Frank Norris: A Descriptive Bibliography by Joseph R. McElrath, Jr. (review)

photograph appropriately shows an immature, slightly foppish young man, in contrast to the hearty early-graying author of the usual Doubleday publicity shots. Following a suggestion by Franklin Walker, McElrath builds his psycho­ logical portrait around an apparent mental collapse in 1897, from which Norris emerged to begin his great period of productivity. (Doubtless the Freudian Edwin H. Miller, another of the biographers in the chase, will have much to say about this period, and Norris’s relationship with his histrionic mother.) McElrath’s criticism rises to the challenge of the dreadful Moran and A M an’ s Woman (a test of any Norris scholar), producing illumination without stooping to praise. He proposes a new, somewhat heterodox interpretation of The Octopus, and adjudicates tactfully the differing readings of Laura’s sexuality in The Pit. His reading of Norris and Naturalism (Norris was a “Humanist who used Naturalistic literary methods”) is an intelligent compromise between conflicting critical camps. The limitations of the book are those of the Twayne format: cramped space, undergraduate audience, stiff price. Anyone interested in Norris will read it for its impeccable current scholarship, but will see it as a stop-gap while awaiting McElrath’s biography (and those of his competitors, Miller and Rich­ ard Davison). There, perhaps, we will learn more about Norris’s experiences in South Africa and Cuba, and their contribution to his growth; and about the evolution of his masterpiece McTeague (paradoxically drafted before the crisis which initiated his artistic maturity). Perhaps there the vexing question of Norris’s racism, indexed in the present volume but not discussed, will be at last confronted. ^CHARLES L. CROW Bowling Green State University Reviews 177 ■ frank Norris: A Descriptive Bibliography. By Joseph R. McElrath, Jr. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992. 373 pages, $120.00.) This latest publication of the twenty-five-volume Pittsburgh Series in Bibli­ ography is designed for book collectors and serious scholars of Frank Norris. A primary bibliography only, McElrath’s work covers 101 years of Norris’s publica­ tions, from the first San Francisco Chronicle article in 1899 (titled “Clothes of Steel”), to the 1990 publication of a previously unprinted letter. Book publica­ tions, from first editions to the most recent reprints, are carefully described and copiously illustrated. There are almost 300 periodical publications of Norris’s work listed; perhaps even more usefully, there are 519 “Misattributions and Dubious Attributions.” Thirty-four important secondary works are listed in a brief appendix. In this work, McElrath updates, expands, and corrects Part I of the 1959 Lohf and Sheehy bibliography, as well as subsequent supplemental lists, to produce what will no doubt be the primary Norris bibliography for at least the next thirty years.£ r i c HEYNE University ofAlaska Fairbanks 178 Western American Literature tf/illa Cather: Stories, Poems, and Other Writings. Edited by Sharon O ’Brien. (New York: The Library of America, 1992. 1039 pages, $35.00.) To read Cather’s Stories, Poems, and Other Writings makes for sheer pleasure, and the book provides an excellent scholarly tool as well. It offers Cather’s stories in chronological order from 1892-1929. Selected reviews and essays also appear in chronological order from 1895-1940. Included are two novellas, Alexander’ s Bridge and My Mortal Enemy; three short story collections, Youth and the Bright Medusa, Obscure Destinies, and The Old Beauty and Others; a poetry collection, April Twilights and Other Poems; a collection of nonfiction sketches, Not UnderForty, and selected reviews, essays, and uncollected stories. Cather series editor Sharon O ’Brien presents detailed text notes at the end of the volume. These notes would be excellent for teaching Cather at any level. The notes also provide helpful information for the advanced reader interested in learning more about how Cather constructed her writing. Readers familiar with Cather’s novels will find evidence of her expansive writing style in her shorter pieces. For instance, in reading Cather’s short stories in sequence, the reader can observe how she conveys a sense of her main characters struggling against a broad, vast landscape in settings both east and west of the Mississippi. W hether reading Cather for enjoyment or scholarship, this volume is worth the investment. -^JiELEN...