Happy 4th of July to all my American followers! Hope you have a fab day/night of celebrating Independence Day! In homage, here’s a few American Literature classics to brighten your day! ✨
It’s about two migrant farm workers who get a job in California during the Great Depression. George is more or less the carer of Lennie, who is a beautiful person, but congenitally naive and doesn’t understand how physically strong he is.
And what’s it really about?
It’s about the death of The American Dream, again.
The American Dream is the idea that if you work hard, you’ll make a better life for you and your family. For many Americans, this dream is essentially unattainable due to intellectual, economic or social circumstances.
Like most American literature published after World War I (e.g. The Sound and the FuryorDeath of a Salesman), the death of The American Dream is parsed through the catastrophic failures of the personal ambitions of the characters.
What should I say to make people think I’ve read it?
“We thought about getting a pet rabbit but Timmy is very big for his age.”
What should I avoid saying when trying to convince people I’ve read it?
“I preferred the part about mice.”
Should I actually read it?
Yes. It was originally written as a screenplay, so it’s short and dialogue-heavy. You can zip through it in an afternoon. It’s desperately sad, but if you’ve read Game of Thrones and you think Of Mice And Men is too sad, you should present yourself to the relevant authorities at first light.
Today I’m discussing a prescient novel which analyses the subtleties of social order and stability, and the place we each accept within it. John Steinbeck’s The Pearl is a brilliantly insightful work about a pearl diver named Kino, who lived in a poor area of Mexico in 1940. He acquires the most valuable pearl he, or anyone he has ever known, has ever seen. The acquisition of this pearl, rather…
Reluctant wartime prostitute Suzy DeSoto (Debra Winger) strikes unlikely sparks with ballplayer turned marine biologist Doc (Nick Nolte) in the quirky John Steinbeck adaptation Cannery Row (1982, David S. Ward)
In 1939, Viking Press first published John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and it’s pretty good if you can get past the part about the goddamned turtle crossing the goddamned road.
My thirteenth book of 2020. This book terrified me when I first read it. I was on a weekend pass from the Army in Texas, where I’d been training with my unit to go to Afghanistan. And this book is all about the futility of an occupying army’s effort to subdue a people. THE MOON IS DOWN (1942) is clever war propaganda meant to motivate people in countries occupied by Nazis. While I don’t identify with Nazis, as I read the book, I did identify with an army of occupation. I was pleased to learn later that our mission in Afghanistan was liberation and reconstruction, not occupation and exploitation. While the soliders in this book are looked upon by the people with hatred and suspicion, we got along well with the Afghans, working with them to improve their lives and fight the Taliban we all hated. On election day in Farah, Afghanistan an line of Afghan voters down the block waved and shouted “Thank you! Thank you!” Such a scene was impossible in this book, or in the events that inspired it. A fantastic book!
Recently read “Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck. The fact that corporations still throw away so much perfectly good food is not only infuriating but down right evil. This book is still relevant nearly 100 years later.
“I don’t very much believe in blood,” said Samuel. “I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb.” “You can’t make a race horse of a pig.” “No,” said Samuel, “but you can make a very fast pig.”
