think I've been avoiding John Steinbeck, consciously or subconsciously, ever since I was a horseloving teenager and thought that sitelinkThe Red Pony would be a nice, pleasant book to read.
I didn't read any Steinbeck books for years,
But I was in the local library, puttering around in the general fiction shelves, and happened to pull this one out and noticed how short it wasonlypages.
I had just finished reading sitelinkJonathan Livingston Seagull, which was apage overdose of cheesy's inspiration, and it occurred to me that by reading this book to offset JLS I could restore the cosmic balance in my life, or something like that.
Lennie and George are a unique pair of friends: George is restless, intelligent and often shorttempered Lennie is huge and incredibly strong, although mentally damaged.
He has a childlike sweetness but is easily confused and frightened, and that combined with his strength makes him threatening to others, Somehow, despite their differences, the two have formed a friendship, George tries to protect Lennie from the world, . . and the world from Lennie, It's a difficult task. But they have their dreams and plans of a place of their own, where they can tend a garden and raise animals, And Lennie can take care of the rabbits, It's the most heavenly thing he can imagine,
George and Lennie are hired as field hands at a ranch
in California, and the foreshadowings of disaster start to come thick and fast.
An old sheepdog whose usefulness has passed is unceremoniously shot, The owner's son Curley comes around to their bunkhouse, spoiling for a fight, Curley's young, bored wife comes around even more often, looking for a different kind of trouble, The hands are sure that they only need a month or two of wages to achieve their plans of a place of their own, but the bestlaid schemes of mice and men gang oft agley.
I was expecting to read about shattered dreams, but I was surprised and touched by the strength of the theme of true friendshipnot just the friendship between George and Lennie, but also the friendship and understanding offered by Slim, the ranch foreman.
With all of the loneliness and cruelty and loss and disappointment that life can bring, it's this one message of hope that I choose to take away from this short but powerful book.
Oh shit. Don't laugh at me but I just now got this:
Of Mice amp Men has been on my bucket list for a while.
It's one of those stories that are kind of everywhere, but somehow I've still managed to avoid spoilers for the pastyears,
How
I'm going to go out on a long shaky limb and say it's probably because nothing about me lends itself to paying any attention to mopey books about ranch hands.
Steinbeck covers a lot of ground in this relatively small tale, The casually horrible racism, the plight of a man who has the mind of a child, and the bleak outlook for the poor and uneducated once they've passed their point of usefulness.
And of course, those painted tarts that flirt and wreck a man's sanity, ltsomehow it doesn't surprise me that the hoe was the villain of the piece,
So, The moral of the story is that you shouldn't pet animals too hard or they'll get all dead and floppy, don't be a mean skank because nobody wants to catch herpes from a complete bitch, and sometimes you just need to shoot a guy in the head to be nice.
That's it, right Right
Or,
Maybe the moral of the story is just that sometimes, no matter how hard you try, shit just goes sideways,
Yes, it was poignant and worth reading, But more important to me, it was blessedly short, I don't think I would have wanted to endure living in that depressing story for any longer than I did,
PS
Gary Sinise was an unbelievably incredible narrator, I mean, I actually had to go back and make sure this audiobook didn't have a full cast because his voices were so distinct,
It's the way Steinbeck describes things that gets me,
"Crooks, the negro stable buck, had his bunk in the harness room a little shed that leaned off the wall of the barn.
On one side of the little room there was a square fourpaned window, and on the other, a narrow plank door leading into the barn.
Crooks' bunk was a long box filled with straw, on which his blankets were flung, On the wall by the window there were pegs on which hung broken harness in process of being mended strips of new leather and under the window itself a little bench for leatherworking tools, curved knives and needles and balls of linen thread, and a small hand riveter.
On pegs were also pieces of harness, a split collar with the horsehair stuffing sticking out, a broken hame, and a trace chain with its leather covering split.
Crooks had his apple box over his bunk, and in it a range of medicine bottles, both for himself and for the horses, There were cans of saddle soap and a drippy can of tar with its paint brush sticking over the edge, And scattered about the floor were a number of personal possessions for, being alone, Crooks could leave his things about, ad being a stable buck and a cripple, he was more permanent than the other men, and he had accumulated more possessions than he could carry on his back.
"
None of this is relevant to the story, and yet a middle chapter opens up with this vivid scene, Steinbeck succeeds because the characters he paints in your head are exact, The first time I saw the movie that was made out of this story, it was just as I had envisioned it, Though the story great itself, the reason I will come back to this book is for the little things, the very things that have made me love Steinbeck so much.
I first read Of Mice And Men my sophomore year of high school, when it was a required reading in Mrs, Beeler's class. I recall disliking almost all required school readings up to this point though admittedly I had skipped out on the summer reading project of "The Grapes Of Wrath".
When this book was assigned, I knew it was different, I blew through it, reading it in a day or two, even though I wasn't supposed to, For once there was a school book that I enjoyed, And all the credit in the world to my teacher, who chose other good books the rest of the year, So it's beenyears since I've read this, and now, reading it for the second time, it's just as memorable as I remember, The story sticks with you, the imagery sticks, The characters are among Steinbeck's best, painted in such a crystal clear vision of the time,
It's a near perfect short story, and one that I will surely revisit throughout my life, شاهکار فوقالعاده ای از روابط انسانی و سرگذشت غم انگیز دو دوست کارگر. . نثر نمایشنامه ای و ریتم بالای این اثر بهمراه شخصیت پردازی فوقالعاده و گیرایی روایت خوانش اثر رو بشدت لذت بخش میکنه و درنهایت پایان تراژیک کتاب هست که جای هیچ بحثی رو باقی نمیگذاره. . The title of this novel is onlyaccurate, a very poor effort, Yes, its about men, but theres little or nothing about mice in these pages, Mice enthusiasts will come away disappointed, This got me thinking about other novel titles, You would have to say that such books as The Slap, The Help, The Great Gatsby, Gangsta Granny, Mrs Dalloway and Hamlet have very good titles because they are all about a slap, some help, a Gatsby who was really great, a no good granny, a woman who was married to a guy called Dalloway and a Hamlet.
I have no problem with those titles, But you may be poring over the pages of To Kill a Mockingbird for a long fruitless evening to find any mockingbirds coming to any harm at all.
Indeed, to coin a phrase, no mockingbirds were harmed during the making of that book, So I rate that title onlyaccurate, And some titles seem to have a word missing, such as Conan Doyles The Sign of Four, Four what It doesnt say, Perhaps he completed the book and left the title to the very last minute and died as he was writing it down, Same thing with The Crimson Petal and the White, White what Wallpaper Hat Cat Mouse Mockingbird Could be The Crimson Petal and the White Gangsta Granny for all we know, A poor title. And what about The Dharma Bums I think a Cigarette or You Out is clearly missing from that title.
Another grossly misleading title is Women in Love , I cant be the only reader who was expecting some strong girl on girl action from DH Lawrence but I would have been better off fastforwarding to the middle part of Mulholland Drive.
Now thats what I call Women in Love, DH, take note. Another badly chosen title is Hitlers Niece yes, it isaccurate, but at first glance it can look like Hitlers Nice, and surely that is going to put off a lot of potential readers except for the readers you really dont want.
And what about Call it Sleep call what sleep
The Catcher in the Rye, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Flauberts Parrot, The Camomile Lawn sometimes obscure titles can be solved if you understand that the author is referring to Death, so, the Catcher is Death, the Postman is Death, the lawn is Death and the Parrot is Death.
Of course, I may have got that wrong, Its something I read somewhere and it just stuck in my mind,
Some other titles I would give low ratings to :
The Turn of the Screw completely baffled me I know that “screw” is what inmates call prison officers, so I was expecting a story about a concert put on by the staff of a large correctional institution.
It was nothing like that,
The Little Prince according to my system does ratebut I still think The Little Fauxnaif Idiot would have been better.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay actually, I rate this asaccurate there are two guys who are named Kavalier and Clay, and they do have adventures, but they arent amazing.
A Clockwork Orange this must be a metaphor for “I have given up thinking of a title for my novel”
No Name like A Clockwork Orange this must be where the author couldnt think of any title so in this case he left it without one, like the Byrds album Untitled, or by Sigur Ros, or several paintings by De Kooning and those other abstract expressionist types but to call a novel No Name is selfdefeating, because No Name then becomes its name epic fail, Mr Collins.
The Violent Bear it Away this is another example of a word missing possibly "took" or "dragged", I expect that's the sort of thing a violent bear would do Im surprised the publisher did not catch this error.
.