SFG75
Well-Known Member
GOLLUM said:Grapes Of wrath....
Excellent choice!. NPR has a great web section devoted to the book and the great depression, it's not to be missed.
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John Steinbeck
- Thread starter Mark4583
- Start date
Excellent choice!. NPR has a great web section devoted to the book and the great depression, it's not to be missed.
OOH what do I win...SFG75 said:
Whilst I'm located in Melbourne, Australia we have a 24 hours radio news station which takes direct transmissoins from NPR, BBC World and Deutsche Welle to name just a few, so I do recall NPR mentinonig something on their program "All Things Considered", you get that there I assume.....
SFG75
Well-Known Member
GOLLUM said:OOH what do I win...
Whilst I'm located in Melbourne, Australia we have a 24 hours radio news station which takes direct transmissoins from NPR, BBC World and Deutsche Welle to name just a few, so I do recall NPR mentinonig something on their program "All Things Considered", you get that there I assume.....
Yes, we have a few stations that carry them. If all else fails, internet streamign broadcasts are the way to go. To tell you the truth, I prefer streaming.
I guess I would go with East of Eden as my favorite, although I love a lot of his books.
He also wrote a poem about one of his teachers, which I also love. It's called Like Captured Fireflies. I don't know if it's copyrighted, but I found this copy of it by doing a Google (see link below). Here's my favorite passage:
"Every morning we came to her carrying
new truths, new facts, new ideas cupped
and sheltered in our hands like captured fireflies."
Wow.
http://www.montebello.k12.ca.us/edtech/LAMDA/Like Captured Butterflies.doc
He also wrote a poem about one of his teachers, which I also love. It's called Like Captured Fireflies. I don't know if it's copyrighted, but I found this copy of it by doing a Google (see link below). Here's my favorite passage:
"Every morning we came to her carrying
new truths, new facts, new ideas cupped
and sheltered in our hands like captured fireflies."
Wow.
http://www.montebello.k12.ca.us/edtech/LAMDA/Like Captured Butterflies.doc
SFG75
Well-Known Member
Just finished The Winter of Our Discontent. It's definitely more "readable" than The Grapes of Wrath. The story of a solid American slowly losing his Puritan work ethic and values and becoming a selfish person out to get wealth for his own benefit was a compelling read. I finished this one off in three evening readings. Rankings thus far.
1.Grapes of Wrath
2.The Moon is Down
3.The Winter of Our Discontent
On-deck: The next Steinbeck book I can find.
1.Grapes of Wrath
2.The Moon is Down
3.The Winter of Our Discontent
On-deck: The next Steinbeck book I can find.
Shade
New Member
I read the stories in John Steinbeck's first collection The Long Valley (1938) over the past week. And my god, are they quite astoundingly grim or what? The lightest story in the collection, the title of which escapes me, concerns a man whose wife dies and who responds more in glee than in grief. Otherwise, it's bleakness all the way, from a young man coming of age - and dying of exposure - in the mountains, to murder, nigger-lynching, freak-show autists, devil-pigs, and a truly creepy piece on a woman who pays to watch a snake devour rodents. And that's before we get to the four Red Pony stories, which are included in this volume but are also published separately. These are probably the strongest work in the book, although I may have been mistaking the pleasant familiarity of getting to know the characters with out-and-out quality. Nonetheless, despite having the charming set-up of a young lad being given his first pony as a gift from his father, these tales - or two of them anyway - are as bloody, depressing and difficult as any. Though 'difficult' is not the word precisely, as the quality of Steinbeck's writing, even early in his career, transforms the yuck factor into other qualities, that make the reader reach for words like 'powerful' and 'compelling'. And they are this, and more besides, but you'll forgive me if I head for the lighter slopes of Sweet Thursday or Tortilla Flat before I head into the serious business of The Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden, which I expect will be so 'powerful' and 'compelling' that I might just want to lie down and die.
Also I recently read Steinbeck's shortie The Pearl (1947). It tells the story of a Mexican pearl-diver Kino, who finds a enormous pearl, 'the size of a seagull's egg' and who thinks it will bring fortune and happiness for him and his wife Juana and their baby boy. Of course, you've got to be careful what you wish for, and things don't quite work out as planned (but for the reader, they do work out more or less as expected). The obvious comparison is Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, where the enormous marlin, once caught, damn near kills the old fellow, but it was reminiscent too of Márquez's No One Writes to the Colonel. Steinbeck's story, however, lacks Márquez's humour (by choice, I think), though oddly enough it retains a slightly 'other' sense, as though it's in translation, with the scenes forming and dissolving in an almost impressionistic way. All in all I found it a satisfying little tragedy.
I picked up a whole bunch of Steinbecks in those nice silver Penguin Classics editions, ten for a tenner in fact inc. East of Eden, Grapes, Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday, Tortilla Flat, and The Wayward Bus. Also bidding on The Moon is Down on eBay. Could be a big Steinbeck year for me then.
Also I recently read Steinbeck's shortie The Pearl (1947). It tells the story of a Mexican pearl-diver Kino, who finds a enormous pearl, 'the size of a seagull's egg' and who thinks it will bring fortune and happiness for him and his wife Juana and their baby boy. Of course, you've got to be careful what you wish for, and things don't quite work out as planned (but for the reader, they do work out more or less as expected). The obvious comparison is Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, where the enormous marlin, once caught, damn near kills the old fellow, but it was reminiscent too of Márquez's No One Writes to the Colonel. Steinbeck's story, however, lacks Márquez's humour (by choice, I think), though oddly enough it retains a slightly 'other' sense, as though it's in translation, with the scenes forming and dissolving in an almost impressionistic way. All in all I found it a satisfying little tragedy.
I picked up a whole bunch of Steinbecks in those nice silver Penguin Classics editions, ten for a tenner in fact inc. East of Eden, Grapes, Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday, Tortilla Flat, and The Wayward Bus. Also bidding on The Moon is Down on eBay. Could be a big Steinbeck year for me then.
SFG75
Well-Known Member
muggle-I really recommend The Moon is Down. It has an interesting history behind it really. Steinbeck actually met with FDR and was concerned about the effectiveness of the nazi propganda machine. He wrote The Moon is Down and the nazis quickly banned it after discovering the first copies that fell into their hands. Steinbeck was roundly criticized as the soldiers(the occupiers) were portrayed as human beings, and not as monsters who had children hanging from their bayonets. Steinbeck wrote of them having interests in love, poetry, and other things that humans enjoy. For many years, the book was under appreciated as a propganda piece. Interestingly enough, it was one of the most clandestinely reproduced works during the war.
The powerful nature of the work is that while Steinbeck writes of a nameless aggressor and a nameless victim country-he does identify a universal value. What is that value? Namely that occupiers cannot overcome the desire for freedom among those that they occupy. In the end, freedom trumps tyranny. While he wrote it with the nazis storming across europe in mind, you could compare it to other situations where aggressors face a quarrelsome population.
The powerful nature of the work is that while Steinbeck writes of a nameless aggressor and a nameless victim country-he does identify a universal value. What is that value? Namely that occupiers cannot overcome the desire for freedom among those that they occupy. In the end, freedom trumps tyranny. While he wrote it with the nazis storming across europe in mind, you could compare it to other situations where aggressors face a quarrelsome population.
Shade
New Member
Having enjoyed The Pearl and The Long Valley, I splashed out on The Moon is Down as recommended by SFG above. This was on top of the half-dozen other Steinbecks I already have, unread, from a ten-for-a-tenner deal I got a few years ago. Perhaps I should have waited before getting more of his stuff, as I've just sweated and toiled my way through a fair portion of The Grapes of Wrath - his all-conquering masterpiece! - before giving up. I wasn't really going to post about it (or boast about it), because I have no desire to change anyone's mind or challenge its classic status. However, for what it's worth, if there's anyone out there who also was bored rigid by it and mystified by the acclaim: know that you are not alone.
In some Amazon reviews, people thought the alternate chapters - which take a sidelong look at the overall problems the Joads are coming up against - were boring and superfluous. My experience was quite the opposite: I felt that way about the Joad chapters. None of the characters stood out individually for me, Granma, Grampa, Al, Tom, Casy, etc. etc. or Timmy the dog, so when two of the above died in one chapter it was more a relief - a winnowing down of the unnecessary, a case of 'two down, twelve to go!' - than a tragedy. Although 'sad' things were happening in every chapter, they never touched me or worked their way through my brain down to my heart. I was constantly frustrated by the fact that they never actually got to frigging California (I gave up about a third into it, on page 170; skipping ahead, I saw they finally made it around the page 230 mark). And the hokey Okie dialect, though comprehensible, was a right royal pain in the arse.
I suspect The Grapes of Wrath was a formidably powerful book on publication; tearing through society with devastating force and the revelatory power of a piece of shocking reportage (which in some ways it was). But to me it just seemed a quaint, distant tale, so full of heartstrings-by-numbers tragedy that it entirely failed to affect me, rather like Joseph O'Connor's The Star of the Sea.
I thought it might be interesting to read another 1939 novel of the Depression for comparison, but a third of the length, so I've moved on to John Fante's Ask the Dust, and I'm afraid that in twelve pages it's already interested me more than the Grapes did in nearly 200.
In some Amazon reviews, people thought the alternate chapters - which take a sidelong look at the overall problems the Joads are coming up against - were boring and superfluous. My experience was quite the opposite: I felt that way about the Joad chapters. None of the characters stood out individually for me, Granma, Grampa, Al, Tom, Casy, etc. etc. or Timmy the dog, so when two of the above died in one chapter it was more a relief - a winnowing down of the unnecessary, a case of 'two down, twelve to go!' - than a tragedy. Although 'sad' things were happening in every chapter, they never touched me or worked their way through my brain down to my heart. I was constantly frustrated by the fact that they never actually got to frigging California (I gave up about a third into it, on page 170; skipping ahead, I saw they finally made it around the page 230 mark). And the hokey Okie dialect, though comprehensible, was a right royal pain in the arse.
I suspect The Grapes of Wrath was a formidably powerful book on publication; tearing through society with devastating force and the revelatory power of a piece of shocking reportage (which in some ways it was). But to me it just seemed a quaint, distant tale, so full of heartstrings-by-numbers tragedy that it entirely failed to affect me, rather like Joseph O'Connor's The Star of the Sea.
I thought it might be interesting to read another 1939 novel of the Depression for comparison, but a third of the length, so I've moved on to John Fante's Ask the Dust, and I'm afraid that in twelve pages it's already interested me more than the Grapes did in nearly 200.
pontalba
Well-Known Member
I thought East of Eden was the only one of his I'd read, but many years ago I did read The Winter of Our Discontent, and didn't care for either one. I hardly remember Winter, but have vivid memories of EoE and not good ones. The story itself was actually quite good. I guess part of it was I was totally unsympathetic towards all of the characters. I have to be able to either like, or at the least empathize with at least one character. That may be a flaw in me, and not Steinbeck, still, there it is. And even though the story was interesting, it seemed somehow flat to me.
Can y'all tell me if there are any characters in Steinbeck that might fit my criteria? I am fairly open to suggestion.
That may be a flaw in me, and not Steinbeck, still, there it is. And even though the story was interesting, it seemed somehow flat to me.Can y'all tell me if there are any characters in Steinbeck that might fit my criteria? I am fairly open to suggestion.
muggle
New Member
I really liked the characters in Tortilla Flats and Cannery Row. You should be able to latch onto at least one of them in each book.pontalba said:I thought East of Eden was the only one of his I'd read, but many years ago I did read The Winter of Our Discontent, and didn't care for either one. I hardly remember Winter, but have vivid memories of EoE and not good ones. The story itself was actually quite good. I guess part of it was I was totally unsympathetic towards all of the characters. I have to be able to either like, or at the least empathize with at least one character.
Can y'all tell me if there are any characters in Steinbeck that might fit my criteria? I am fairly open to suggestion.
