Abstract
Written during the 1890s but rejected by more than one editor for its graphic details, Vandover and the Brute was not published until 1914, twelve years after the author’s death. More than his other novels, Vandover draws on Frank Norris’ youth in San Francisco, especially his family’s real estate holdings, but the author augments, exaggerates, and upends these details, creating a surrealistic nightmare. As Donald Pizer bluntly states, “Vandover is Norris’s most autobiographical novel” and this claim is evidenced in Joseph McElrath and Jesse Crisler’s biography.2 The parallels between Norris and his title character are numerous, including their educations and artistic ambitions, but in chronicling Van’s ultimate decline, Norris creates a dystopian biography, a grotesque version of his life—Vandover serves as a but-for-the-grace-of-God warning that, like McTeague, typifies the suffering of a man who fails to develop or adapt in an urban environment during volatile economic times. Piecing together fragmented memories, rearranging “them in some more orderly sequence,” Norris through Vandover narrates his youth, creating a foreboding tale, a gargoyle that serves as a warning to both the author and the reader.3
