Reviews for The Pit: A Story of Chicago

The average rating for The Pit: A Story of Chicago based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-03-14 00:00:00 Michael Ball The Pit is the second novel in Frank Norris's Epic of the Wheat, an unfinished trilogy meant to portray the production, distribution, and consumption of a crop of American wheat. Norris only lived long enough to complete the first two novels in the trilogy but those two novels represent an important contribution to the effort to create an indigenous American Literature with subject matter, themes, and symbols drawn from American life. The subtitle of this novel is 'A Story of Chicago' and it is at its finest in its depiction of that city around the time of the turn of the century. Detailed descriptions of the downtown financial district, opera at the Auditorium Building, artists' studios, Lincoln Park, the busy river, the grain elevators and the railyards all are worked into the story of Curtis Jadwin, a real estate mogul who corners wheat by essentially buying up almost an entire crop in the trading pit of the Board of Trade, driving the price of wheat ever higher. The scenes of trading described in the novel, of brokers buying and selling futures contracts for bushels of wheat as a crowd looks on from the visitors' gallery, are a truly vivid depiction of financial operations, something rarely portrayed in literature. Jadwin's story is one of building a great fortune almost overnight. It's a kind of proto-American Dream tale, but his obsession with speculation and finance lead him to neglect his wife Laura, the other main character in this story. Her personality is split between her love for her husband and her natural sympathies toward a more artistic and aesthetic sense of life which is brought out in her relationship with the artist Sheldon Corthell. While her husband provides a cavernous home for her, complete with an art gallery and organ, there's something inside her that isn't satisfied and she's stifled and miserable in her gilded cage. But the most important character in the novel is wheat, the amber waves of grain that provide a livelihood to farmers and farming towns across so much of America and the crop that is the object of much of the trading in Chicago's Board of Trade Building, though it only appears there in the form of small pouches of sample wheat that are scattered to pigeons waiting nearby after it has been inspected for quality. Norris spends pages characterizing the wheat as a natural force similar to a hurricane or earthquake that just is and cannot be resisted or avoided. It's a tremendous allegorical symbol combining natural and man-made elements. And the theater in which all this wheat is bought and sold is the Board of Trade Building, "black, monolithic, crouching on its foundations like a monstrous sphinx with blind eyes, silent, grave," a large temple devoted to trading the crop used by Norris to symbolize the unfeeling impersonal economic forces which were assuming ever greater power in American life at the time this novel was published. Ultimately the wheat carries on. Beginning as a crop and the livelihood of farmers in The Octopus, here it is the object of speculation and finance by a businessman with the hubris to think that he could control it, if only briefly. The final volume of Norris's trilogy was meant to show the consumption of American wheat in Europe and it would have bracketed Norris's project as a work on the subject of globalisation, the economic links that exist around the world connecting diverse populations in a worldwide system of capital explored via the wheat trade. At the conclusion both Jadwin and his wife Laura find redemption in loss and like many characters in American literature before and since they head west for a different life. But this novel is a dynamic portrait of the Chicago they leave, a rising city growing out of its midwestern origins to assume worldwide importance, busy with trade and industry but also stopping to go to the opera and appreciate the fine arts. And it's that fully realized setting which makes this great novel come to life as an exciting American story.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-05-07 00:00:00 N.a. Stansbury This is the second book of a projected trilogy by Frank Norris. From the front of the book: The Trilogy of The Epic of the Wheat includes the following novels: THE OCTOPUS, a Story of California. THE PIT, a Story of Chicago. THE WOLF, a Story of Europe. These novels, while forming a series, will be in no way connected with each other save only in their relation to (1) the production, (2) the distribution, (3) the consumption of American wheat. When complete, they will form the story of a crop of wheat from the time of its sowing as seed in California to the time of its consumption as bread in a village of Western Europe. The first novel, "The Octopus," deals with the war between the wheat grower and the Railroad Trust; the second, "The Pit," is the fictitious narrative of a "deal" in the Chicago wheat pit; while the third, "The Wolf," will probably have for its pivotal episode the relieving of a famine in an Old World community. Unfortunately, Norris died before he could write the third book of the trilogy. I remember attempting to read The Octopus when I was in high school for an American lit class but I know I didn't get very far into it. However, I did read Norris' McTeague several years ago and thought it was one of the best novels of the time period around the turn of the 20th century. It told the story of a couple's courtship and marriage, and their subsequent descent into poverty, violence and finally murder as the result of jealousy and greed. The Pit has some similar themes as McTeague including how greed can lead to self destruction and how it can ruin relationships. It was published in 1903 and takes place in Chicago. It centers on the life of Laura Dearborn and her eventual marriage to Curtis Jadwin who at first is a minor wheat speculator in the trading pits at the Chicago Board of Trade. But Jadwin becomes obsessed with speculating on the price of wheat and eventually makes millions. Laura is torn between three different suitors but marries Jadwin primarily for the security. The novel delves into her motivations which don't seem to really include love. The parts of the novel involving Laura and her love life were definitely dated and read like an early romance novel. However, as the story developed, and focused on the speculation of buying and selling wheat, it became quite engrossing. Toward the end of the novel there was a sequence in "The Pit" that was reminiscent of a prize boxing match with the Bears fighting the Bulls as the price of wheat rose and fell. Of course, the novel did not end happily for the Jadwins. The novel was great in describing the Chicago of the time and the daily routine of the idle rich including attending the opera, reading the current novels, investing in art, etc. It also taught a lot about how the commodities market work and how greed and gambling in the market can affect the fortunes of both farmers and small investors while also making the price of the commodity out of reach for the poor. Overall I would recommend this one and now I need the read The Octopus.