This author’s essay “The True Reward of the Novelist,” analogizes copyists as fakirs and businessmen who “prostitute the good name of American literature for a sliding scale of royalties.” (-5[1])The central character abuses his lover Ida Wade and hesitates to rescue a drowning man in this author's Vandover and the Brute. In one novel, this author described a character having to amputate her fingers after they became infected from her hobby of (*) painting toy animals with toxic paint. That novel ends with her titular husband beating her to death then ending up handcuffed to her cousin in Death Valley. This author chronicled the Derrick family’s fight against the encompassing reach of railroad companies. For 10 points, identify this author of McTeague, (10[1])who wrote The Octopus as part of his unfinished Epic of the Wheat trilogy. ■END■ (10[1])