Both as a Californian (though, like Norris, not a native of the state) and a student of American literary naturalism, I was always interested in Frank Norris's work. Indeed, one of my earliest publications was an essay on The Octopus, which appeared in 1955 when I was still a UCLA graduate student. It was not, however, until I completed and then revised my dissertation on Hamlin Garland for publication in the late 1950s that I gave full attention to Norris, an effort that resulted in a number of essays and that culminated in two books, The Literary Criticism of Frank Norris (1964), an edition, and The Novels of Frank Norris (1966), a critical study. Although I occasionally wrote about Norris in the three decades that followed, especially in essays devoted to naturalism in general, I was principally preoccupied during this period with the writings of Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser and John Dos Passos. Since the late 1990s, however, I have again given Norris's work a good deal of attention, concentrating on prominent issues in the interpretation of McTeague and The Octopus.

As I note in several of the essays that follow, Norris has not been taken seriously by most scholars of American literature. His early death at 32 was much lamented at the time, but soon afterward it became common to place his work in various pigeonholes that had the effect of prejudicing any interest in its possible depth or quality. Although his playful self- designation as the “Boy Zola” in several of his letters did not directly influence the deterioration of his early reputation, both his youth and his enthusiasm for Zola were nevertheless well known and their implications played a major role in itsdecline. In the conventional reading of Norris's work that soon arose and still persists, Norris had full- heartedly seized upon Zolaesque naturalism as his principal form of expression and thereby doomed his novels to the mediocrity characteristic of an immature acceptance of a simplistic and inadequate interpretation of existence. This dismissal was later endorsed by the tendency in most histories of American literature to consider late nineteenth- century American naturalism in general an unproductive (but fortunately brief!) moment in this history, with Norris the best example of the thinness of the movement.