Rating: 
Summary: "Robber barons" and the Mussel Slough Massacre
Review: "The Octopus" is based on little-known yet well-documented events. In the late 1870s, a number of California ranchers banded together to fight a corrupt railroad corporation that, aided by an equally crooked court system and news media, had bilked them of the property they had farmed for years. The resulting melee, the Mussel Slough Massacre of 1880, generated coast-to-coast headlines. (One newspaper editor who famously supported the ranchers and denounced the railroad was Ambrose Bierce.)The proceedings that led to the impasse demonstrate capitalism run amok. The railroad monopoly Southern Pacific, after receiving adjoining plots from the government as a subsidy for building the railroad, encouraged farmers to develop and enhance the land, promising it would be sold to them for $2.50 an acre. Eventually, however, the railroad reneged on its agreement and offered the farmland at more than ten times the promised rate to other bidders (some of them penniless "dummy" buyers), refusing even to compensate the heavily mortgaged farmers for any improvements (homes, barns, etc.) made to the acreage. When the ranchers attended a picnic featuring a speech by a supportive State Supreme Court justice, two of the new "owners," accompanied by federal marshals and railroad representatives, sneaked into one of the homes, removed furniture and personal effects, and began taking possession. Word of this ruse reached the homesteaders, and a shootout ensued that resulted in the deaths of several of the ranchers and two of the invaders. A seminal work of American naturalism, Norris's novel is conscientiously faithful to the basic facts of the incident, fictionalizing the characters and changing a few of the particulars (for example, instead of attending a speech, the ranchers congregate to slaughter rabbits that had been overrunning the territory). Around these details, Norris weaves an absorbing depiction of a community of Westerners, a bitter commentary on the excesses and brutality of nineteenth-century capitalism, and a denouement in which the villain gets his just deserts. He also includes re-imagined versions of other historical figures, such as the notorious train robber Chris Evans, whose story is featured in one of the more exciting chase sequences in nineteenth-century fiction. And, while others have noted correctly that the poet Presley represents Norris himself, Presley's career also mirrors the success of the real-life Edwin Markham and the publication of "The Man with the Hoe." A few modern readers have complained that the book is just too long. (Set beside many other epic works of the period, Norris's fiction is actually both forward-looking and action-packed.) Part One, which describes each of the characters and the surrounding countryside, might seem "slow" to today's readers, but I could barely put down the book once I reached the second part, when most of the action takes place. At times, the book reads like an old-fashioned Western novel. Yet even the lengthy exposition in the first part was often fascinating: one of the most memorable (and surprisingly believable) portrayals is the conversion of Annixter from a condescending, misogynistic killjoy to an altruistic, devoted husband. Then again, the mysticism and clairvoyance of the ranch-hand Vanamee are bizarrely out of place in this novel; although "realism" wins out, much of this subplot seems a trendy dabbling with the American spiritualism that captured the fascination (and embarrassed the reputations) of contemporary authors ranging from Mark Twain to William James. Fans of historical fiction and of American realism, then, are especially likely to enjoy "The Octopus." And, bearing in mind the unscrupulous "robber barons" who recently commandeered such businesses as Enron, Global Crossing, and WorldCom, many other readers may decide that Norris's fiction seems, even today, far more realistic than historical.
Rating:
Summary: Wheat barons vs. railroad barons
Review: Based on an actual incident, "The Octopus" is set in the San Joaquin Valley of central California towards the end of the 19th century -- not long before it was written. It concerns a dispute between the Pacific & Southwestern Railroad (in historical reality, the Southern Pacific) which owns the land it runs through and the tenant wheat ranchers who farm it. For one thing, the ranchers would like to own the land by buying it off the railroad, but the railroad raises the price per acre to exorbitant levels in violation of a previous contract; also, the ranchers are protesting the railroad's monopolistic policy of charging high freight rates for shipping wheat, which cuts into their profits. The characterization of the novel is rather straightforward. The "heroes" are the ranchers, which include "Governor" Magnus Derrick, an ostensibly upstanding politician; Broderson, an ineffectual old man; Osterman, a loudmouthed joker; Annixter, an irascible and obstinate misogynist; and an engineer named Dyke who starts his own hops business after being laid off by the railroad. The author himself is presumably represented by a third-party observer named Presley, a poet who lives on the Derrick ranch and is using the scenery and the conflict as inspiration. The "villain" is, of course, the railroad, which is personified by a porcine banker named S. Behrman who acts as the railroad's agent and mouthpiece and whose frequent insensitivity and cruelty reduces him to a simplistic caricature. The ranchers decide that the best way to keep the railroad's freight rates under control is to elect their own officials to the state Railroad Commission, which would entail bribery; after all, the railroad practically owns the Commission as it is. Despite their getting the Governor's son, Lyman Derrick, to represent them on the Commission, the ranchers' scheme proves ineffective. The railroad ultimately offers the wheat land for sale at the raised prices and sends "dummy" buyers out to dispossess the ranchers, who arm themselves to defend their homes. The result is a shockingly violent confrontation that shakes Presley's sentiments to the core. "The Octopus" has some elements that I found distracting, puzzling, or faulty. First, there is not just one but *two* romantic subplots: Annixter's difficult courtship with a girl whose family works on his ranch (but at least we see how his marriage transforms his character positively and plausibly); and the shepherd/spiritualist Vanamee's incomprehensible nightly summonings of the ghost of his long-lost love Angele. Some of the dialogue is rendered flaccid by the use of euphemisms -- it's unbelievable that Annixter would refrain from calling Behrman anything worse than a "pip." The unctuous tone it applies to its oppressed-worker-vs.-corporate-monster theme is similar to the approach Steinbeck would use almost forty years later in "The Grapes of Wrath." Despite its obvious flaws, however, "The Octopus" manages to be an exemplary work of American literature. The subject matter is unique and necessary for its time, and the commercial and legal aspects of the conflict are treated with maturity and confidence. It uses the perpetual production of wheat as a metaphor for the continuous cycle of the good of the earth prevailing over the evil of men. But most importantly, it achieves the highest purpose of a novel about business: It examines the integrity and resolve of men faced with financial ruin.
Rating: 
Summary: A Novel Rich with Loamy Irony
Review: Certainly a novel with a capital "N", from a time when authors wrote grand, sweeping, "epics of the soil and those who work the soil". Norris was inspired by the work of French novelist Zola, which is funny because some of his harshest writing takes to task San Francisco society matrons attempting to appreciate French style landscape art. I read this book after reading Kevin Starr's "Californians and the American Dream". While this novel does culminate in a retelling of the infamous "Mussel Slough" shoot out, where a group of "squatting" ranchers shot it out with representatives of the U.S. government and the Marshalls, it is most notable for its classic descriptions of California ranch life circa 1880. The character's at the center of the Octopus are broad: Vanamee, the "Hebraic" looking sheep herder/mystic who yearns for the sweet embrace of his departed lover; Presley, the would-be poet who gets wrapped up in the affairs of the world, only to turn away from the world in the end; Annixter, the rough-hewn young rancher who is transformed by the love of a woman. The Octopus is also notable for the supporting cast of minor characters. They reveal as much about life in California in the 1800's as do the major characters.
Still relevant for its historical value, but let's face it... the prose is dated. Also, I agree with other reviewers in that this book is too long by about a hundred pages. Probably a must read for people who are serious about the history of California.
Rating:
Summary: A Novel Rich with Loamy Irony
Review: Certainly a novel with a capital "N", from a time when authors wrote grand, sweeping, "epics of the soil and those who work the soil". Norris was inspired by the work of French novelist Zola, which is funny because some of his harshest writing takes to task San Francisco society matrons attempting to appreciate French style landscape art. I read this book after reading Kevin Starr's "Californians and the American Dream". While this novel does culminate in a retelling of the infamous "Mussel Slough" shoot out, where a group of "squatting" ranchers shot it out with representatives of the U.S. government and the Marshalls, it is most notable for its classic descriptions of California ranch life circa 1880. The character's at the center of the Octopus are broad: Vanamee, the "Hebraic" looking sheep herder/mystic who yearns for the sweet embrace of his departed lover; Presley, the would-be poet who gets wrapped up in the affairs of the world, only to turn away from the world in the end; Annixter, the rough-hewn young rancher who is transformed by the love of a woman. The Octopus is also notable for the supporting cast of minor characters. They reveal as much about life in California in the 1800's as do the major characters.
Still relevant for its historical value, but let's face it... the prose is dated. Also, I agree with other reviewers in that this book is too long by about a hundred pages. Probably a must read for people who are serious about the history of California.
Rating: 
Summary: A great story in need of editing.
Review: First off, "The Octopus: A Story of California (Twentieth Century Classics)" edition has several spelling errors and typos. certainly a book of this quality deserves a better editor than it received. Also, Frank Norris has a tendency to repeat himself. Not just occasionally but routinely. Even using the exact same phrasing within a few pages of the last time it was used. It certainly could have been slimmed down, probably by about a hundred pages or so. The story is a phenomenal one though and deserves to be read in spite of the sloppy editing.
Rating:
Summary: A piece of Tulare County history
Review: I am always in search of books regarding my native San Joaquin Valley, particularly Tulare County. I hunted down the current names of the locations depicted in the book and wanted to share that info.
The Mussel Slough affair (the focus of Norris' book) takes place near Hanford in western Tulare County. "Bonneville" is now called (the city of) Tulare. Although the railroads also had a significant number of tracks running through eastern Tulare County, nothing east of Visalia is mentioned in the book.
Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile, if you stick with it
Review: Norris flounders around for two thirds of "The Octopus" until he begins telling the story. We don't know who these characters are until we're well into the novel and their lack of first names makes them hard to keep straight initially. Who is the novel's protagonist? Presley? Annixter? Magnus Derrick? I would have liked a little more character development. Presley IS Frank Norris, but we don't see him as anything more than a dilletante until nearly the novel's conclusion. We really don't know why Lyman Derrick sells out his father, or how the "league" bribes his way onto the Railroad Commission. Vanamee's obsession over his dead girlfriend adds nothing to the story. (What the heck are "heavy lidded eyes" anyway?) I expected "The Octopus" to be proto-Steinbeck. It is a story Frank Norris had to tell, but it seems he was writing to satisfy the conventionalities of his time. The conclusion that good prevails after what these people have endured may have rung true 100 years ago. Now it seems contrived. "The Octopus" is worthwhile if the reader can stick with it; infinitely superior to Zane Gray's "Desert of Wheat", which isn't saying a whole lot.
Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile, if you stick with it
Review: Norris flounders around for two thirds of "The Octopus" until he begins telling the story. We don't know who these characters are until we're well into the novel and their lack of first names makes them hard to keep straight initially. Who is the novel's protagonist? Presley? Annixter? Magnus Derrick? I would have liked a little more character development. Presley IS Frank Norris, but we don't see him as anything more than a dilletante until nearly the novel's conclusion. We really don't know why Lyman Derrick sells out his father, or how the "league" bribes his way onto the Railroad Commission. Vanamee's obsession over his dead girlfriend adds nothing to the story. (What the heck are "heavy lidded eyes" anyway?) I expected "The Octopus" to be proto-Steinbeck. It is a story Frank Norris had to tell, but it seems he was writing to satisfy the conventionalities of his time. The conclusion that good prevails after what these people have endured may have rung true 100 years ago. Now it seems contrived. "The Octopus" is worthwhile if the reader can stick with it; infinitely superior to Zane Gray's "Desert of Wheat", which isn't saying a whole lot.
Rating:
Summary: ranchers, railroads, rebellion, redemption, and revenge
Review: Prolixity, thy name is Norris ! My edition of 448 pages says that it has been edited. I would have been interested to know in what way because Norris is nothing if not verbose and repetitive. Add a healthy dose of 19th century idealistic, rosy romanticism, a bit of extra-sensory perception, communication with "shades", melodramatic deaths, and some old Anglo-Saxon racial prejudices and one would think, "Bob, why did you bother ?" But you would be wrong. Though his earlier novel, "McTeague" is probably his best work, Norris comes close, in many ways, to his idol, Zola, in creating a realistic portrait of a whole time, a whole area, a whole way of life. The time is late 19th century, the place, central California's San Joaquin Valley, and the way of life the one centered around wheat production. No detail escapes the author's eye---the tools, the land, the houses, the railroads, the dialogues, the flowers and animals. His characters are most lifelike, real people who will stay with you for a long time. The railway, whose many tentacles sucked the blood out of farmers through freight rates and crooked land deals, is the Octopus of the title. The vast production of the fertile valley is chased, rounded up, and cornered by the railway monopoly despite the best efforts of a group of wheat farmers to prevent it. They fight the railway by means of clean politics, dirty politics, and ultimately through violence. The story is a gripping one, no less than Zola's "Germinal", but differing from the latter because California was such a different environment from a French coal miners' town. Class existed---it was not so binding as in Europe---but those at the lower end still lived extremely precariously, as Norris shows. You could say that three young men; one a farmer, the other two intellectuals or dreamers, make up the main characters. One tries to fight the Octopus and pays the price. The second remains what he has always been-an introspective dreamer with no thought of creation, only trying to re-create the past to link up with a dead love. He sees more clearly than the other two even so. The third is perhaps closest to Norris himself, an upper class urban intellectual cast into this battle of Titans. He writes poetry expressing his overwrought emotions, he tries to give inflammatory speeches, he even throws a bomb. He remains peripheral, sailing off to India at the end, not having succeeded in anything, forced by the web of class and social obligation to be closer and more beholden to the capitalist owners of the railroad than to his erstwhile comrades. Yes, you could say this. But I think the main characters in this flawed but great novel are the wheat and the railroad which determine the lives of many, forces greater than any one man. A pity Norris died at the age of 32. He might eventually have won a Nobel Prize, but for sure he would be remembered as one of the greatest American writers.
Rating:
Summary: Simply brilliant
Review: This is the first of Frank Norris's books that I have ever read, and my God is it great. The characters are so real and the manner in which they are described brings them to full life. Upon the death of the characters, the characters that the reader has grown to love, the reader mourns for them. They make the reader laugh and they inspire love and hatred. The truth brought about by The Octopus, that of the ultimate good, dwarfs the adjunct, impersonal truths carried on by some other literary "masterpieces". For such an unknown masterpiece, this one is a pearl. The writing is masterful and the story is golden. While it may seem that a story about the railroad in Old California may be tiring, Norris captures the same Escapist qualities that authurs such as J.R.R. Tolkien are recongnized for(Tolkien is fantasy, Norris is reality). The naturalist sting of the novel does not at all take away, but butresses the novel. The Octopus, a masterpiece, simply brilliant.
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