Is expanding my impression of this book into two journals a blatant attempt to get more journals out of less reading? Man, I just really liked this book, and wanted to write a lot about it, and that combined with my really busy life has made it the only book I've read in a while. Get off my back.
SO, to my original point- why is Steinbeck awesome? It can't hurt that the characters he weaves into his stories and the lives they live are inherently interesting. Nothing seems more boring to me than a book about rich people. As I'm reading, all I can think is "Stop whining, you're doing fine." Oh, Jay Gatsby, your girl left you while you were away at the war? The family in The Grapes of Wrath, who lived at the same time as you, are STARVING TO DEATH. Ask me how much I care about your feeling of emptiness. Money can't buy happiness, but it can definitely make misery suck less.
Steinbeck puts everything one level beneath the outside. I respect that. He doesn't ram a moral in your face, but you also don't need a cryptology degree to figure out what's going on. The infamous Turtle Chapter of Grapes of Wrath is a perfect example. Everyone's quick to say that it was meaningless or silly, but it was an easy image to put into the head and had an obvious message. I feel the sense of accomplishment that comes from literary analysis, but I don't really have to try that hard.
I've found that Steinbeck carefully balances dialogue and description so that dialogue teaches you about the characters, while description teaches you about their situation. The world around the characters is what shapes them in every book; fate, happenstance, etc. make them who they are. This has an everyman appeal; I can place myself into the work boots of any character, and it proves that the characters are meant to be representative of everybody who undergoes the same experiences.
So, in conclusion, John Steinbeck is the best they was, the best they is, and the best they gon' be.
SO, to my original point- why is Steinbeck awesome? It can't hurt that the characters he weaves into his stories and the lives they live are inherently interesting. Nothing seems more boring to me than a book about rich people. As I'm reading, all I can think is "Stop whining, you're doing fine." Oh, Jay Gatsby, your girl left you while you were away at the war? The family in The Grapes of Wrath, who lived at the same time as you, are STARVING TO DEATH. Ask me how much I care about your feeling of emptiness. Money can't buy happiness, but it can definitely make misery suck less.
Steinbeck puts everything one level beneath the outside. I respect that. He doesn't ram a moral in your face, but you also don't need a cryptology degree to figure out what's going on. The infamous Turtle Chapter of Grapes of Wrath is a perfect example. Everyone's quick to say that it was meaningless or silly, but it was an easy image to put into the head and had an obvious message. I feel the sense of accomplishment that comes from literary analysis, but I don't really have to try that hard.
I've found that Steinbeck carefully balances dialogue and description so that dialogue teaches you about the characters, while description teaches you about their situation. The world around the characters is what shapes them in every book; fate, happenstance, etc. make them who they are. This has an everyman appeal; I can place myself into the work boots of any character, and it proves that the characters are meant to be representative of everybody who undergoes the same experiences.
So, in conclusion, John Steinbeck is the best they was, the best they is, and the best they gon' be.
so how does this compare to other novels by this great great author? It seems to me he typically sticks to one method of writing, which I get is his identity, but I find some elements to seem somewhat redundant. So how does this relate to his other novels?
ReplyDeleteI think I like Steinbeck because it never occurs to me to think about the American Dream when I read him. He writes the American life, not the dream. The way that he worships the gifted land we love, the power in that land==and the fact that the power is amoral, that it deals out death as well as life, suffering as well as beauty, just makes me ache more when I read one of his books. The Grapes of Wrath hurts too much, at least for me, but Of Mice and Men or (my favorite) To a God Unknown makes me yearn to get as close as I can to a life that is earthbound...
ReplyDeleteMatt- he played on the same themes as he did in many of his other books, and allowed his characters to serve as representatives of larger groups without turning them into cardboard placeholders.
ReplyDeleteI think that in order to write about the life, he makes the dream a default- not something worth explaining or delving into, but the expected nature of an American. He also puts a spin on the dream; in Grapes of Wrath, the bankers are successful, but they don't share the family's love and connection to the land. The same goes for the ranchers son in Of Mice and Men- the dream isn't about getting rich, it's about using what we're given to the fullest, without inhibition.