The Octopus
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Frank Norris's The Octopus is a thunderous indictment of corporate greed set against the vast wheat ranches of California's San Joaquin Valley, where the iron grip of the Pacific and Southwestern Railroad — known to the farmers simply as the Octopus — slowly strangles the livelihoods and dreams of the men who work the land. At the center of the novel stands Presley, a poet seeking inspiration in the pastoral landscape, who instead witnesses a brutal war between the ranchers and the all-powerful railroad trust that leaves no soul untouched and no illusion intact. Published in 1901 as the first volume of Norris's ambitious Epic of the Wheat trilogy, the novel chronicles the collision between agrarian idealism and ruthless industrial capitalism with the sweeping, naturalistic force of a Zola or a Dreiser. Norris writes with a muscular, panoramic energy that carries the reader across sun-scorched plains, through smoke-filled boardrooms, and into the desperate hearts of men ground down by forces far beyond their control. The Octopus remains one of the defining works of American literary naturalism — a searing portrait of a nation at the crossroads of progress and exploitation — and its central question, of who truly owns the land and at what human cost, resonates with an urgency that refuses to be buried by time.
Author: Frank Norris
Format: Paperback
Genre: Classic fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Frank Norris's The Octopus is a thunderous indictment of corporate greed set against the vast wheat ranches of California's San Joaquin Valley, where the iron grip of the Pacific and Southwestern Railroad — known to the farmers simply as the Octopus — slowly strangles the livelihoods and dreams of the men who work the land. At the center of the novel stands Presley, a poet seeking inspiration in the pastoral landscape, who instead witnesses a brutal war between the ranchers and the all-powerful railroad trust that leaves no soul untouched and no illusion intact. Published in 1901 as the first volume of Norris's ambitious Epic of the Wheat trilogy, the novel chronicles the collision between agrarian idealism and ruthless industrial capitalism with the sweeping, naturalistic force of a Zola or a Dreiser. Norris writes with a muscular, panoramic energy that carries the reader across sun-scorched plains, through smoke-filled boardrooms, and into the desperate hearts of men ground down by forces far beyond their control. The Octopus remains one of the defining works of American literary naturalism — a searing portrait of a nation at the crossroads of progress and exploitation — and its central question, of who truly owns the land and at what human cost, resonates with an urgency that refuses to be buried by time.