Steinbeck, anyone?
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- lisateb
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Re: Steinbeck, anyone?
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I did not enjoy Hemingway's books.
Many years later I was a police officer on foot patrol downtown one morning. I saw a man, a Mexican, who looked distressed. I talked to him and he'd just recieved a letter that said his brother had died and it took the letter three months to catch up with him. I invited him to have breakfast with me and we chatted. His English was fair. He was raised in a small village with no school but his father sent him to a larger village to stay with a friend, and help the family, and go to school. He had three years of school.
As we talked he reached into his shirt and showed me the corner of a book. "The greatest book ever written. The greatest author ever." It was "Grapes of Wrath" in Spanish. We talked about the book and I marveled at a man with three years of school who not only read "Grapes of Wrath" but appreciated it. Then I thought of people I worked with who had 16 or 18 years of school and hadn't read a book since finishing school.
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- lincolnp
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Great story!! As they say "never judge a book by its cover" - never judge a person by your first impression. I have read East of Eden which I enjoyed. I will probably try Of Mice and Men next since so many have words of praise for the book.patrickt wrote:When I was about 13 I discovered two sets of books at my grandmother's house. One was the works of Steinbeck and one of Hemingway--up to that time. My grandmother tended to collect things and the books had never had the pages cut. I read all of them over the summer. I really enjoyed "Of Mice and Men", thought "Grapes of Wrath" was good, and enjoyed "Cannery Row".
I did not enjoy Hemingway's books.
Many years later I was a police officer on foot patrol downtown one morning. I saw a man, a Mexican, who looked distressed. I talked to him and he'd just recieved a letter that said his brother had died and it took the letter three months to catch up with him. I invited him to have breakfast with me and we chatted. His English was fair. He was raised in a small village with no school but his father sent him to a larger village to stay with a friend, and help the family, and go to school. He had three years of school.
As we talked he reached into his shirt and showed me the corner of a book. "The greatest book ever written. The greatest author ever." It was "Grapes of Wrath" in Spanish. We talked about the book and I marveled at a man with three years of school who not only read "Grapes of Wrath" but appreciated it. Then I thought of people I worked with who had 16 or 18 years of school and hadn't read a book since finishing school.
- Redlegs
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I recently read The Grapes of Wrath as a (much) older man, and didn't recall having read it before. Frankly, it blew me away just how good it was - I was so impressed! Steinbeck's research to capture the culture and speech patterns of the characters resulted in a story that resonated with authenticity.
I would heartily recommend this book to anyone as one of the finest examples of classic American literature. I am very keen to read more Steinbeck novels, even those I may have read once before many years ago.
(I found reading To Kill A Mockingbird again recently about 40 years after first reading it that I loved it just as much but got even more out of it.)
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Also, the book served as part of a twist of fate for me; I ended up meeting my husband through the project that required me to read the book in high school. I owe a lot of thanks to Steinbeck.
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- DATo
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I strongly agree with you about Cannery Row and Tortilla Flat. Both of these books maintain the Steinbeckian penchant for describing life as it is - raw, and not sugar-coated - but also exhibit a rare sample of Steinbeck's amazing sense of humor. I think he was reversing field in these books because as many would cite the gloom and doom aspects of his stories I feel he was aware that life is not ALL sadness and despair but also funny at times.ZackandMack wrote:My favorite Steinbeck novel is Cannery Row. Tortilla Flat is also an excellent companion. We use quotes from Grapes of Wrath all the time for when our vehicles enter a lot for the first time (talking fairgrounds here), the looks from everyone are comparable to the looks the Joad family received when they entered the ad-hoc migrant camp... Living life on the road like we folks do is a lot like an okie migration, so we can relate to that.
I mentioned in an earlier post a short story by Steinbeck called Saint Katy the Virgin which was a totally comic and sarcastic dig at the Church - laugh out loud funny.
STRONGLY recommend all three of these lesser-known Steinbeck stories mentioned above.
― Steven Wright
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It wasn’t until 1935 that Steinbeck achieved his first critical success, with Tortilla Flat a humorous novel set in post-war Monterey, California, that won the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal. It portrays the adventures of a group of homeless young men in Monterey after World War I, just before U.S. prohibition.
Steinbeck began to write his series of "California novels" and Dust Bowl fiction, set among common people during the Great Depression. These included In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath.
Of Mice and Men about the dreams of a pair of migrant agricultural laborers in California. It was critically acclaimed and Steinbeck's 1962 Nobel Prize citation called it a "little masterpiece."
He wrote The Grapes of Wrath (1939), considered by many as his finest, most ambitious novel, based on newspaper articles about migrant agricultural workers that he had written in San Francisco. Later that year it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
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