Customer Reviews

The Pit: A Story of Chicago

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Pit is a story about the Chicago Wheat market during the early 1900's. Norris writes a historical / romance book in which Laura Dearborn finds herself in Chicago from Boston. Almost immediately, she is beset by a variety of suitors. However, she is most taken by Curtis Jadwin, a sophisticated businessman who is influential on the Chicago Board of Trade.

After marrying Laura, the conservative speculator, after making a nice profit on the wheat market, becomes obsessive over controlling it. As the story unfolds, his wealth grows in a short period of time and for a while he captures the market. Ultimately, though, the market corrects itself and he must save his fortune as well as his wife, Laura, whose love begins to flee from lack of attention from Jadwin.

I found this book very slow at the beginning. However, once the market traps Jadwin, the book becomes exciting and the pages fly by. Laura is a realistic character, although I didn't have a lot of sympathy for her - she come off rather spoiled and hapless. Norris's point about the addictiveness of speculating on wheat futures and the power that it has over the rest of the world is evident. A solid book and worth reading by those who like that period of time or are interested in Chicago's history.

The second novel in an unfinished trilogy (THE OCTOPUS was the initial volume), it's the story of how a man's ruthless business ambitions drive a wedge between himself and the love of his wife. Curtis Jadwin speculates in the Chicago wheat market; his successes propel him into wanting to "corner the market," which he proceeds to do. In the wake of all that "desire of the moth for the star," as Shelley put it, is the detritus of ruined men committing suicide, failed health, and Jadwin's own crumbling marriage due to neglect. Indeed, his wife Laura almost succumbs to the attentions of another man, Sheldon Corthell, but is brought back to her husband's side when he becomes ill. The scenes with Laura are the least successful because they are the most melodramatic. Norris felt the need, of course, to put things on an even keel again before the story's close; thus Jadwin loses all his money on a poor gamble regarding a banner wheat harvest that sends the market reeling, which brings on his illness and the loyal Laura. All's well that ends well, as the couple head West to start a new, though financially poorer, life (in 1903 it was still possible to do that). Norris is at his best in the wheeling and dealing that occurs in the Chicago exchange: the writing there is exciting and crisp. This tale of greed vs. marital love is a good one, though not as powerful as THE OCTOPUS.

The book arrived in excellent condition - and the print and size was exactly what I was looking for. I am very pleased with this purchase.

Except for the language and gender roles, which date this book from its publication in 1902, The Pit could have been written about any form of speculation to which greedy executives have succumbed. The Pit happens to be about the speculation in wheat at the turn of the last century, which is appropriate given the agrarian nature of the American economy at that time. However, you could exchange any number of commodities for wheat in this story - oil, mortgages, stocks, dot-coms, and you would see the very timely similarities.

Curtis Ladwin is a man who already has more money than he could ever use or need, but he's addicted to the art of the deal, and thrill of thinking two steps ahead of his competitors. To the detriment of his health, his family and his finances, he continues to chase long after the tide has turned. "I haven't cornered the wheat. The wheat has cornered me."

Frank Norris is one of my favorite novelists from this time period because his stories are still amazingly readable and relevant. Some authors from the early 1900s are almost impossible to read now, so ridden are their books with linguistic acrobatics. Aside from some melodramatic histrionics in the domestic scenes, the language that Norris uses is remarkably plain-spoken and contemporary in feel.

I've only reduced the book from five stars to four because I believe it is melodramatic in the domestic scenes. I understand that these over-the-top dramatics are commonplace in novels from this period, but I have seen domestic scenes of this type written better, and I know that Frank Norris was capable of a lighter touch.

`The Pit' is a story of speculation on the price of wheat in the Chicago wheat exchange (the `Pit') at a moment when agriculture was the main industry in the world.

As Frank Norris tells us: speculation `is a matter of life and death', not for the speculators (`the fellows in the Pit don't care about the grain'), but for the farmers and the world population, because the speculators `say just how much the peasant shall pay for his loaf of bread. If he can't pay the price, he simply starves.'
The price is also vital for the world economy: `Because of some sudden eddy spinning outward in the middle of the Pit's turmoil, a dozen bourses of continental Europe clamored with panic, a dozen Old-World banks trembled.'

An `Unknown Bull' succeeds in cornering the wheat market sending the price to dizzying heights. But his greed is also his fall. The high prices attract farmers all over the world to grow a bumper crop: `It was as if the Wheat, Nourisher of the Nations, as it rolled gigantic and majestic in a vast flood from West to East, here, like a Niagara, finding its flow impeded, burst suddenly into the appalling fury of the Maëlstrom.'
The rough and tumble of the `Pit' is paralleled by a story about an innocent maiden. She also chooses the speculator, `always cruel, selfish, pitiless, the fighter, rigorous, panoplied in the harness of the warrior', instead of the artist `and his cult of the beautiful, soft of hand and speech, refined, sensitive and temperamental.'

This novel, whose subject is still very topical, is sometimes not without a certain sentimentality and theatricality. But it should not be missed.

This story of the Chicago commodities is quite shocking. The central characters, the Jadwins, let greed and self pity ruin their once happy marriage. The amount of money that these characters waste and then lose is mind blowing. It shows that greed has always been the driving force in our American economy.

The Pit was obviously not written recently. With its dated language and pre-PC attitudes toward sex and gender roles, it portrays a simpler time. However, when it describes trading and the risks of falling in love with a position and believing that the market is "wrong", it is as topical as the internet bubble.

While reading it, I couldn't help but compare it to Arthur Hailey novels like "Wheels" or "Airport", because this is the story of an industry told through the eyes of real people with their own foibles, loves, and idiosyncrasies. Laura Jadwin, nee Dearborn, tells most of the story. Her inner conflict between self-centered materialism and desire for "perfect" love forms the backdrop to the financial saga enmeshing her husband, Curtis. All in all, this is a good read but may move too slowly for some people--except for the climax of Jadwin's corner of the wheat market, which is as fast-paced as a Clancy novel.

norris thrilled me as a junior in high school with realism. "The Pit" my recent read some 17years after highschool can only be understood by someone that has gone through trading on some level. It wasn't so much greed but lust to trade. go downtown ny or chi right now and watch the faces of the boys/men /women and this novel will transcend time for anyone.