Frank Norris's naturalist novel McTeague: A Story of San Francisco follows a dentist of modest ambition in late nineteenth-century San Francisco, his courtship and marriage, and the greed and jealousy that spread through his small circle. It offers a vivid picture of urban life and a sober study of how character and circumstance can pull a life downward.
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Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
McTEAGUE A Story of San Francisco by Frank Norris CHAPTER 1 It was Sunday, and, according to his custom on that day, McTeague took his dinner at two in the afternoon at the car conductors' coffee-joint on Polk Street. He had a thick gray soup; heavy, underdone meat, very hot, on a cold plate; two kinds of vegetables; and a sort of suet pudding, full of strong butter and sugar. On his way back to his office, one block above, he stopped at Joe Frenna's saloon and bought a pitcher of steam beer. It was his habit to leave the pitcher there on his way to dinner. Once in his office, or, as he called it on his
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