SOURCE: Hochman, Barbara. “Norris's Dubious Naturalism.” In The Art of Frank Norris, Storyteller, pp. 1-19. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1988.

In the following essay, Hochman disputes Frank Norris's reputation as a naturalist, contending that the imaginative force of his work “is not to be sought in his naturalist concerns, but rather in a cluster of preoccupations that center on the vulnerability of the self.”

“You don't understand. … It runs in my family to hate anything sticky. It's—it's—it's heredity.”

—Annixter in Norris's The Octopus

So you think Romance would stop in the front parlor and discuss medicated flannels and mineral waters with the ladies? Not for more than five minutes. … She would find a heart-ache (may-be) between the pillows of the mistress's bed, and a memory carefully secreted in the master's deedbox.

—Norris, “A Plea for Romantic Fiction”

This study grows out of the conviction that the...