BS: John Steinbeck (1902-1968)

Subject: RE: BS: John Steinbeck
From: Mrrzy
Date: 28 Aug 20 - 12:51 PM

My mistake with Steinbeck was trying to read Grapes of Wrath, when I already knew the Cisco Houston version of the song, but had not known it was based on any book, let alone the one I was trying to read. I found him unreadable through no fault of his own, because the song was so much more entertaining.
I have never been able to read anything of his.
I wish I had tried to read him earlier. He sounds great.

Subject: RE: BS: John Steinbeck
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Aug 20 - 01:14 PM

What a readable author
Steinbeck wrote, "The vilification of me out here from the large landowners and bankers is pretty bad. The latest is a rumor started by them that the Okies hate me and have threatened to kill me for lying about them. I'm frightened at the rolling might of this damned thing. It is completely out of hand; I mean a kind of hysteria about the book is growing that is not healthy."

Subject: RE: BS: John Steinbeck
From: Lighter
Date: 28 Aug 20 - 01:47 PM

The final scene of Grapes of Wrath is so grotesque, so heavy-handed, and so aesthetically repellent to many readers that, in my opinion, it keeps the book from being truly great, no matter how good the rest of it is.

But it's exceptionally good. When I read it in high school, I couldn't put it down.

Subject: RE: BS: John Steinbeck
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 Aug 20 - 03:15 PM

He did use a trowel for that ending imagery in Grapes of Wrath, but talk about some easily available symbols - for example, if anyone mentions seeing the Joads out on a road or parking lot, etc, you know exactly what they mean. Steinbeck's touch was much lighter in the short stories. I've loved all of the novels that I've read except East of Eden, where Cathy Trask and those dysfunctional sons were just too much after a while. I was about 2/3 through the audiobook when I finally admitted defeat.

Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday with Doc (based on Ed Ricketts) were wonderful to spend time with. His non-fiction is also excellent. The Log From the Sea of Cortez - I remember laughing out loud when he wrote about how gray whales have bad breath when you get up close to them.

Subject: RE: BS: John Steinbeck
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Aug 20 - 03:25 PM

Wasn't Carol C great? I miss her. Amos is still funny.
As for J Steinbeck, for me he could write from a POV of the inside out and outside in, simultaneously. Some authors can only write from one POV or alternate POV's one at a time. If you don't understand what I said, it is due to my bad authorship. As for Stilly perhaps she has learned how to meld all the great voices into one clear concentrated clarion call we hear today. ;^/ or maybe she's just loquacious.
Bang ptoo- zing
and rap is OK too.

Subject: RE: BS: John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 29 Aug 20 - 04:54 AM

Deckman's 2005 link about the Salinas public library is no more - perhaps because Salinas library itself isn't?

Anybody know what it said?

Subject: RE: BS: John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 29 Aug 20 - 09:21 AM

It is there, I looked, I just didn't update that link.

Salinas Public Library - 2020.

National Steinbeck Center (when the site opens you hear a recording of Woody Guthrie).

Subject: RE: BS: John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 30 Aug 20 - 03:56 AM

Whoever refreshed the tnread, thank you. You have inspired me to re-read Steinback. Starting at the top, I have downloaded East of Eden to my Kindle :-)

Subject: RE: BS: John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
From: The Sandman
Date: 30 Aug 20 - 04:25 AM

Cannery Row, Dave, is one of the best,
I would also recommend The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell and Love on the Dole a novel by Walter Greenwood, about working class poverty in 1930s

Subject: RE: BS: John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
From: Thompson
Date: 30 Aug 20 - 05:40 AM

There's a lot of Steinbeck free to read on the Internet Archive - search for

steinbeck site:archive.org

and a list of goodies comes up.

Subject: RE: BS: John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 30 Aug 20 - 05:43 AM

I have read both of those, Dick. They are good but not Steinbeck. Not sure how they fit in to this discussion?

Subject: RE: BS: John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
From: Thompson
Date: 30 Aug 20 - 05:46 AM

Or if you're a real nostalgia hound, abebooks.com has several Armed Services Edition copies of Steinbeck books; these were printed for American soldiers using a press set for magazines, so they're an odd and pleasing sideways shape designed to fit in the breast pocket of a uniform. As far as I know, while Bibles regularly stopped bullets, no Armed Services Edition novels did so, though.

It's a pity that authors and their heirs don't have the same rights as painters - if you buy a painting or sculpture secondhand, the artist gets a residual, same with showings of TV shows or films. But with books, if they're sold secondhand the whole fee goes to the seller and not a penny to the writer.

Subject: RE: BS: John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Aug 20 - 10:38 AM

That's a different topic and there are threads that discuss that.

I think the Salinas community has reconciled with it's Steinbeck connection; the older white male land-owning generation that was at odds with his views supporting workers and immigrants has died off. The tourism dollars also help soothe that old wound. That new National Steinbeck center appears to be smack in the middle of town.

Subject: RE: BS: John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Aug 20 - 12:34 PM

One of my favorite American authors of the twentieth century is William Faulkner. (He was also Steinbeck's favorite author.) The Trauma of the Civil War Lives On in Faulkner’s Fiction. Suitable for another thread another time, but also an excellent illustrator of American history.

Through the ineffable, through his relentless drive to describe what cannot be said directly, Faulkner plunges us into the harrowing canyons of the nation’s past. Toni Morrison, his fellow Nobel laureate, wrote that she read Faulkner to “find out about this country and that artistic articulation of its past that was not available in history, which is what art and fiction can do but history sometimes refuses to do.” In spending relatively little time with the literary aspects of Faulkner’s novels — the astounding characterization, his brilliance with metaphor and his dazzling descriptions of perception and physicality — Gorra misses an opportunity to tell a fuller story of the sublime interplay of aesthetics and theme in Faulkner’s work. This is doubly unfortunate because Gorra writes so beautifully when he turns his attention to Faulkner’s artistry, as in this description of “Absalom, Absalom!”: “This prose has that same overheated fecundity, its modifiers piled recklessly, rank with too much meaning.”

Another favorite, whose oeuvre should have stopped at one novel, was Harper Lee, whose To Kill a Mockingbird flows much in the way Faulkner's does (though you don't have to figure out how to breathe to read her writing. The key is that Faulkner's work was written to be read out loud.) I mention this to make it clear that it isn't just men who wrote these great modernist novels.

To return to the Steinbeck topic, CSpan "Booknotes" featured the Life and Times of John Steinbeck in a 2002 program, filmed at the National Steinbeck Center. Writings of John Steinbeck starts out with my friend Louis Owens (mentioned back in the early posts of this thread). The entire two hour lecture can be listened to through the CSpan area. (Owen's literary examination of Steinbeck, also available through the Twane series mentioned above, is very accessible. Alas, Owens died later in the year after he participated in this program.)

Subject: RE: BS: John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 31 Aug 20 - 08:32 AM

Does anyone know wher eI can get a copy of "The Harvest Gypsies: On The Road to the Grapes of Wrath" in London?

Subject: RE: BS: John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 31 Aug 20 - 11:04 AM

www.Bookfinder.com