John Steinbeck (1902–1968)

Deeply engaging story of the Salinas Valley. This feels like the one that everything else Steinbeck wrote about the area was just a warm-up for. He plots the lives of two farming families, one being the Hamilton's to which the narrator belongs, and the other being the Trasks, a rich family transplanted from New England. The story of these families weaves together, but it is the Trask's story that remains primary. They have all the makings of a successful farm, family and legacy, and yet show more there's a dark streak in their midst that threatens to tear them apart.

For a novel with a central message about the dangers of a black-and-white perception of the world, it certainly sets up some extremes in the way of characters. Cathy is the nastiest villain I've encountered in fiction for quite a while. Do not let the misogynist in your home read this one, or they'll discover she validates every wrong idea they ever had. Steinbeck is examining the nature of good and evil, and he finds the root of evil in the absence or denial of love. To experience love you must first believe in it and sense it. You must be capable of loving and of receiving love. Charles, Cathy and some others in this story may all seem of one type, but each is missing a different piece of the puzzle: the belief in love, or the love they crave and cannot have, or the inability to deliver it, or some other component.

At the other extreme stands Samuel and Lee. Samuel talks a lot, is too generous with his time and can't hold onto a dollar, but he is a tower of wisdom and humility. Lee is another standout character: master of Chinese pidgin by day, master of English by night, a brilliant man caught between worlds and deeply underestimated by nearly everyone around him. They represent natural good and its characteristics of empathy and understanding, offering a hand up to anyone who is willing to profit by it. How did they attain that standing?

Adam and his family are between these forces, influenced and informed by the examples and words of both sides. How much of their fate will be determined by them, and how much lies beyond their control? What excuses can be made for them, and what must they take responsibility for? Simple questions all of us must deal with. We see other examples on the sidelines of those who navigate this middle course - the sheriff who wants to keep the peace in his county, Abra who was born to a family that wanted a son. And what emerges is the image of a narrow road into the dark with a ditch on both sides, with only the light behind us to guide our way, a single word that answers all. show less

A rich old curmudgeon with a reputation of speaking for the common man realizes he has not been out amongst the hoi polloi in a while, so he sets out in a little camper with his poodle to rediscover the soul of America. Steinbeck strings together some sightseeing, rants, and colorful road trip characters into a mostly entertaining and often humorous travelogue.

Some of the sections seemed unlikely or too good to be true, so upon finishing the book, I was not surprised to find that researchers show more have found that Steinbeck fictionalized chunks of the book.

What did surprise me was how little things seemed to have changed in nearly 60 years as Steinbeck writes about a divisive political election, migrant workers, urban sprawl, the crazy reputation of Texas, and racism among other topics. show less

Steinbeck called himself “an American writer, writing about America” but, in 1960, he was twenty years beyond some of his most famous and recognized work. He felt that he had lost his connection with the land and the people that he wrote about and he wanted to find his voice once again. So, he secured a truck and camper, naming it Rocinante for Quixote’s horse, and he and his dog, Charley, went in search of America. He drove from his Sag Harbor home to Maine, across the northern show more reaches of the country trough Wisconsin, the Dakotas, and Montana, dipping down from Washington to his home country in Northern California, and then ventured across Texas and into the South before making the trek home. The account of the trip was published in 1962 as [Travels with Charley].

What is most interesting about Steinbeck’s book is that it turns out to be more of an internal journal, an account of his own personal journey as much as the physical journey. Though he set out to find America, Steinbeck seems more in search of himself and the soul of his writing. As he nears the end of his trip, Steinbeck records:
“It would be pleasant to be able to say of my travels with Charley, ‘I went out to find the truth about my country and I found it.’ And then it would be such a simple matter to set down my findings and lean back comfortably with a fine sense of having discovered truths and taught them to my readers. I wish it were that easy. But what I carried in my head and deeper in my perceptions was a barrel of worms. I discovered long ago in collecting and classifying marine animals that what I found was closely intermeshed with how I felt at the moment. External reality has a way of being not so external after all.”
So, what Steinbeck records is a distillation of his own thoughts and life rather than conclusions on the country. In seeing the land and interacting with its people, he refocuses his heart, learning as much about himself as anything.

What is transposed from other Steinbeck writing into this book is his keen eye for people. The reason his characters seem so human is because Steinbeck has a unique ability to lay bare the essence of people. For instance, early in his trip, Steinbeck enters a roadside café to find a waitress “who can drain energy and joy, can suck pleasure dry and get now sustenance from it…spread a grayness in the air about them.” Long before Steinbeck explains this waitress’s nature, he has described her and recounted his interaction with her in such a way as to reveal her completely. His depiction of ‘mercenary migrant’ potato workers in Maine or a philandering businessman from only leavings in a hotel room identify these people as though you are at the fire or in the hotel room with Steinbeck.

Steinbeck’s eye for the land is no less keen than his eye for people. As a desert dweller, I was most interested in how he perceived the desert Southwest. After all, Steinbeck is a penultimate man of the sea, driven by its rhythms and raw power. How would he view the exact opposite of what he is most familiar and comfortable with? Of course, his perception cut to the very quick of the desert’s nature, identifying what is most beautiful and vibrant in a place where most only see desolation.
“And the desert, the dry and sun-lashed desert, is a good school in which to observe the cleverness and the infinite variety of techniques of survival under the pitiless opposition. Life could not change the sun or water the desert, it changed itself. The desert, being an unwanted place, might well be the last stand of life against unlife. … The desert has mothered magic things before this.”
After sliding into the high desert and pushing through Gallup to the Continental Divide, he camps in a canyon off the road for the night. Even at this lonely place, he notes something so telling about the nature of the place, but without knowing why or how. Near their campsite, he and Charley uncover a mound of broken bottles, whiskey and gin bottles, thousands of them. He says, “I don’t know why they were there.” Having lived near where he is describing, I know it is one of a thousand drinking spots that draw the inhabitants of that region, often daily. Some mystical pull attracts people to these spots and they mark their gatherings with the leavings of their addiction.

Perhaps most telling of the stories in this book is Steinbeck’s trip back to the Salinas and Monterey of his early life. Steinbeck meets up with an old friend from his younger days in a bar. The man begs Steinbeck to return so that things will be like they were before. But Steinbeck notes how different the place and the people are, how all of their friends are dead or gone. Though, in the end, Steinbeck doesn’t see the ghosts of things past. He says about his return,
“I was the ghost. My town had grown and changed and my friend along with it. Now returning, as changed to my friend as my town was to me, I distorted his picture, muddied his memory. When I went away I had died, and so became fixed and unchangeable. My return caused only confusion and uneasiness. Although they could not say it, my old friends wanted me gone so that I could take my proper place in the patter of remembrance – and I wanted to go for the same reason. Tom Wolfe was right. You can’t go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.”

This book solidified Steinbeck’s place in my own personal canon. His writing is crisp, though not as spare as Hemingway or McCarthy. But what he shares with those two authors is an uncanny sense of the human condition in its various forms. The resulting truth of his work is comforting and provocative.

Bottom Line: An intimate and internal diary of a trek across America.

5 bones!!!!!

A favorite for the year and an all-time favorite. show less

“It was a morning like other mornings and yet perfect among mornings.”

This novella opens with the simple contentment of a young Mexican pearlfisher: at peace with his life, wife, and baby, living in a tightknit community, and accompanied by the “Song of the Family” that plays in his mind.

Pearls, by contrast, are a consequence of imperfection - possibly of pain or discomfort. But from the irritation caused by stray sand, rare transfixing beauty can occur. Unlike gold and diamonds, a show more pearl needs no finishing, and yet its allure arises from its imperfections: the shifting elusiveness of the watery light it exudes, the unexpectedly grainy surface, the not-quite spherical shape, and the glowing warmth it imparts to eye and skin.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Quiet contentment would not make much of a story. But wherein lies the greater danger: a scorpion, poised to pounce on a resting babe, or a huge pearl that could pay for school, and thus enable little Coyotito to “break out of the pot that holds us in”?

There is mystical hope when “the need was great and the desire was great”, but beware, “It is not good to want a thing too much.”

Oyster being opened, source here.

Fortune shines. “In the surface of the great pearl he could see dreams forming.”

Fortune is fickle. “The pearl has become my soul”. Wealth brings power, and power tends to corrupt. What once offered warm lucent promise turns “gray and ulcerous”. The possession possesses him.

Ultimately, this is a story of sacrifice - specifically, of choosing what and when to surrender. Make the wrong choice, and you risk losing everything.

Story in Song

The people of the Gulf of California had songs for everything, though maybe only Kino hears them now. The story is encapsulated in the evolving sequence of songs (minor spoilers implied):

* “Clear and soft… The Song of the Family.”
* “The Song of Evil… a savage, secret, dangerous melody, and underneath, the Song of the Family cried plaintively.”
* “A secret little inner song… sweet and secret and clinging, almost hiding in the counter-melody, and this was the Song of the Pearl That Might Be.”
* “The music of the pearl had merged with the music of the family so that one beautified the other.”
* “The music of evil, of the enemy sounded, but it was faint and weak.”
* “The music of the pearl was triumphant… and the quiet melody of the family underlay it.”
* “The music of the pearl had become sinister… and it was interwoven with the music of evil.”
* “The Song of the Family had become as fierce and sharp and feline as the snarl of a female puma.“
* “The Song of the Family was as fierce as a cry… a battle cry.”
* “The music of the pearl, distorted and insane.”
* “The music of the pearl drifted to a whisper and disappeared.”

Faith… in What?

Kino and Juana blend belief systems: ancient magic invocations, Hail Marys and prayers, and a resentful faith in the knowledge and consequent power of white settlers. A traditional remedy might be as effective as one from the doctor, but “lacked his authority because it was simple and didn't cost anything.”

For those raised on Bible stories, it’s impossible to read this without thinking of the pearl of great price, the desire for which Jesus likened to the Kingdom of Heaven:
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.” Matthew 13:45 - 46 (KJV)

But it’s an oft-misquoted proverb that comes more sadly and strongly to mind:
“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” 1 Timothy 6:10 (KJV)
For the mere prospect of great wealth changes priorities, changes people - for ever. Transfiguration is not always for the better.

And the Moral Is...

Unlike a traditional parable or morality tale, there is no explicit teaching point, not even a clear ending. Just a new, stark, and very uncertain beginning.

“Oyster Pearl,” Hawaii, by Anna. Licensed under CC By 2.0.

Steinbeck’s Philosophy

Steinbeck distanced himself from Christianity over the years, and atheists sometimes claim him as their own. The Bible was certainly part of his heritage, but broader, non-sectarian social justice permeates his works.

Of particular relevance to this novella:
* Steinbeck grew up in California, and was always interested in Mexican culture around him.
* His concern for the poor and marginalised is reflected in his writings.
* He was shocked by race riots in his easygoing state, and wrote this two years later.
* He was also reeling from the success and infamy of Grapes of Wrath.
* This was written with the intention of its being filmed for and by Mexicans. And it was.
* Steinbeck studied marine biology at university (but didn’t complete the course).

Quotes

* “The uncertain air that magnified some things and blotted out others… so that all sights were unreal and vision could not be trusted.”
* “There is no almsgiver in the world like a poor man who is suddenly lucky.”
* “So lovely it was, so soft, and its own music came from it - its music of promise and delight, its guarantee of the future, of comfort, of security. Its warm lucence promised a poultice against illness and a wall against insult. It closed a door on hunger.”
* “The sky was brushed clean by the wind and the stars were cold in a black sky.”
* “The land was waterless, furred by the cacti.”
* In the desert, “pools were places of life because of the water, and places of killing because of the water, too.”

* “He had lost one world and had not gained another.”

Neil Gaiman's take on Pearls

In American Gods, Gaiman says we insulate ourselves from the tragedies of others: “we build a shell around it like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit... This is how we walk and talk and function... immune to others' pain and loss.” See my review HERE. show less