And yet, the knights around the table in Monterey, California are more human than the heroes in the legends, they are warm and alive and caring. They know how to go through the different stages of heavy drinking, and how to mess up a perfectly fine love story. His is a hopelessly poor world, full of people who are destined to stay in the chaotic situation they call life forever. ![]() I don't know why the sad tales of John Steinbeck fill me with so much joy. "Ah, the prayers of the millions, how they must fight and destroy each other on their way to the throne of God." But the desire to keep things as they are is a very strong one in real life, Steinbeck makes you feel that desire and sense of loss in the little world he creates, and it takes him less than 200 pages to do it. A story that makes your throat tighten at the end, and makes you wish.well, you're supposed to read it. He never departs from our subjects for more than a couple pages, never spends 5 pages describing a rock or a particular tree, or even any of the men or the home they live in. Thankfully, he's so quick with his pen they're like brief tangents that come, then go once you've gotten the point of them. And Steinbeck seems to love the little side stories. Some richer, some poorer, all with their own little story. Like Cannery Row, its about a lot of down on their luck guys, and the people of the town about them. But it never seems heavy handed, you can almost see the characters realizing they're playing a part and stepping up to do it. They even use "Thou" and "Thee" in some parts. I've heard its a Camelot tale and I can see it. The characters are interesting and simply made, archetypes almost. Besides, none of the characters would know the word, so why would you use it to describe them? What are you, better than your subject? I think the point Steinbeck constantly makes is - no, you're not. ![]() They don't need a $2 word every couple paragraphs, they need maybe three per book. Simple construction - departing every so often to show off that yes, they know EXACTLY what they're describing - for the most part just recording the story as they would an event that really happened. This is what I run into every time I read Steinbeck. A substantive story, containing meaning and moral, simply told IS great literature. Here's my opinion: Using flowery prose to add weight and impart meaning on a vaporous story is not great literature. I despise the idea that he (like hemmingway for that matter) is sometimes considered a "simple" writer. I learned from this book that I continue to love Steinbeck. Seventeen of his works, including The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Cannery Row (1945), The Pearl (1947), and East of Eden (1952), went on to become Hollywood films, and Steinbeck also achieved success as a Hollywood writer, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Story in 1944 for Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat. He died in 1968 in New York of a heart attack, and his ashes are interred in Salinas. ![]() One of his last published works was Travels with Charley, a travelogue of a road trip he took in 1960 to rediscover America. His later body of work reflected his wide range of interests, including marine biology, politics, religion, history, and mythology. Steinbeck often populated his stories with struggling characters his works examined the lives of the working class and migrant workers during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Later, he used real historical conditions and events in the first half of 20th century America, which he had experienced first-hand as a reporter. In his subsequent novels, Steinbeck found a more authentic voice by drawing upon direct memories of his life in California. An exception was his first novel Cup of Gold which concerns the pirate Henry Morgan, whose adventures had captured Steinbeck's imagination as a child. Most of his earlier work dealt with subjects familiar to him from his formative years. Steinbeck moved briefly to New York City, but soon returned home to California to begin his career as a writer. This upbringing imparted a regionalistic flavor to his writing, giving many of his works a distinct sense of place. Steinbeck grew up in the Salinas Valley region of California, a culturally diverse place of rich migratory and immigrant history. In 1962, Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature. In all, he wrote twenty-five books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and several collections of short stories. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939, and the novella, Of Mice and Men, published in 1937.
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