The Octopus: A Story of California (1901)

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." ( )

I liked reading this book, but would have been far better (for me) if it had been half its length. It was an interesting story of California’s early wheat farmers and their struggles with the railroad. The tale was told well, with some memorable characters, although the true history and geography of the period was manipulated a bit. For example, a Spanish mission was located in the San Joaquin Valley where none ever was established by the Franciscans. That kind of literary license in such a novel is fine with me. However, I found the book to be a tad too long and redundant. The flowing descriptive passages went on and on. And on! Although I admit I liked it for the most part and learned from it, I truly believe that Frank Norris enjoyed writing this book far more than I enjoyed reading it. Looking ahead, I think I would enjoy The Octopus – The Film, if one ever were to be made in the future. ( )

While more than a great read, I cannot pretend to agree with the dire determinism of the author, Frank Norris. This novel of California wheat farmers versus the Railroad (the 'Octopus' of the title) is in the naturalistic tradition of Zola. In fact I was reminded of my reading of Germinal at times while rereading this classic, yet flawed, novel. Norris tends toward hyperbole at times and the prose can be somewhat melodramatic, yet it is a lucidly written novel with fascinating characters. The poet, Presley, is one character who particularly fascinated me. Presumably a stand-in for Norris himself, Presley is able to comment on the action and almost persuade the people to rise up against the Railroad; however, he is ultimately unsuccessful in changing their fate determined by Nature. Norris planned a trilogy based on his story of 'Wheat' but only finished one more volume, The Pit, before his untimely death. ( )

Meh. Like most experiments w/ early (if not super early) American novels, this beefy monster has not weathered the years well. I understand that I am supposed to like books like this and Moby Dick, but the constantly shifting POV drove me nuts and the rugged manly types and stoic woman types were comical at best. Sorry American lit buffs. Your contemporaries' tastes don't fit w/ this one anymore. ( )

When I finish reading a book and can't figure out if it was bad or good, I ask myself a simple question: Did I like reading it? In the case of The Octopus my answer is, "Not really."

I liked reading it -sometimes-. Norris has the sort of overly dramatic prose where even if you don't like where he's going, or don't really care about what's happening it's fun to watch him turn a meal, or plowing, or a trip, into an epic event. It's also amusing to listen to a voice that is clearly showing its age. There is off-hand racism in the mention of those with Hispanic blood reveling in the murder of a sea of rabbits where more civilized Angelos turn away (though in Norris' defense such silliness only happens once). Gender roles and ideals about them stand firmly in the early 1900s. Yes, there is really a part in the book where Norris can't gather the balls to use the word whore and substitutes ____. Oh how far we have come.

And that's where the real value of the book is. It's not horrible, just horribly outdated, and because it's so outdated it provides for the reader not just a window into the world that Norris was writing about, but also the perceptions and assumptions that helped people of the time define that world. ( )