Norris Frank Norris: Eight Novels

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4553-9181-3
Verlag: Seltzer Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 2045 Seiten

This book-collection file includes: Blix, A Deal in Wheat, A Man's Woman, McTeague, Moran of the Lady Letty, The Octopus, The Pit, The Surrender of Santiago (article), and Vandover and the Brute. According to Wikipedia: 'Benjamin Franklin Norris, Jr. (March 5, 1870 - October 25, 1902) was an American novelist, during the Progressive Era, writing predominantly in the naturalist genre. His notable works include McTeague (1899), The Octopus: A California Story (1901), and The Pit (1903). Although he did not openly support socialism as a political system, his work nevertheless evinces a socialist mentality and influenced socialist/progressive writers such as Upton Sinclair. Like many of his contemporaries, he was profoundly influenced by the advent of Darwinism, and Thomas Henry Huxley's philosophical defense of it. Norris was particularly influenced by an optimistic strand of Darwinist philosophy taught by Joseph LeConte, whom Norris studied under while at the University of California, Berkeley. 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 Emile Zola.'

Autoren/Hrsg.

Norris, Frank

Leseproben

"Strike me!" continued Captain Jack, "you should have seen Billy Isham on that Panama dough-dish; a passenger ship she was, and Billy was the life of her from stem to stern-post.  There was a church pulpit aboard that they were taking down to Mazatlan for some chapel or other, and this here pulpit was lashed on deck aft. Well, Billy had been most kinds of a fool in his life, and among others a play-actor; called himself Gaston Maundeville, and was clean daft on his knowledge of Shakespeare and his own power of interpretin' the hidden meanin' of the lines.  I ain't never going to forgit the day he gave us Portia's speech.  We were just under the tropic, and the day was a scorcher.  There was mostly men folk aboard, and we lay around the deck in our pajamas, while Billy-- Gaston Maundeville, dressed in striped red and white pajamas--clum up in that bally pulpit, with the ship's Shakespeare in his hands, an' let us have--'The quality o' mercy isn't strained; it droppeth as the genteel dew from heavun.' Laugh, I tell you I was sore with it.  Lord, how we guyed him! An' the more we guyed and the more we laughed, the more serious he got and the madder he grew.  He said he was interpretin' the hidden meanin' of the lines."   And so the Captain ran through that wild, fiery tale--of fighting and loving, buccaneering and conspiring; mandolins tinkling, knives clicking; oaths mingling with sonnets, and spilled wine with spilled blood.  He told them of Isham's knife duel with the Mexican lieutenant, their left wrists lashed together; of the "battle of the thirty" in the pitch dark of the Custom House cellar; of Senora Estrada's love for Isham; and all the roll and plunge of action that make up the story of "In Defiance of Authority."   At the end, Blix's little eyes were snapping like sparks; Condy's face was flaming, his hands were cold, and he was shifting his weight from foot to foot, like an excited thoroughbred horse.   "Heavens and earth, what a yarn!" he exclaimed almost in a whisper.   Blix drew a long, tremulous breath and sat back upon the upturned box, looking around her as though she had but that moment been awakened.   "Yes, sir," said the Captain, rolling a cigarette.  "Yes, sir, those were great days.  Get down there around the line in those little, out-o'-the-way republics along the South American coast, and things happen to you.  You hold a man's life in the crook of your forefinger, an' nothing's done by halves.  If you hate a man, you lay awake nights biting your mattress, just thinking how you hate him; an' if you love a woman--good Lord, how you do LOVE her!"   "But--but!" exclaimed Condy, "I don't see how you can want to do anything else.  Why, you're living sixty to the minute when you're playing a game like that!"   "Oh, I ain't dead yet!" answered the Captain.  "I got a few schemes left that I could get fun out of."   "How can you wait a minute!" exclaimed Blix breathlessly.  "Why don't you get a ship right away--to-morrow--and go right off on some other adventure?"   "Well, I can't just now," returned the Captain, blowing the smoke from his cigarette through his ears.  "There's a good many reasons; one of 'em is that I've just been married."       Chapter X     Mum--mar--married! gasped Condy, swallowing something in his throat.   Blix rose to her feet.   "Just been MARRIED!" she repeated, a little frightened.  "Why-- why--why; how DELIGHTFUL!"   "Yes--yes," mumbled Condy.  "How delightful.  I congratulate you!"   "Come in--come back to the station," said the Captain jovially, "and I'll introduce you to m' wife.  We were married only last Sunday."   "Why, yes--yes, of course, we'd be delighted," vociferated the two conspirators a little hysterically.   "She's a mighty fine little woman," declared the Captain, as he rolled the door of the boat-house to its place and preceded them up the gravel walk to the station.   "Of course she is," responded Blix.  Behind Captain Jack's back she fixed Condy with a wide-eyed look, and nudged him fiercely with an elbow to recall him to himself; for Condy's wits were scattered like a flock of terrified birds, and he was gazing blankly at the Captain's coat collar with a vacant, maniacal smile.   "For Heaven's sake, Condy!" she had time to whisper before they arrived in the hallway of the station.   But fortunately they were allowed a minute or so to recover themselves and prepare for what was coming.  Captain Jack ushered them into what was either the parlor, office, or sitting-room of the station, and left them with the words:   "Just make yourselves comfortable here, an' I'll go fetch the little woman."   No sooner had he gone than the two turned to each other.   "Well!"   "WELL!"   "We're in for it now."   "But we must see it through, Condy; act just as natural as you can, and we're all right."   "But supposing SHE recognizes us!"   "Supposing she does--what then.  How ARE they to know that we wrote the letters?"   "Sh, Blix, not so loud! They know by now that THEY didn't."   "But it seems that it hasn't made any difference to them; they are married.  And besides, they wouldn't speak about putting 'personals' in the paper to us.  They would never let anybody know that."   "Do you suppose they could possibly suspect?"   "I'm sure they couldn't."   "Here they come."   "Keep perfectly calm, and we're saved."   "Suppose it isn't K. D. B., after all?"   But it was, of course, and she recognized them in an instant.  She and the Captain--the latter all grins--came in from the direction of the kitchen, K. D. B. wearing a neat blue calico gown and an apron that was really a marvel of cleanliness and starch.   "Kitty!" exclaimed Captain Jack, seized again with an unexplainable mirth, "here's some young folks come out to see the place an' I want you to know 'em.  Mr. Rivers, this is m' wife, Kitty, and--lessee, miss, I don't rightly remember your name."   "Bessemer!" exclaimed Condy and Blix in a breath.   "Oh!" exclaimed K. D. B., "you were in the restaurant the night that the Captain and I--I--that is--yes, I'm quite sure I've seen you before." She turned from one to the other.  beginning to blush furiously.   "Yes, yes, in Luna's restaurant, wasn't it?" said Condy desperately.  "It seems to me I do just barely remember."   "And wasn't the Captain there?" Blix ventured.   "I forgot my stick, I remember," continued Condy.  "I came back for it; and just as I was going out it seems to me I saw you two at a table near the door."   He thought it best to allow their "matrimonial objects" to believe he had not seen them before.   "Yes, yes, we were there," answered K. D. B. tactfully.  "We dine there almost every Monday night."   Blix guessed that K. D. B. would prefer to have the real facts of the situation ignored, and determined she should have the chance to change the conversation if she wished.   "What a delicious supper one has there!" she said.   "Can't say I like Mexican cooking myself," answered K. D. B., forgetting that they dined there every Monday night.  "Plain United States is good enough for me."   Suddenly Captain Jack turned abruptly to Condy, exclaiming: "Oh, you was the chap that called the picture of that schooner a barkentine."   "Yes; WASN'T that a barkentine?" he answered innocently.   "Barkentine your EYE!" spluttered the Captain.  "Why, that was a schooner as plain as a pie plate."   But ten minutes later the ordeal was over, and Blix and Condy, once more breathing easily, were on their walk again.  The Captain and K. D. B. had even accompanied them to the gate of the station, and had strenuously urged them to "come in and see them again the next time they were out that way."   "Married!" murmured Condy, putting both hands to his head.  "We've done it, we've done it now."   "Well, what of it?" declared Blix, a little defiantly.  "I think it's all right.  You can see the Captain is in love with her, and she with him.  No, we've nothing to reproach ourselves with."   "But--but--but so sudden!" whispered Condy, all aghast.  "That's what makes me faint--the suddenness...