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Representations.
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WALTER
BENN
MICHAELS
saved "withoutknowing why"-"without any thought,withoutidea of consequence-saving for the sake of saving."' But to say thatTrina saved forthe sake
of savingdoesn't so much explain her behavior as identifythe behaviorin need
of explanation: whywould anyone save just for the sake of saving? Psychology
in the late nineteenthcenturyhad begun to question whetheranyone actually
did. The "common lot of misers,"accordingto WilliamJames,"value theirgold,
not for itsown sake, but for its powers.Demonetize it,and see how quicklythey
will get rid of it."2In fact,as the economist Ottomar Haupt wrote in January
1897, "a certaintendencyof hoardinghad been developing"in the United States,
"broughtabout by the fear of free coinage of silver,and coupled withthe hope
thatlateron a substantialpremiummightbe obtained forgold."3These hoarders
were clearlynot saving for the sake of savingand, afterBryan'sdefeat in 1896,
when, as Haupt puts it, "the cause for the alarm had been removed,everybody
was glad to get rid of his gold coin.
. . ."4
of her gold. She does, on one occasion,speak of herselfas savingup "some money
against a rainyday" (187), but it is perfectlyclear that not even the electionof
WilliamJenningsBryan could make the day rainyenough forher to startthinking of her hoard as an investmentor a speculation,muchless providean occasion
forher to spend it. Why,then,does Trina save?
The power thatJames thinksmiserslove is, of course, the power to buy and,
in arguing againstthe associationistnotionthatmisershad developed an attachmentto "gold in se,"he was insistingthatthe miser'sreal interestwas in money.
But this,if true, only underlines the puzzle of the miser'sbehavior,since if he
just loved saving gold we could thinkof him as a collectorwho loved gold the
waysome people love stamps,whereaswhathe seems to love insteadis the power
to buy,while at the same timehe refusesever to exercise thatpower.In extreme
cases, James thought,thiscould only be described as "insanity."
The "common"
miser,however,the "excessivelyniggardlyman,""simplyexhibitsthe psychologREPRESENTATIONS
Winter 1985 ?
THE
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105
ical law thatthe potentialhas oftena far greaterinfluenceover our mind than
the actual. A man willnot marrynow,because to do so puts an end to his indefinitepotentialitiesof choice of a partner.He prefersthe latter"(2:423). And this
analysiswas extended by Georg Simmel,who, in ThePhilosophy
ofMoney(1900),
denies thatthe miserhas anyinterestat all in the "possibleuses of money."Rather,
the miser experiences "the power that money-stored-uprepresents... as the
finaland absolutelysatisfyingvalue.?5This power would be "lost" if "it were to
be transposedintotheenjoymentof specificthings.""Old people,"Simmelremarks,
become avariciousbecause, "subjectively,"
"the sensual enjoymentof lifehas lost
itscharm,"and the "ideals" have losttheir"agitatingpower."Withnothingto buy
and nothingto look forwardto buying,theytakepleasure in the "abstractpower"
of moneyitself,the "absolute means" of buying.
As a descriptionof Trina, however,thisclearlywon't do-not only because
Trina isn'told and because her lifenotoriouslyretainsa good deal of its"sensual
charm,"but because Trina's miserliness,as Norris describes it, doesn't exactly
consistin a refusalto spend. It is true,of course, thatshe won'tbuy clothes,and
thatshe spends as littleas possibleon rent,and thatshe "grudged even the food
thatshe and McTeague ate,"preferringto steal scraps froma "coffee-joint"and
"enjoyingthe meal withthe greaterrelishbecause itcost her nothing"(166-67).
But the moment in which Trina's "avarice had grown to be her one dominant
passion" (198) is depictedbyNorrisnotas an absoluterefusalto spend anymoney
but as an absolute unwillingnessto forgo the pleasure of having "her money in
hand,"even ifthatmeans payingforit.Thus she graduallywithdrawsher capital
fromUncle Oelbermann'sstore,"reducingher monthlyincome"(200) butobtaining
forherself"an ecstasyof delight."Norris here representsher savingas a kind of
spending,not only because she pays for her gold withher monthlyincome but
also because refusingto use her gold to pay for food, she is spending it instead
on the gold itself.
Simmel gives an example that shows why this must be so. Noting that the
"wampumof the NorthAmericanIndians consistedof musselshells,whichserved
as money but could also be worn as a decorativebelt;' he pointed out that the
"role of the shells as jewelry"acquires "an air of distinctionby virtueof the fact
thatit requires abstentionfromusing them directlyas money."6What he seems
to imagine here is somethinglike the associationists'collectionof gold. But why
should we saythatusing the shellsas jewelryinvolvesabstainingfromusingthem
as money?Shouldn'twe say instead thatthe shells as jewelryhave been paid for
by the shells as money,and thatthe "air of distinction"Simmel acutelyascribes
to thebeltderivespreciselyfromthefactthatitis at everymomentof itsexistence
as a belt being paid forby its existenceas money?The only differencebetween
Trina and the Indian is thatTrina places no value on her gold as decoration,as
what Simmelcalls an "object" In thisaccount,the attractionof gold is indeed its
106
REPRESENTATIONS
power to buy,but a power that the miser exercises neither(like the Indian) by
buyingobjectsnor (likeavariciousold people) by refrainingfrombuyingobjects,
but instead (like Trina) by buyingmoney.Accordingto Norris,then,what Marx
called the miser's"asceticism"is in facta "debauch,"her hoard is a sort of perpetual buyingmachine,and she herselfis a spendthrift.
But if the miser is a spendthrift,what is the spendthrift?Why does the
spendthriftspend? This question seems at firstsightless puzzling than the questionabout whythe misersaves,no doubt because spendingmoney,even foolishly,
findsitsplace more easilythansavingin whatSimmelcharacterizesas the normal
transactionin a moneyeconomy-the movementfrom"possessionof money"to
''expenditureof money upon the object" to "enjoymentthroughthe ownership
of the object.?7When, forexample, Vandover,Norris'sspendthrift,
begins"flinging away money withboth hands,"he does it by chartering"a yachtfor a tendays cruise about the bay,"buying "a fresh suit of clothes each month,"and
recklesslygiving"suppers" to "actresses.8 And whileitis easy to imaginecircumstances in whichsuch expendituresmightbe unwise (Vandover's,for instance),
the objects and activitiesVandover buys don't seem in themselvesimplausible
sources of enjoyment.But, accordingto Simmel;the recklessnessof expenditure
is not in itselfthe markof the spendthrift:
The pleasureassociatedwithsquandering
is attachedto themomentofspendingmoney
and has to be distinguished
fromthepleasureprovidedby
upon anyobjectwhatsoever,
thefleeting
ofobjects. . . ratheritrelatestothepurefunction
ofsquandering
enjoyment
without
contentand attendant
regardto itssubstantial
circumstances.9
The spendthriftbuys objects, then, not reallybecause he likes the objects but
because he likesbuying; he likes,Simmel says,"the momentof transpositionof
moneyinto other formsof value.'"0
Put withSimmel'sclarity,
thisis nota difficult
pointto grasp,but the difficulty
of distinguishingin practicebetweenspending for objects and spending, as we
mightput it,forthe sake of spending maybe considerable.Since even spending
for the sake of spending involvesbuyingsomething,how can we know that the
"nonsensicalpurchases" don't appear to him as plausible objectsof
spendthrift's
desire, worth buying for the pleasure theywill bring? When Norris describes
Vandover's pleasure in spending as a "hystericaldelight,"he certainlyalerts us
to its unusual character,but, narratingVandover's"degeneration,"he betraysa
certainconfusionabout whatkindof spendingreallyis degenerate.Having made
$15,000 fromthe sale of his "old home,"Vandover"gambledor flung"the money
''awayin a littleless than a year":
He neverinvestedit,butate intoit dayafterday,sometimes
to payhisgamblingdebts,
sometimes
to indulgean absurdand extravagant
whim,sometimes
to payhisbillat the
107
108
REPRESENTATIONS
Donnelly in TheAmerican
PeopIe6Moneycalled "barbarism,"the conditionof having "no moneyat all.""
For Donnelly,the threatof a societywithoutmoney seemed a directconsequence of adherence to the gold standard. Having demonetized silver in the
"crimeof '73" and thus cut the money supply in half,the "Wall Street Misers"
now wanted "to drive gold out of circulation"and to bringabout a returnto the
"Dark Ages,"which,in Donnelly'sview,had originallybeen caused bythe gradual
exhaustion of the gold and silvermines of Spain. Withoutany new sources of
money,
The supplydiminished;
theusurerpliedhisartsand thecapitalist
graspedtherealestate;
ina fewhands,justas itis becomingtoday;and themultitude
all wealthwasconcentrated
and wretchedness.12
werereducedto thelowestlimitofdegradation
Only the free coinage of silver could keep money in circulationand save the
American people froma similarfate.
But if the imaginationof a societywithoutmoney held obvious terrorsfor
freesilverites,who feared thatthe world'ssupplyof gold was disappearingfrom
circulation,it also playeda centralrole in the economic imaginationof goldbugs,
who were convincedthattherewas more than enough moneyto go around. For
them,the moneylesssociety,"but one remove frombarbarism,"as David Wells
put it,was the inevitablestartingpointforan evolutionaryhistoryof financethat
culminated in what numerous writers,Wells among them, called the "natural
selection"of gold as money.'3In his own RobinsonCrusoesMoney(firstpublished
in the 1870s as an anti-Greenbacktractand reprintedin 1896 as an attackon
freesilver),WellsimaginesCrusoe's wreckas a Donnelly-likereturnto economic
savagery,where nothinghas any "purchasingpower,"but he goes on to narrate
the islanders' natural development throughbarter to the exchange of cowries
and finallyto the discoveryof gold, which, stumbled upon accidentally,soon
became "an object of universaldesire,""acquired spontaneouslya universalpurchasingpower,and fromthatmomenton, became Money"(40). Onlywhen,under
the stressof financingtheirwar withthe cannibals,the islandersbegin to print
paper money and then mistakethat paper (the "representativeof a thing")for
gold (the "thingitself")do theyrun into trouble.
For Wellsand theothergoldbugs,the moralof such storieswas thateconomic
disastercould be broughton not, as Donnelly thought,by the disappearance of
gold but ratherby any attemptto tamperwithits"naturalpurchasingpower."At
the same time,however,imaginingmoney as a "thingitself,"the sort of thing,
for example, that the world mightrun out of, the gold conservativesand the
silverradicals held in common a viewof moneythatwas in certainrespectsmore
powerfulthan theirdifferences.As againstthe Greenbackersor fiat-money
men
like Tom Nugent, who advocated the use of "inconvertiblepaper,"'14 gold and
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REPRESENTATIONS
111
112
REPRESENTATIONS
fear of the silvermen as a fatal triumphfor them. Greed doesn't kill; the gold
standard does.
But to read McTeagueas a silvertractwould be finallyto miss the point of
gold and silver'sshared fantasy,"real" or "primary"money.Stressingthe importance of thisfantasy,I don't mean to slightthe differencebetweenthe gold and
even economically,
silverinterests;socially,politically,
theywere substantial.Rather,
it is just these differencesthatmake the shared commitmentto precious metals
so striking.Neitherthe goldbug fear of inflationnor the free-silverdesire forit
can quite explain the nearlyunanimous hostilityto fiatmoney since, of course,
the essence of legal tenderis thatitssupplycan be controlledby the government
that issues it to produce either of these effects.Indeed, it is just this fact that
excited the most hostility.Nast's famous illustrationfor RobinsonCrusoesMoney
(Fig. 1),20juxtaposing a piece of paper made into milkby an "act of Congress"
witha piece of paper made intomoneyin thesame way,brilliantly
capturesWells's
sense that fiatmoney was nothingbut dangerous "hocus pocus" (84). And the
government'sabilityto enforceitshocus pocus is, of course, preciselywhatstarts
McTeague on hisjourney into the desert.The "authorities"at "CityHall" forbid
him to practicedentistrybecause he hasn't got a diploma, a "kind of paper,"as
Trina describesit to the bewildereddentist,withoutwhich"you can't practice,or
call yourselfdoctor.""Ain'tI a dentist?Ain't I a doctor?" (147), McTeague protests,appealing finallyto the gold tooth she herselfgave him as proof of his
identityand insistingthathe "ain'tgoing to quit forjust a piece of paper" (149).
But, in the event,McTeague can't practicedentistry,
he can't be a dentist,unless
he has the diploma, the piece of paper on his wall that says,"This is a dentist,"
like the piece of paper drawn by Nast that says,"This is money."Paper here is
more powerfulthan gold; dentistscan only be made by preciselythe kind of
governmentalalchemythatWellsimagined in the makingof milk.
It is more accurate, then, to say that McTeague dies for the gold standard
than to say that he dies from it. He and Trina are united in their distastefor
"representative"paper. At the same time, however,as Norris's plot works to
remove all gold from circulationand so authenticateit as nature's money,his
language pulls in the opposite direction.Few criticshave failed to bemoan the
unrelentingaccumulation of gold imagery in McTeague: "The gold tooth, the
$5,000,Trina'stwenty-dollar
gold pieces,theimaginarygold plateof Maria Macapa,
the absurd canary in the giltcage.... The wonder,"wrote Vernon Parrington,
"is that he didn't give Trina gold hair instead of black.?,2' In some respects,of
course, thisproliferationof gold is compensatory.Having lost her money,Trina
takesa temporarypleasure in the sunlightthatfalls"in round golden spots" on
the floorof her room, "likegold pieces" (197), she saysto herself.Nature,which
provided the gold in the firstplace, now offersto replace it withsunlight.But
whatexactlyis the "like"-nessbetween"golden spots"of lightand gold coins? In
The GoldStandardand theLogicof Naturalism
113
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REPRESENTATIONS
metallurgicalutility."Of all objects those are most prized that ministerin the
highestdegree to our sense of beauty,"23
Poor declares, and Wells describeshis
islander discoveringa metal of "remarkablebrightnessand color" and bringing
it home to his wife,who immediatelyhangs it "by a stringabout her neck as an
ornament"(38). Grounding the economic in the aesthetic,both writersimagine
thatour response to moneyis virtuallyphysiological,on the order of our natural
response to beauty.The existenceof value in nature is thus nothingmore than
an instanceof the existenceof beautyin nature,and our love of gold is as instinctiveas our love of a beautifulsunset.
James himself,arguing in the PrinciplesofPsychology
forthe possibilityof an
instinctive"desire" to "appropriate,"insistedon the primacyof the "aesthetic
sense." Everyone,he wrote,could feel the attractionof "glittery,
hard, metallic,
odd prettythings.""The source of their fascinationlies in their appeal to our
aestheticsense, and we wishthereupon simplyto ownthem"(2:679). Despite his
earlierskepticismabout misers,Jamesassertshere thatwe can have some desires
"quite disconnectedwiththe ulterioruses of the things"desired, and he insists,
against Herbert Spencer and the associationists,that these miserlydesires are
"entirelyprimitive."Spencer agreed that the "act of appropriating"could be
"pleasurableirrespectiveof the end subserved,"but onlybecause the act of acquisitionwould itselfevoke "agreeable associations"24withusefulobjectspreviously
acquired. Thus, savingmoneycould produce a pleasure of itsown,but a pleasure
thatwas ultimatelycompounded out of pleasant associationswithall the things
money had previouslybought, and so logicallyand chronologicallydependent
on a more common and less miserlyconception of the instrumentalvalue of
money.James,on the otherhand, insistingon the "primitive"statusof our desire
for the useless, denies thatit is dependent on our memoriesof havingacquired
useful thingsand, insistingon its "aesthetic"status,locates,like Wellsand Poor,
The aestheticoffershim a way
the attractionof these objectsin theirmateriality.
out of the instrumentaland the economic both; we like the glitteryobjects for
what theyare, not forwhat theywillbuy or what theyrepresent.
But while it is clear that Norris'smisersdon't followthe Spencerian model
(lovingtheirgold as a kind of mnemonicforthe pleasures it has broughtthem),
it is equally clear thatZerkow,at least,doesn'tlove gold because itis prettyeither.
And, as James goes on to give a more detailed account of the objects of our
primitivedesires,he begins to provide some sense of whatit is thatZerkowloves.
For,as much as or even more than we love "prettythings,"James says,we love
curiousthings. .. naturalobjectsthatlookas iftheywereartificial,
or thatmimicother
objects-theseforma classof thingswhichhumanbeingssnatchat as magpiessnatch
us. Whathousedoes notcontainsomedraweror cupboard
rags.Theysimplyfascinate
116
REPRESENTATIONS
117
of thingsin themselveseither; we want thingsin themselvesthat look like representations.We begin,in otherwords,withthe illusionthatrepresentationitself
is natural,and withoutthisillusionwe would never develop any interesteither
in representationor in nature. To the question as to how there can be value at
all if there is no value in nature,James thus responds by locatingthe genesis of
value in an accident,a momentwhen nature seems unnatural. Imitatingsomethingmade by man, nature sets man the example of imitationand produces in
him the primitivedesire formimesis.
It is thus,perhaps,a signof Zerkow's"atavism"thathis passion forgold finds
itsmostpowerfulexpressionin his love of Maria's storyabout her lostset of gold
service. "The story,"Norris says, "ravished him with delight" (28). Indeed, as
Zerkow'spassion progresses,it focusesmore and more on "Maria'srecital,"which
becomes "a veritablemania withhim" (73). He compels her to tellthe storyover
and over again, each repetitionenablinghim to "see thatwonderfulplate before
him, there on the table, under his eyes, under his hand:" sharpening both his
desire and his disappointmentwhen Maria finallyrefusesto tell it another time.
"What a torment!what agony! to be so near-so near,to see it in one's distorted
fancyas plain as in a mirror."Indeed, it is the eventual withholdingof the story
thatprovokesthe crisisin Zerkow'srelationswithMaria and leads to her murder.
"Sweatingwithdesire:"ZerkoWhimselfbegins to tell the storyof the gold-"It
was he who could now describe it in a language almost eloquent" (137)-while
at the same time escalating his violent effortsto "make" Maria "speak." The
distinctionbetweenhis desire forthe gold and his desire forthe descriptiongets
lost here, a confusionanticipatedin Maria's own earlyaccounts of the gold service, when she describesit both as a source of lightand as a reflector:it was "a
yellowblaze likea fire,like a sunset";itwas "likea mirror. .. just likea littlepool
when the sun shines into it" (27). It is as if the gold reflectsitselfand so reallyis
itsown reflection,an object thatbecomes what it is by representingitself.Thus,
it isn'tso much thatthe distinctionbetweenthe gold and itsrepresentationis lost
as it is that the representationis here understood to be an essentialpart of the
gold itself.If Zerkow'sfancyis a mirrorthat reflectsthe gold, and if Maria's
language is a mirrorthat reproduces it in simile,then the gold itselfis also a
mirror,so that in taking the representationfor the thing itself,Zerkow is not
making some quixotic mistakeabout fictionsand the real but is instead rightly
recognizingthe representationas an ontologicalpiece of the thing.Zerkowis a
miserof mimesis,and when he dies clutching"a sack fullof old and rustypansfullya hundred of them-tin cans, and iron knives and forks"(180), he dies
happy. He seems, like Wells'sislanders,to have mistakenthe worthlessartifacts
of men for nature'sgold, but thatmistakeis, in reality,only a kind of tributeto
the mistakeembodied in gold itself,to the necessaryresemblance of material
object to representation.Junk,like language, can representgold only because,
118
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119
120
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121
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122 REPRESENTATIONSY
another,makes four,and two layered stamps stickingout fromunder the tendollar bill raise the numberto five.The pointof thisvirtuosodisplayis precisely
to demonstratewhat everyone,of course, already knows,that even the flattest
objects are irreduciblythree-dimensional.Insistingon the impossibilityof an
l'oeilproduces a flatnessthat
image thatcan escape three-dimensionality,
trompe
can never be conceived as just a surface. Indeed, trompe
l'oeil paintingsof money
and photographsworkpreciselyby stagingthe triumphantfailureof even those
objectsthatare nearest to being nothingbut surface ever actuallyto be nothing
but surface.
Greenberg'sblank canvas, despite (or, rather,because of) its repudiation
of all illusion, participates directlyin the trompel'oeil production of threedimensionality.33
By virtueof its blankness,it has no surface,or rather-since
everythinghas a surfacejust as everythinghas depth-one mightsay thatit has
a surface thatit won'tallow to be a surface.What makes it so flatis thatthere is
nothingon it,but the factthatthereis nothingon it is what makes it at the same
time nothing more than a (very flat) three-dimensionalobject, like any other
object. Thus, while the blank canvas provides,in a certain sense, a ratherspecl'oeil ideal, it is an alternativewitha well-estabtacular alternativeto the trompe
lished place in the trompel'oeil economy,the place, quite literally,of the "raw
material" that Wells opposed to the representation.Replacing the illusion of
three-dimensionality
with the physical fact of three-dimensionality,
the blank
canvas identifiesvalue withmaterial,picturewithsupport.The paintingthatcan
representnothingand stillremaina paintingis "moneyitself,"and the modernist
(or, perhaps, literalist)aestheticof freedom from representationis a goldbug
aesthetic.
This by no means contradictoryprogression from painting as illusion by
wayof flatnessto paintingas object,whateverrelevanceitmayhave fortwentiethcenturyart history,
clearlyfindsan antecedentin whatNorrisdepictsin Vandover
and theBruteas Vandover'sregressionfromman to beast. Vandover,like Norris
himselfin his youth,is a painterwho beginsby sketchingout of books,but whose
''styleimprovedimmenselythe momenthe abandoned flatstudiesand began to
workdirectlyfromNature" (25).34 Convinced,aftera long period of neglecting
his "art,"thatit alone can "staythe inexorable law of nature"thatis turninghim
into"a blind,unreasoning. .. animal" (309), he setsto workon his "masterpiece,"
only to find that his "technicalskill" has mysteriously
vanished; the "formshe
made on the canvas were no adequate reflectionof those in his brain" (224). And
thisinability
to reproduceon canvasthe figureshe sees in his imaginationbecomes
almost immediatelyan inabilityto imagine the scene he wants to represent: a
"strangenumbness"grows"in his head": "All the objectsin the range of his eyes
seemed to move back and stand on the same plane" (226). The failureof Vandover'simaginationis a failureof perspective,and the brute appears as a flatness
The Gold Standardand theLogicof Naturalism
123
thatturnswhat should have been the depiction of a dyingsoldier and his (also
dying)horse into a "tracing"of "emptylines."
The factthat not even Norris regarded Vandover's failureto complete The
LastEnemyas a loss to art should not distractus fromthe interestof the process.
For even though Vandover at his best is no masterof illusion,the disappearance
of his art is exclusivelyidentifiedwith his loss of painting'schief illusionistic
device, perspective,and the appearance of the brute is, by the same token,identifiedwiththeflatteningtransformation
of livingfiguresintocharcoallines: "The
thatwould have
verythingthatwould have made themintelligible,interpretive,
made them art, was absent" (224-25). As a painter,then, the brute is a minimalist;where Vandoverexcels at paintingnature,thebrute replaces the painting
withnature itself.But this,as I have suggested,is ultimatelya distinctionwithout
a difference.Vandover the artistcan so easily devolve into Vandover the brute
preciselybecause both artistand brute are already committedto a naturalist
The
ontology-in money,to precious metals; in art, to three-dimensionality.
moralof Vandover'sregression,fromthisstandpoint,is thatitcan onlytakeplace
because, like the inventionof moneyon Robinson Crusoe's island, it has already
taken place. Discoveringthat man is a brute, Norris repeats the discoverythat
paper money isjust paper and thata paintingof paper money isjust paint.
In the course of reproducingWells'sand Nast's aestheticeconomy,however,
Norris also introducesa crucial variationon theirtrompe
l'oeilmaterialism.Vandover's mostcherished possessionsare the furnishingshe acquired for his fashionable roomson SutterStreet:a tiledstove,a windowseat,castsof threeAssyrian
bas-reliefs"representingscenes fromthe lifeof the king"and a "wounded lioness;' "photogravures"of Rembrandt'sNightWatchand a Velazquez portrait,an
"admirable reproductionof the 'Mona Lisa"' (178). Contemplatinghis reprol'oeilpicturesof money
ductions,he has replaced whatWellsthoughtof as trompe
l'oeilpicturesof other pictures.35But as the brute gains the upper
withtrompe
hand, Vandover is forcedto sacrificehis thingsand to move fromhis apartment
to a hotel room where the "walls were whitewashedand bare of pictures or
ornaments"(270). Only monthsbefore,the sightof"the heavycream-whitetwill"
of his "blank"and "untouched" "stretcher"(223) had inspiredhim to tryto save
himselfby paintingagain; now the emptywalls of his room produce a similar
response:"His imaginationwas forevercoveringthe whitewallswithrough stoneblue paper, and placing screens,divans, and window seats in differentparts of
the cold bare room" (280). But this time,when it comes to producing on those
walls an "adequate reflection"(224) of the formshe has imagined, he pins up
"littleplacards whichhe had painted witha twistedroll of the hotel letter-paper
dipped into the ink stand. 'Pipe-rackHere.' 'Mona Lisa Here.' 'Stove Here.' 'Window-seat Here"' (280). Instead of drawing the forms "in his brain,"he writes
them.
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127
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Notes
1. Frank Norris,McTeague,ed. Donald Pizer (New York, 1977), 72. Subsequent references are cited in parenthesesin the text.
2. WilliamJames, The PrinciplesofPsychology
(1890; reprint:New York, 1950), 2: 424.
Subsequent referencesare cited in parenthesesin the text.
3. Ottomar Haupt, "Is Gold Scarce?" in The Gold Standard:A Selection
fromthePapers
IssuedbytheGoldStandardDefenceAssociation
in 1895-1898 (London, 1898), 56.
4. Ibid.
5. George Simmel, The Philosophy
of Money,trans. Tom Bottomore and David Frisby
(Boston, 1978), 245.
6. Ibid., 155.
7. Ibid., 248.
8. FrankNorris,Vandover
and theBrute,intro.byWarrenFrench(1914; reprint:Lincoln,
1978), 290. Subsequent referencesare cited in parentheses in the text. Although
Vandoverwasn'tpublished until afterNorris'sdeath,James D. Hart argues convincinglythatitwas "prettywellfinished"in 1895, the yearthatalso saw mostof McTeague
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131
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