RelevantMag Forum discussion

Finished this novel, which was the first book required for my violence in Lit class.

Let me say, I did really like this book. It's one of the best examples of early american naturalism, and it certainly shines as such.

Here is a book that is pretty hard. Hard on the soul. Hard on the mind.

Pretty unflinching. I won't go into plot detail, as lots of others here on Good Reads have already done so, at length.

I will recount a couple of major themes:

Nature vs. Nurture
Social Darwinism
Greed and Capitalism
Masculinity and Demasculinity
Violence
Realism
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

I've never heard of this book before and in my investigation I found this site: http://fiction.eserver.org/

Pretty amazing collection of classic lit if you ask me. I'm not a huge fan of reading books on my computer but this seems like a great place to at least preview a few chapters of some novels I've thought about reading before buying a normal copy from the bookstore.

From just the few opening pages of McTeague it sounds very interesting. Thanks for the heads up.

that site sounds interesting.