopolistic, land-grabbing railroad represented everything they consolidation, organization, conformity. But Norris idealizes no one in this epic depiction of the volatile situation, for the farmers themselves ruthlessly exploited the land, and in their hunger for larger holdings they resorted to the same tactics used by the subversion, coercion and outright violence. In his introduction, Kevin Starr discusses Norris's debt to Zola for the novel's extraordinary sweep, scale and abundance of characters and details.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction, Novels, American, Literature, 20th Century

688 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1901

About the author

Naturalistic novels of noted American writer Benjamin Franklin Norris, Junior, brother of Charles Gilman Norris and sister-in-law of Kathleen Thompson Norris, about American life include McTeague in 1899.

This novelist during the Progressive era predominantly authored works that include The Octopus: A California Story (1901) and The Pit (1903). Although he not openly supported socialism as a political system, his work nevertheless evinces a socialist mentality and influenced socialist-progressive writers, such as Upton Beall Sinclair. Philosophical defense of Thomas Henry Huxley of the advent of Darwinism profoundly influenced him like many of his contemporaries. Norris studied under Joseph LeConte, who at the University of California, Berkeley, taught an optimistic strand of Darwinist philosophy that particularly influenced him. Through many of his novels, notably McTeague, runs a preoccupation with the notion of the civilized man overcoming the inner "brute," his animalistic tendencies. His peculiar and often confused brand of social Darwinism also bears the influence of the early criminologist Cesare Lombroso and the French naturalist Émile Zola.

Reviews

[P. Lundburg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my third time reading this book. I first read it for an American Lit survey course in college, and something about Norris' tenacious and unwavering passion for truth on a grand scale pulled my 20-something idealism in a new direction. In particular, there's a thread of social justice that elevates this book from being a good story to a poignant social statement.

The story revolves around the growth of the railroad industry. At a time when the expansion of the railroads was being heralded as the vehicle for progress, Frank Norris was telling the rest of the story--the real story as it hit the lives of people who were subjugated and oppressed by the sprawling railroads. We follow the lives of farmers and aspiring business-folk who are crushed by the untethered demands of the railroads, and we watch with heartbreak as their lives are ruined by the greed of this new industry.

And something should be said about that title. The railroads stretched their tentacles across the land like an octopus, pulling all profit and entrepreneurialism into the cutting and crushing bit of its hardened beak. The octopus seeks to dominate absolutely, and so the railroads did.

And Norris told that story.

This book--as all of Norris' works are--is an example of the Naturalist movement in American Literature. Naturalism, among other things, sought to apply the discoveries of science to literature: scientific order in the world, random occurrences, and most of all the indifference of the universe. Contrary to the concept of a loving and benevolent God maintaining the order of all things, Naturalist writers portrayed the universe as a cold, indifferent machine that could and would crush anything that is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Octopus captures Naturalism as well or better than any other example of Naturalism. Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser are the names usually at the top of the list of Naturalism, but for me the number one spot is occupied by Frank Norris.

Needless to say, I highly recommend this book . . . for many reasons.

[max · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this novel years ago after an undergraduate English professor kept mentioning it in a survey class I took on American literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was not an assigned text, though it was one that he clearly favored. I liked the professor very much; he was an impressively learned old school man who lectured with confident ease on a broad canvas about philosophical, political, and social currents that formed the backdrop of whatever works we happened to be reading.

This was 1975, when English professors knew their literature and the social and intellectual and political contexts in which it was written. They didn't trouble us with bizarre literary theories and pretentious jargon (the toxic waste that started spreading in the '80s and is unlikely ever to be effectively contained and remediated). I was a freshman and had never before heard a teacher speak so effortlessly on so many high-toned intellectual topics. And so I felt compelled to read this important American novel which, unsurprisingly, nobody really reads anymore, and that is a shame. The characters are memorable and the story is compelling.

File under "naturalism." This is a term I have never especially liked, because it seems misleading. It is a word that does not effectively convey exactly what the main ingredients of this literary movement are. How does the word "naturalism" come to mean a school of literature in which characters are subjected to Darwinian forces beyond their control? What is "natural" about that? Like it or not, naturalism means exploitation, avarice, and how people, caught up in their inexorable grip, are crushed by the the raw exercise of economic and political power. Like the railroad in this novel, whose tentacles strangle those who attempt in vain to oppose its unstoppable grasp.

Seems to me a novel like this would be perfectly appropriate to the conditions which prevail in the USA a century later: extreme wage inequality, rampant dishonesty and corruption on the part of politicians, market manipulation and rapacious greed that are normative behavior on Wall Street, and powerful corporations who fire employees, move jobs to other countries, and strip remaining employees of basic benefits, all the while paying top management salaries that balloon ever higher into the stratosphere. A new Octopus for a new age.

[Bob Newman · Rating 4 out of 5]

ranchers, railroads, rebellion, redemption, and revenge

Prolixity, thy name is Norris ! My edition of 448 pages says that it has been edited. I would have been interested to know in what way because Norris is nothing if not verbose and repetitive. Add a healthy dose of 19th century idealistic, rosy romanticism, a bit of extra-sensory perception, communication with "shades", melodramatic deaths, and some old Anglo-Saxon racial prejudices and one would think, "Bob, why did you bother ?"
But you would be wrong. Though his earlier novel, "McTeague" is probably his best work, Norris comes close, in many ways, to his idol, Zola, in creating a realistic portrait of a whole time, a whole area, a whole way of life. The time is late 19th century, the place, central California's San Joaquin Valley, and the way of life the one centered around wheat production. No detail escapes the author's eye---the tools, the land, the houses, the railroads, the dialogues, the flowers and animals. His characters are most lifelike, real people who will stay with you for a long time. The railway, whose many tentacles sucked the blood out of farmers through freight rates and crooked land deals, is the Octopus of the title. The vast production of the fertile valley is chased, rounded up, and cornered by the railway monopoly despite the best efforts of a group of wheat farmers to prevent it. They fight the railway by means of clean politics, dirty politics, and ultimately through violence. The story is a gripping one, no less than Zola's "Germinal", but differing from the latter because California was such a different environment from a French coal miners' town. Class existed---it was not so binding as in Europe---but those at the lower end still lived extremely precariously, as Norris shows.
You could say that three young men; one a farmer, the other two intellectuals or dreamers, make up the main characters. One tries to fight the Octopus and pays the price. The second remains what he has always been-an introspective dreamer with no thought of creation, only trying to re-create the past to link up with a dead love. He sees more clearly than the other two even so. The third is perhaps closest to Norris himself, an upper class urban intellectual cast into this battle of Titans. He writes poetry expressing his overwrought emotions, he tries to give inflammatory speeches, he even throws a bomb. He remains peripheral, sailing off to India at the end, not having succeeded in anything, forced by the web of class and social obligation to be closer and more beholden to the capitalist owners of the railroad than to his erstwhile comrades. Yes, you could say this. But I think the main characters in this flawed but great novel are the wheat and the railroad which determine the lives of many, forces greater than any one man. A pity Norris died at the age of 32. He might eventually have won a Nobel Prize, but for sure he would be remembered as one of the greatest American writers.

[Richard Derus · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book merits three stars based on historical interest alone. It's not Norris's best writing by a long shot, that honor belonging to "McTeague" (in this writer's never-humble opinion), and it's further evidence if any was needed that the loss to American letters that Norris's death at 32 was immense.

The imagination that Norris evidenced in his six-book career is sharp. He saw clearly the world around him, and wasn't about to let the Great Unwashed fail to see it with his clarity. His infelicities of style were those that a longer career could have, and probably would have, beaten out of him. Dreiser aside, the other American Realists improved their writing chops with time; I see no reason to suspect Norris of Dreiser-hood.

But no amount of writerly tyro-hood can take away the astonishing storytelling eye the man had. It's entirely possible that we'd have grown our own, more meellifluous, Conrad right here in Murrika had medical science been only a little more advanced in 1902. A major cultural "what might have been" moment....

I'd say this isn't a book to read and savored and committed to memory, but rather a cultural artifact to be appreciated by those interested in the culture in question.

[George K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Τον Αύγουστο του 2017 διάβασα και πραγματικά απόλαυσα το "ΜακΤίγκ" του ίδιου συγγραφέα, και μπορώ να πω ότι το ίδιο συνέβη και με το "Το Χταπόδι", ίσως μάλιστα το τουβλάκι αυτό μου άρεσε και λίγο παραπάνω! Πραγματικά πρόκειται για ένα κλασικό μυθιστόρημα, για μια κλασική αμερικάνικη ιστορία, για το απόλυτο "Έπος του Σιταριού", με τον συγγραφέα να παρουσιάζει με ζωντανό και αρκετά περιγραφικό τρόπο εικόνες από τη ζωή στην Καλιφόρνια, στα τέλη του 19ου αιώνα, βασίζοντας μάλιστα την ιστορία του σε μια πραγματική και δυστυχώς αιματηρή διαμάχη το 1880, ανάμεσα σε σιτοπαραγωγούς/αγρότες και τη σιδηροδρομική εταιρεία Σάουθερν Πασίφικ, στην κοιλάδα του Σαν Χοακίν (εδώ, για ευνόητους λόγους, η εταιρεία αναφέρεται ως "Πασίφικ & Σάουθγουέστερν"). Είναι ένα ρεαλιστικά, έντονα και σε σημεία μελοδραματικά γραμμένο μυθιστόρημα, θέλει τον χρόνο του, απαιτεί υπομονή, κινείται με αργούς και σταθερούς ρυθμούς, με ελάχιστες εξάρσεις εδώ κι εκεί, μέχρι να έρθει το τέλος, που είναι μάλλον κάπως απαισιόδοξο αλλά σίγουρα πολύ δυνατό και ρεαλιστικό με βάση αυτά που προηγήθηκαν. Η γραφή είναι πολύ ωραία, ζωντανή, γεμάτη από πλούσιες περιγραφές τοπίων, σκηνικών και χαρακτήρων, σίγουρα ο συγγραφέας πολυλογεί γενικά, όμως προσωπικά μου άρεσε αυτή η πολυλογία του, κατάφερε αν μη τι άλλο να με μεταφέρει σε μια άλλη εποχή, σε ένα άλλο σημείο του πλανήτη, και να μου δείξει έναν άλλο κόσμο, μακριά από αυτόν που ζω. Και επίσης κατάφερε να με κάνει ένα με τους χαρακτήρες και το δράμα τους, πιστεύω ότι πέτυχε (σχεδόν) στον απόλυτο βαθμό όσον αφορά τη σκιαγράφηση των χαρακτήρων του: Ήταν πολύ ρεαλιστικά δοσμένοι, άνθρωποι απλοί, με τα θετικά και τα αρνητικά τους, όπως όλοι μας. Γενικά, ένα κατά τη γνώμη μου υπέροχο μυθιστόρημα!

Υ.Γ. Όσον αφορά την ελληνική έκδοση (Bibliotheque), έχω κάποιο παράπονο: Είναι σίγουρα πολύ όμορφη και γερή, με ωραιότατη και γλαφυρότατη μετάφραση, όμως υπάρχουν κάμποσα λαθάκια επιμέλειας, όπως παραπανίσιες λέξεις σε ορισμένες προτάσεις, λέξεις του στιλ "το", "τα", "και" που έλειπαν εδώ κι εκεί, και πάει λέγοντας. Εγώ το μυθιστόρημα το απόλαυσα χάρη στη γραφή και την πολύ καλή μετάφραση, αλλά αυτά τα λαθάκια ανά πέντε ή δέκα σελίδες θα μπορούσαν να είχαν αποφευχθεί με μια πιο προσεκτική επιμέλεια! Πάντως μπράβο στον εκδότη που έφερε στην Ελλάδα το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο!

[Sarah Beaudoin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prior to beginning The Octopus, the only thing I knew about Frank Norris was that his novel The Pit inspired Upton Sinclair to write The Jungle (I don't know if this is true but the four years between the two books makes it seem plausible). Thus I went into The Octopus with a fairly open mind.

I loved it.

It is not an easy book to read; the events it is based upon are not happy ones. The Octopus covers a period in California history where the railroads wielded an enormous amount of power not only in transportation but also in government and land ownership. As a result, they made paupers of rich men overnight and destroyed the lives of many less wealthy farmers. There is no happy ending. And because Norris creates such a rich cast of characters and devotes many of the 600+ pages to fully developing their families, experiences, and personalities beyond the political story, the ending is even more difficult to take.

Frank Norris is not a spare writer. He spends time setting each scene and despite the multiple points of view present throughout, I often felt that the overall master narrator was the poet Presley. Scenes are described in breathtaking language, regardless of if the view is of a field of wheat or a ditch of bodies. In the novel, when Presley writes a poem to great acclaim, he chooses to publish it in a newspaper for the masses instead of in a magazine for the privileged. Norris does the same with his novel: it is a story about wrongs against humanity and he wrote it for the masses. There is nothing privileged about this book. It is a warning against the concentration of power and the risks all people run if they lose sight of their morals. This book does not preach but it would be hard to miss to message.

[Beth Cato · Rating 3 out of 5]

News stories about Occupy Wall Street and the 99% have dominated the headlines for the past year. These same themes also dominate this century-old book, which was a bestseller in 1901. Here, the Octopus is the Railroad, its tentacles suffocating and destroying the lives of hardworking ranchers and their families.

This book is also personal for me. It's based on real events that happened around 1880 in central California, only miles away from where I grew up a century later. The Southern Pacific leased land to ranchers, and then after the land was developed and the lease time was at end, the railroad increased the price tenfold and then acted to force the farmers off the land. The end result was the Mussel Slough Tragedy, a shoot-out that killed several men and made the surviving ranchers into local folk heroes.

Norris used those elements to create his drama of the West. He changed many of the facts; in his book, the incident takes place right before 1900, and the real places of Hanford and Grangeville have been altered to Bonneville and Guadalajara, respectively. The latter also has a mission in this telling. The geography is also strangely different with nearby hills and canyons that provide handy places for his characters to look down upon the valley of promise; in reality, the hills are some 40 miles away.

There are some classics that age better than others. The Octopus is very slow to get going. It has a wide cast of characters and changes points of view on a whim. The women are stock characters, either simpering or overly noble; the real protagonists are the men. In Victorian fashion, the descriptions wax eloquent and can go on for pages. Very little happens in the first 2/3 of this 650 page novel. Much of it is building up the tension, slowly, and has a great deal of angst. However, when the end comes it actually moves along at a steady clip. It's a tragedy in a Rocks Fall Everyone Dies sort of way. Most of the main cast is annihilated: the men dead, the women suffering through miscarriage or poverty or prostitution. All of this is the fault of the railroad or their own moral failings.

Those moral failings are heavy-handed in the style of the time, but also are not clear black and white. The most upstanding of the characters suffer because of their poor choices. A character I disliked immensely at the beginning was Annixter; he was creepy and anti-woman, with an angry fixation on his dairymaid. However, by the end of the book he had transformed and became a redemptive figure because of the love of that very dairymaid.

The book is also steeped in the biased attitudes of the time. The head of the railroad is Jewish. The cast of good guys is very Anglo-Saxon. The lesser farmhands, such as the Portuguese, are regarded with disdain (which is amazing to me since the valley's Portuguese population is now so large and integral). The most blatantly racist line of the book is near the end, after a jack rabbit round-up: "The Anglo-Saxon spectators round drew back in disgust, but the hot, degenerated blood of the Portuguese, Mexican, and mixed Spaniard boiled up in excitement at this wholesale slaughter." It makes me wince, but the statement is also a reflection of the time period and must be seen in that context. Also, most of those wincing Anglo-Saxons ended up dead, but the so-called degenerates lived on. Perhaps there's a sort of Darwinism in that.

It's not a fun read, but I found it fascinating to read a dramatization of events that happened a few miles away from my home, and I'm glad I finally trudged through the tome. Sometimes it's good to read a classic just to be able to say, "I read that."

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Octopus: A Story of California is a 1901 novel by Frank Norris. I loved this book. It was the first part of an uncompleted trilogy, titled, The Epic of the Wheat. The Epic of the Wheat sounds so boring, but I didn't find it boring at all, at least not the first book, by the time the wheat is made into bread and biscuits and all that kind of thing, who knows, perhaps I'll be bored.

Frank Norris was an American author born in Chicago. It doesn't seem like he stayed there long though. He also lived in California, London, New York and Paris, he worked as a news correspondent in South Africa and as a war correspondent in Cuba during the Spanish-American war; he seemed like a very busy person. Whenever I read anything about Frank Norris it says he was a "naturalist" writer, so I finally looked up the word. These are two of the definitions I found:

"Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character."

"The thinking was that certain factors, such as heredity and social conditions, were unavoidable determinants in one’s life. A poor immigrant could not escape their life of poverty because their preconditions were the only formative aspects in his or her existence that mattered. Naturalism almost entirely dispensed with the notion of free will, or at least a free will capable of enacting real change in life’s circumstances."

Emile Zola, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser and Upton Sinclair are all listed as major naturalist authors. So this is what I've learned; without giving a thought to whether I agree with naturalism, I certainly enjoy that style of writing because I love all those authors.

The Octopus is the story of the conflict between wheat farmers in the San Joaquin Valley and the Pacific and Southwestern railroad. The "octopus" is the railroad, its tentacles spread out into every aspect of man's life, making itself even more powerful and of course always richer. The focus in the novel seem to be the power the railroad company has over the farmers and how the farmers are almost helpless to this "entity." The issue at stake is one of land ownership. Along the lines of the Pacific and South West Railroad, alternate sections of land had been granted to the Railroad Trust by the government. The railroad invited the farmers to settle the land and cultivate wheat, then offers the land for sale, at first to the first occupants. The price was promised to be between $2.50 and $5.00 per acre. Improvements to the land would not affect the price, therefore, the land would prove to be very valuable to those first farmers. As the novel goes on the farmers greatly improve the land through things like irrigation, however the railroad has no intention of selling to the farmers at the original price. When told that the farmers have improved the land they are told the presence of the railroad also increases the value of the ranches. Eventually the railroad decides to sell, but now the selling price to is be in the range between $20.00 and $30.00 per acre. Thus begins the war between the farmers and railroad trust. When the ranchers resolve to defend their homes and livelihood, there are tragic consequences of which you are going to have to find out for yourselves what they are.

I loved the book, a lot of people wouldn't. There is a lot of talk about wheat, a lot of talk about wheat prices, oh and a lot of talk about railroads. The railroad seems like its the main character, and it is a long book. I've often heard it said that if you're from California you would love the book. Well I'm not from California, have never been there (doubt I'll ever get there) but I still thought it was a great read. On to the next book, happy reading.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published in 1901, this is a story of one of the west coast railroads and the ranchers of the San Joaquin valley. Frank Norris tells us that the railroad, beginning with concessions from the government, became so all-powerful that it squashed the livelihood of the ranchers. It reminded me of how today mostly local governments provide tax favorability to businesses so that they will relocate - do we create another Octopus by doing so? Anyway, the problem with the railroads is that they were essentially a monopoly within their given territory and became politically corrupt to the core.

I was reminded of my history and that at the time, frankly, I didn't pay close attention. Still, the term "trust buster" lurked in the back of my mind. I think that came after this novel, but probably not because of it. As I read, it was easy to see how, in the real world, business owners were so selfish as to not foresee the advent of unions, for example, nor of small and then increasing government regulation. (An observation: I think we can see today that corruption never goes away, it just moves around a bit. I am reminded of the phrase "influence peddling is a cottage industry in Washington, DC.")

This novel is not all political. It is a novel and therefore people inhabit the pages. There are multiple storylines involving different characters. I use the word storylines rather than plot as there is really only one plot. The storylines of the different characters move the plot along and illustrate the author's point in multiple ways. The characterizations may not be quite fully fleshed, but they are well done. I like Norris' writing style.

Frank Norris died young and left us only 3 novels. I liked his McTeague: A Story of San Francisco at 5-stars worth, but I think this novel is no more than a solid 4-stars. I look forward to his The Pit: a Story of Chicago. I'll give myself some time, though, before I pick that one up.

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

The railroad is bad. Especially in the 1880s. It is the destroyer of souls, the devil's most exquisite instrument of torture. That's about all I got for getting through this slog. It was fine. It wasn't offensive. But that's about the best compliment I can give it.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely gripping and powerful novel about the destruction of a whole community of farmers in California by a giant railroad corporation. This is a political protest novel, with a well-developed anti-capitalist message. There's nothing subtle about it, Norris doesn't beat about the bush - and the novel is all the better for that.
Norris' story of the San Joaquin valley and its inhabitants is at the same time incredibly lifelike. The main characters, Presley, Annixter, Magnus, and a few others, are memorable and tragic figures.
Norris has a particular talent for writing about the awesome natural beauty of the wheat ranches, and about exciting and dramatic episodes, such as debates that seem about to turn into fist-fights, a drunken barn party, a train heist, manhunts and gruesome deaths. My only complaint is that one or two sections are a bit over-written or repetitious. For the most part, The Octopus is suspenseful and fast-moving.
In some ways the epic depiction of the West, and the intense drama of individuals caught up in a life-and-death struggle against ruthless capitalist forces, is reminiscent of the movies Heaven's Gate and Once Upon a Time in the West - which share the same basic theme and were probably inspired by Norris.
After reading this, I wondered: who is writing like this today? (Or like Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, or Emile Zola?) Where is the similar novel about the exploitative activities of Amazon, the fracking industry, the Flint water poisoning, the opioids crisis (for instance)? If such a novel exists, I want to read it, but I fear that Norris' style and preoccupations are too unfashionable. The novel can't really be appreciated through the narrow lens of identity politics, based on race, gender or sexuality, the obsessions of the upper middle class today.
Anyway, I can't recommend this novel highly enough!

[King Wenclas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not just a great American novel-- this book is THE great American novel, in its scope, its understanding of the American character and of the forces which have shaped the American civilization. The leading figures of the narrative, on both sides of the dispute, are risk-takers. Most of them are quite ruthless-- Presley the poet and Vanamee the mystic the chief exceptions. It's Frank Norris's genius that he makes us care about a man like Annixter despite his hardness and ruthlessness. Annixter and the other members of the League become heroic because they stand up for their work, their land and their principles, against what turn out to be irresistible forces.

I see that some reviewers have a problem getting past Norris's style of writing. His "purple prose." Frank Norris was a naturalist and wrote in that mode-- which means the narrative is heavily detailed. It means that the author makes his points again and again-- he hammers them into you-- which is admittedly a different style from what most readers today are used to, but it also gives the book its unusual power. When conflict comes, it has reverberations beyond the incidents themselves, because Norris makes the conflicts part of his larger themes.

Norris overstates his descriptions because he wants the reader to SEE the setting and the characters; really see them. Few novels are so closely tied to the land and nature. (Tolstoy's Anna Karenina comes to mind.)No novel I've read has so well conveyed the special qualities of California; its landscape and sunlit beauty. Norris emphasizes the wheat as a force of nature because he wants us to see the railroad, and the people of the novel, as natural forces as well.

For all the care Norris put into the novel's construction, few novels carry as much excitement. The shooting at the barn dance; the chase of Dyke; and finally, the sudden showdown between ranchers and railroad men are as tense and exciting-- and ultimately as tragic-- as any scenes ever written.

Scope, power, love, tragedy, compassion, meaning-- no American novel puts every aspect of a great novel together as well as this one. Indeed, it remains topical, in that monopolies, corruption, and cronyism are with us today-- and there remain people who fight against these forces, whether their vehicle to do so be the Tea Party or Occupy. Since 1901, when The Octopus was first published, has all that much really changed?

[sdw · Rating 4 out of 5]

"How long must it go on? How long must we suffer? Where is the end: what is the end? How long must the ironhearted monster feed on our life's blood? How long must this terror of steam and steel ride upon our necks? Will you never be satisfied, will you never relent, you, our masters, you, our kings, you, our taskmasters, you, our Pharaohs? Will you never listen to that commandment Let my people go?"

This book is an epic of Wheat in California. And I mean it - an EPIC of WHEAT. I enjoyed it more than The Grapes of Wrath . I read in the afterward that Norris toned down his critiques and complicated the innocence of the farmers to appease the right-ward turn of his press. Yet, I found the book more convincing and engaging because of the moral fall (the fall from innocence) that the railroads' dealings forced upon the farmers.

This book reinforced most of my pre-existing beliefs about depictions of race, gender, and land ownership in California farm narratives. Its a great novel to use to talk about land grants and the railroads in the west.

[Julie Mickens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on a true story of a violent conflict between the railroad and California wheat ranchers in the San Joaquin valley, The Octopus is a big, baggy amalgam of naturalism, regionalism, sentimental novel, political novel and historical dramatization. Just because you may have heard of it being associated with "naturalism," don't be fooled. This turn-of-the-20th-century book has more in common with Dickens or Stowe than, for instance, Richard Wright or even Stephen Crane. It's really striking how some passages of this book feel so modern they could've been written in the 1950s, while others feel so old-fashioned they could've been written in the 1850s.

Although dated in significant ways (e.g., straight-up racism; religious sentimentality), it's still a fascinating document of its time and intriguing artistic effort. OK, I do have to comment on one style tic that is unintentionally hilarious: Norris is kind of addicted to repeating certain descriptive stock phrases when characters or situations reappear in his narrative. A charitable interpretation is that he thinks these word-for-word repetitions are leitmotifs or Homeric epithets something, but they, in fact, are just plain corny and good occasions to skip a page.

The Octopus' length and baggy, episodic structure would have been, for its time, a feature and not a bug. It's a reminder that novels of this time were more analogous to seasons-long TV serials, rather than tightly paced feature films. I recall HL Mencken half-jokingly commenting that the prodigious length of Dreiser novels (from roughly this same period) were selling points -- more book for your bang to pass a long winter.

In short, I'm giving this four stars because there are genuinely interesting and well-done parts mixed in with the not-so-well-done parts, and because it's a pretty significant (though fictionalized) California historical account. To enjoy it, it helps to be a little detached and intellectualizing, to think of it as an artifact somewhat, rather than expecting oneself to be Frank Norris' target reader.

[Ramon4 · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the late 1800's, the state of California awarded a monopoly to the Railroad to build a rail line down the length of the Central California Valley. As an incentive, the Railroad was awarded large tracks of land along side the new rail line. The Railroad invited farmers to settle on the Railroad land, promising that they would be sold the land at some future time.

This story concerns the plight of these farmers as they farm the rich farmland, but find themselves at the mercy of the powerful Railroad. All the organized moves of the Central Valley farms to shake the Railroad yoke off are anticipated and checked by the powerful Railroad.

Our point of view and sympathy are with the farmers, and we see the Railroad as a soul-less evil. Finally, at the end of the story, after all the lives are ruined or broke, the protagonist travels to San Francisco to confront the heartless monster who has ruined all the good farmers. We are shocked to learn the head of the Railroad is himself a prisoner of the economic forces that rule the world. It is 'the wheat' and the people who consume the wheat that control the process. The wheat must move to the hungry people of the world, and anyone who is hurt in the process is just a trivial footnote to a force of nature.

[Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Octopus" is mentioned several times in the last book I read, "The Inventor and the Tycoon". Since I was a big fan of Norris' "McTeague", I decided to tackle this sweeping drama. Although the book is painfully slow in the beginning, it is well worth completing. Norris must have been inspired by Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables", as "The Octopus" delves into the lives of the Northern California farmers whose lives are held in the balance by the greedy railroad tycoons. The characters are extremely well-defined and sympathetic as they attempt to band together and rid themselves of the evil-doers trying to take their land and wrench every penny they can out of their business transactions. Driven to desperation against evil, the farmers find that they must meet the evil halfway and, perhaps, perform tasks they never imagined doing.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know why people called this book "flawed" back in the twentieth century. Perhaps because it has a somewhat sympathetically Marxist tone. However, it's also an excellent picture of what the giant robber barons like Stanford & Co were really LIKE- and the struggle of ordinary people against a corporate monster, too big for true human comprehension, but at best, built to serve the few at the expense of the many. It's a bit Dickensian and also prefigures Jack London, who must have loved it. But it's a good read. The drama never really stops, sweeps you in, and keeps you with it. The characters are quite believable, if a little ragged and sometimes "stereotypical". I am also reminded of Kesey's Sometimes A Great Notion... you get the feeling he must have loved this too. I avoided this one way too long.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is crazy good. Throughout the course of the novel I got invested in the community of farmers that this novel focuses on and it was a delight.

Also, utterly devastating.

[Aleksandr Rubtsov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of the three novels by Norris I have read, this one is by far the best.

[Jim Leckband · Rating 5 out of 5]

Has anyone identified a genre of fiction called "California Disillusionment"? In other words, where California Dreaming becomes California Screaming? "The Octopus: A Story of California" would be a centerpiece, along with The Grapes of Wrath and a book I read while I was reading this one: The Circle. And of course there are all those Hollywood novels, such as The Day of the Locust.

The book that I kept being reminded of when I was reading this was "The Grapes of Wrath". The sense of place and the allegory (Eden mostly, with some biblical themes) made it seem that Steinbeck was more than a little familiar with "The Octopus". The OverSoul in "Grapes" is replaced by "Wheat" here - but it is essentially the same thing, the drive of nature to connect and reproduce.

The plot is a teeny bit overdetermined, as it can be with Naturalist writers. The drum beat of "Bad Things" is thrumming throughout the book. But, that was Norris's point, "Bad Things" are thrumming throughout everything at some level. It seemed to me that "trust" was the keyword to unlock this novel. Trust in the verbal sense in that the people who trusted laws, agreements and even their kin where destroyed. And "Trust" in the monopoly sense - the Railroad Trust of California was the Octopus who ultimately destroyed the wheat farmers of the San Joaquin valley.

It was interesting to read this novel when yet another Octopus (Amazon) was in the news for doing the same thing to publishers and authors as they "negotiated" with Hachette by withholding their products from the market that they dominate. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. And yet I'm writing this on an Amazon owned website. Ah...the ironies. But that is Norris's ultimate point, which he gets to in the last chapter: all this human industry of corruption and creation is just one aspect of Nature doing what it does - creating Wheat, so to speak, in whatever way it can and in doing so, maybe ultimately creating Good in the long run.

One hopes, one does - that is if that one is lucky enough to be Presley (the Norris stand-in in the novel) and not any of the other poor souls engulfed by the Octopus.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like I've been reading this for years. It's like Frank Norris decided one day he was going to write an epic and didn't particularly care what it was about (much like the character Presley and his 'Song of the West').

Overall I found this similar in story and tone to The Grapes of Wrath, only it's the Railroad (the titular Octopus) squeezing out mid-sized farms rather than the Bank and Big Farm squeezing out the poor farmer. It's obvious who you are supposed to side with, and yet Norris depicts the ranchers and farmers in such a way as to make me dislike pretty much all of them. If you manage to get passed the prideful boasting and willful ignorance of the cowardly ranchers, and don't object to the frankly ridiculous caricature of a villain (S. Behrman), then their complete disregard to their own tenants and the prosperity of anyone except themselves ought to still put you off. Several farmers are actively ruining their own land in plans to make fortunes quickly and then leave. How do you root for that?

Now, if the above makes this sound like a nuanced, layered take on what could be a black and white conflict, don't get too excited. Norris employs a lot of structural tactics to convey his message (essentially how helpless the individual is against forces like trusts and monopolies, pretty much summed up towards the end of the novel by the rich railroad magnate Presley visits), and they are employed haphazardly. One particularly heinous use was the death (by starvation) of one character while another group literally feasts. The juxtaposition is a good idea, but the scene switches back and forth something like 20 times. It's excessive and unnecessary, and ruins the intended effect. A lot of the novel is like that.

I gave 2 stars because the writing itself isn't bad, just poorly structured, and there is a wealth of information here for someone interested in either this time period or even potentially business tactics. The international shipping of the wheat to India ostensibly in the name of aid is something that goes on to this day for profit (I believe famine areas in Africa had a lot of this type of 'aid' more recently, much to the benefit of American farm interests).

[Jaycee]

Again, read only a bit for school. No rating or review.

[Mark McKenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I marked "The Octopus" as 'finished' but I quit at page 335. I knew this to be a famous work that was a factor in inspiring lawmakers to break the monopoly of the railroad, the octopus in the title. But I found the book to be a maudlin exercise in purple prose that had more historic than literary interest for me.

There was an interesting sub-plot surrounding 'Vanamee' a wandering prophet-like character who is mourning the mysterious death of his young lover, Angele Varian, a tragedy that happened many years earlier. He seems to be calling her back in some mystical way. Frank Norris spends some time developing this "ghost story" along with his political one.

The book is also interesting in its Western depictions: what was considered a 'great' man in those days, how men thought of and treated women, a notable gunfight, a character (Annixter) being softened by love, etc. But all this was not enough. I didn't care enough about these characters to wade through all the verbiage. Ultimately, "The Octopus" is a polemic work. The characters were created to expose the political shenanigans of the railroad. Good news for the ranchers growing wheat in California's Joaquin Valley. Bad news for readers of fiction.

[pearl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for my 8th grade US History class.
And let me tell you, it is fucking Epic with a capital E. Sure it's slow and dry at times (want better/worse, go read Steinbeck). But I can't tell you how absolutely monstrous this thing is. How much you begin to fear and realize the magnitude of the "Californian Dream", how merciless it is in scope, that it will crush a man and *his* dreams, to make it real.

It comes full circle at the end, in a case of crazy-perfect justice.

The Wheat of course, Wins.

[Carla Remy]

Predictably I couldn't make it through. I liked what I read - 150 pages - but it was just too slow. Categorized this as 19th century lit even though it's from 1901. Thats the vibe I got.

[Lucas Gelfond]

read/skimmed super quickly for independent study, don't feel like I have this enough time to give it a proper review but really enjoyed - grand/almost epic narrative around railroads / changing basis of ownership in CA, reminded me a lot aesthetically of there will be blood (in an phenomenal way). hope to revisit this eventually in less of a rush

[Carter Aakhus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another underrated masterpiece from Frank Norris that speaks to the evergreen, never-ending class war between big business robber barons and the common man. Fantastic, anger-inducing fiction.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was looking at my list of books read this year and I realized I hadn’t read anything published before 1950. As a fan of 20th Century literature of all time periods and cultures I was kind of let down with myself for not expanding my reading pick this year and decided to finally pick up The Octopus.

I acquired this copy of The Octopus (and its sequel The Pit) at the beginning of the year mainly due to my interest in The Pit rather than The Octopus. I believe I found out about these books when looking for literary depictions of Chicago, which is where the sequel takes place. While more of my interest initially laid in The Pit, I was interested in The Octopus as well.

The Octopus is the first book of an unfinished trilogy entitled “The Epic of the Wheat” Trilogy. The Octopus takes place in California, in the agricultural areas beyond San Francisco. Based on the real events of the Mussel Slough Tragedy of 1880, in which a land dispute between settlers and the South Pacific Railroad led to a violent altercation. This book is a fictitious retelling of these events that sets the tone for this trilogy focusing on the production of wheat. The Pit then goes on to follow the sale of wheat on the trade floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, and the unreleased third book, The Wolf, was to cover the utilization of this wheat in Europe.

This expansive scope of a trilogy was also what drew my attention to these books. These kinds of maximalist, sprawling narratives, micro focusing on a niche element of a larger issue to comment on American society and global commerce definitely piqued my interest. Especially given its publication year of 1901, I was curious to see how these concepts were explored at the turn of the 20th Century, especially since I usually associate these kinds of books with the postmodern movement of the latter half of the century.

The Octopus is a wide sprawling novel, almost to a fault. Its main narrative looks to follow the disagreement between the ranchers and the railroad. In line with the historic event, the railroad leased this land out to the ranchers, originally only $1-2 an acre, once the land was improved and the farms established they decided to sell the land at $20-30 an acre, against what the ranchers had been told. This leads to the disagreement between the two parties. The ranchers form a loose collective called “The League” and decide to work together to take on the railroad. Failing at taking legal action to find justice, they take up arms, to their own demise.

This novel is a violent and romanticized account of the events that transpired. Considering the time period it was written in the language used is quite easy to follow. Pacing wise, it is a little slow and there definitely is an argument for significantly cutting down the page count of this work. Many chapters stray from this main plot and while some of it offers a better vision of the world of late 19th Century California, a lot of it feels superfluous and loses track of the overall goal of the novel. Sometimes you will even forget that this is a book about the railroad and wheat, until it is drastically revisited for a few pages.

“The octopus” of the novel refers to an analogy made for the railroad. That its monopolistic goals stretch in all different directions, controlling all elements of society. There are some sections that utilize this analogy well using subterranean verbage to describe the injustice and overwhelming control placed on the ranchers by the railroad but many times this is a forgotten element.

This analogy also opens up the discussion of this book to a wider discourse around the novel and its author, Frank Norris. Norris, born in 1870 and died in 1902 at age 32, was a child of wealth and a social darwinist. There are many criticisms of his beliefs and depictions of non Anglo Saxon, male characters. Primarily of his antisemitic beliefs. Multiple critics have criticized him for his anti immigrant and antisemitic depictions. Often these critics are looking at his works as a whole and his place in the grander Naturalist movement, which often had these antisemitic connotations. Anitisemitism is the most prominent criticism around this author and it is not hard to find these claims.

I have not read any other work from this author, so I don’t make this assessment based on anything other than my reading of this book and criticisms of it but for a book titled “The Octopus” there really isn’t anything strikingly antisemitic about this.

I take claims of antisemitism pretty seriously and when I first was made aware of this reputation, about 250 pages into this book I was set on trying to figure out what might be the issue here. Most obviously might be the trope of the octopus in antisemitic caricatures. While the subject of utilizing an octopus to depict monopolistic greed runs dangerously close to the depiction of an octopus as a symbol for a Jewish cabal controlling the world, I don’t see strong evidence that that was the intention here. In fact, I’m not even sure the trope of the octopus was as widely known in 1901 as it has become in the decades since. Most often these depictions are associated with Henry Ford and Nazi Germany and don’t really come to prominence until the 1920s-1930s. That is not to say that these sentiments weren’t forming in the late 19th century but I’m left without clear evidence that this specific trope existed at this time. I can see how someone reading this book in later decades, who’s very knowledgeable of this trope, could draw parallels but I have failed to see any claims that this book is instrumental in formulating or popularizing this trope, something that I think would offer a valid reason leaving this book in the past.

These claims also center around the character of S Behrman, who is a representative of the railroad and in a sense the main villain due to his direct interaction with the ranchers. He is a vague financial representative of the railroad, dealing with the real estate of the land and the cost of transit of wheat. Never is this character explicitly stated as being Jewish nor is he described in a “stereotypically Jewish” way. You would have to be aware of the ancestral ties of the name Behrman to associate this character with the antisemitic stereotype of a greedy banker and tie his actions to the octopus trope.

I focused a lot of my analysis of this claim on this character as it seems this is where most of these critics connect these claims of antisemitism in his work with this specific novel. There really isn’t much in terms of characterization for any character in this novel but I tried to keep an eye open for any specific dialogue or description that might enlighten me to this argument because I found myself perplexed more than anything. I can see if you are well versed in Norris’ work, this checking the box for you as enough of a red flag but on its own, I’m hard pressed to find that anyone would read this book and think “the Jews are to blame” unless they already thought that going into the book.

I don’t want to discredit this being a negative depiction of a specific ethnic group, especially when so many of the other characters are far worse, more directly negative depictions. Here’s a quick rundown. Black people are non existent in this book, Native Americans are non existent in this book (considering it's a western), the Chinese immigrants (that are most notable in San Francisco ethnic demography) are relegated to non speaking subservient roles, Portuguese immigrants are referred to by ethnic slurs.

The most characterization given to of any of these ethnic characters is Hooven. A (German?) immigrant rancher who should be seen on the same level as his Anglo counterparts yet is looked down upon. Personally, I don’t associate Hooven as a German name and would consider it to be Dutch. Norris often has him referred to as a German but also a Dutchman, nicknaming him Bismark. This is very in line with American ignorance of the time (Pennsylvania Dutch). Hooven and his wife speak in a phoneticized “old world” accent.

I bring this up not to add to the pearl clutching but to point out just how direct Norris is with his views of non Anglo characters and I feel that if he wanted to say something explicitly about Jews, he would have. I don’t deny claims that Norris was an antisemite but I think a better analysis is that he just didn’t like anybody who wasn’t a white, American born, male.

This isn’t even to address women in this book. None of which exist outside of their sexualization and domestic roles. Multiple girls (his words) are pursued by rancher characters, the guys who are our protagonists. It isn’t until the end that these women are given more character emphasis in the plot but none of these depictions are particularly inspiring.

This comes with the territory when reading a book from 1901 and something I was fully prepared for. I’m mainly addressing this now because there seems to be such an off kilter analysis of this work because when I hear that someone was a “rampant antisemite” I’m expecting more than just a vague association that I’m sure most readers didn’t even catch.

Truthfully, this work is incredibly tame. The opening chapter to Hemingway’s To Have and to Have Not is worse than anything in these 550 pages. I’ve read works published after the Civil Rights Act that offer a worse understanding of American diversity.

I bring all this up because I wonder why Frank Norris is not as well known in today’s studying of American Literature. I feel this book, with all its flaws, to be a great step in the legacy of the American novel, bridging the gap between Melville and Hemingway. Reading this you will see its influence on authors such as Dos Passos, Steinbeck, and McCarthy. It would be a disservice to write off this author and his contributions to American literature just because of certain criticisms. Not even all of the critics of Norris’ antisemitism call for his relegation to the trash bin of time. Many find value in reckoning with his flaws while admiring his skills as a writer. Which is that stance I feel is most appropriate.

There truly are some amazingly written passages in this book and the scope of this book feels far beyond its time period, more akin to the American analysis works of Delillo and Pynchon. But beyond the beliefs of the author this work does suffer from drastically shifting pacing and weak characters. The plot shifts around rapidly and some sections are clearly more developed than others and aside from ethnic stereotypes there really isn’t much memorable about these characters individually.

The overall scope and its intentions of this novel feel like a little bit of a mess, particularly compared to more contemporary works. Norris came from wealth and was an educated man, yet he is writing a story from the perspective of the working class. He spent time in this area of the country researching for this novel but it's clear he is not of this world. He tries to offer a more proletariat perspective in this book but he ends up more on the end of “lone wolf libertarianism”.

This is the kind of book Theodore Roosevelt would read. In fact, he did read it. He was quoted as being “inclined to believe conditions in California were worse than elsewhere” after reading it. If the sitting president, with all the information at his disposal, was swept up in the romanization of this retelling, it's clear that this is the work of an unreliable author. The messaging is heavy handed and the thrill of it can definitely distract from real ramifications. In the end nearly all the characters face some sort of downfall but yet the wheat persists. The railroad persists. These institutions outlive individuals. Many of the issues attempted to be reckoned with in this novel still exist today and maybe that is why it should still have value in American Literature. This just isn’t the best attempt at analyzing them. I can see why this book is often discussed in the rankings of “Great American Novel” but it's far from my pick. Anyone claiming this as their pick might catch the question “why haven’t you read anything released more recently?

[Paul Gaya Ochieng Simeon Juma · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not start regretting why I bought this book until I was quarter way into it. Despite my reservations, I was unable to abandon it since I am the one who bought it. I thought it my duty to read it to the last page. However, there is another reason why I persisted with it and it is do with the books theme. It focuses on the conflict between railroad companies and wheat farmers in California in the 19th century. Of late I have developed a keen interest in conflicts involving 'aristocrats' and 'common men'. In this case however, despite the subject matter being of interest to me, I did not take up the task of reading this book as passionately as I had anticipated.

The quarrel began as a result of land. The wheat farmers are accusing the railroad companies of trying to ruin them in underhand way. They charged them of trying to break them financially by grabbing their property. The railroad companies wanted the wheat farmers to dispose of their land to them. However, they made them very poor offers which were rejected by the wheat farmers who proved to be very adept when it comes to matters sale and purchase of land.

When the railroad companies realised that the wheat farmers were not willing to let go off their property, they resorted to using force and violence. But they were mistaken in the thought that their intimidation could remain one-sided. They forgot that the wheat farmers also had their own ways of showing displeasure. This book tells the story of how how the wheat farmers resisted the powerful railroad companies in order to keep their lands.

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ranches v railroad, republican values v monopoly capitalism, romance v realism.