One of the better novels I have read recently is "The Octopus" by Frank Norris. Set in the 19th century, it is a colorful portrait of a California farm town getting overrun by a railroad company. The soul of the novel is not any illustrious character, though there are a few. It is the globalized conquering of wheat that becomes mass-produced to feed a starving world. While the "octopus" in the title refers to the metaphor of a railroad network gripping its tentacles across the land, suffocating the locals who bear its machete, wheat is the resource that pumps its blood, so it is in fact this now ubiquitous grain that uses machinery to conquer the food chain, granting further supremacy by evolutionary monopolies of farmland, which is but an extension of the way it enslaved us during the Agricultural Revolution, reaching new heights with the advent of industry. Wheat doesn't have to do anything to survive or find critical means of reproduction; as we domesticated it, it domesticated us. In a sense, we are the ones serving its power, for it does not need our labor to evolve. It merely exists, somehow knowing we are in its debt.
The novel reminded me of this harrowing insight, especially toward the end, as we see the death of a certain character. There were a few shocking deaths in this novel, so don't get to invest in any of the characters. Norris's development of character requires some patience, as he exquisitely describes most scenes in the book, often using long-winded description, which I enjoy. It's literature at its finest. His prose paints lovely pictures in the mind, similar to the way Proust did. A book it reminds me of is "The Grapes of Wrath", but even that falls short of this hidden gem. And why is it so obscure? It should be a classic, on the same level as "Moby Dick". Perhaps it was missing those iconic characters like Tom Joad, Ishmael, and Capt. Ahab. But the wheat itself became a character, organically mesmerizing, every bit as horrific as the railroad or the White Whale.
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