McTeague The car conductors' coffee-joint, Polk Street
Ch. 1 · 0% through the novel
It was Sunday, and, according to his custom on that day, McTeague took his dinner at two in the afternoon at the car conductors' coffee-joint on Polk Street.
The book opens on McTeague's Sunday routine: the heavy dinner at the car conductors' coffee-joint, the beer, the nap in the operating chair. Norris fixes his dentist to the block before anything happens, and it is here, over these meals with Marcus, that Trina first enters the story.
inferred Polk Street is named throughout; the coffee-joint itself is a working-class fixture Norris invents on the block. The pin marks Polk Street in the residence quarter, near Bush, where its small tradespeople and car men ate.
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McTeague McTeague's “Dental Parlors,” Polk Street
Ch. 1 · 1% through the novel
When he opened his “Dental Parlors,” he felt that his life was a success, that he could hope for nothing better. In spite of the name, there was but one room. It was a corner room on the second floor over the branch post-office, and faced the street.
The corner bay window over the branch post-office is the spine of the book. McTeague works, eats, and sleeps in the one room, dreaming of the giant gilded tooth he will hang outside it. Losing the licence to practise here is the blow that starts the long slide toward the desert.
inferred Polk Street is explicit, but the exact corner is not. Norris puts the single-room parlour on the second floor over a branch post-office; the pin marks Polk Street near Sacramento, a representative corner of the accommodation street he describes.
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