What does Yea Forums think of Steinbeck? Lean, rich, masculine prose. Love of nature and the simple life. No over-written, auto-fascinated subjects of the modernist titty-twisting bullshit new guard.
Says everything about everything that prospective writers today are more interested in emulating hacks like Joyce and Pynchon than Steinbeck.
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Personally extremely fond of him and even envy Americans for having such an amazing author in their pool. Glad I know English well enough to read him without translation. East of Eden has some of the most believable characters that just are there, also probably one of the most accurate descriptions of sociopathic behaviour and one of the most touching stories about common life and common people, both funny and tragic.
He reminds me of Hemingway, for some reason I see Hemingway as an unreachable perfection while Steinbeck feels very comfy and based. Watched a documentary about him and empathized even more than I did before.
I also liked that Steinbeck is very patriotic in a right way: he does not suck government's or ideology's dick, he truly cares for his people and wants to show all the injustice being done to them. Don't really get why they labeled him to be socialist for that.
Awesome both as human and as an author, an example to follow and a style to aspire to
California bishhhhh
Only book I read was Of Mice and Men but that was in school so the experience was tainted and I haven't revisited him. Same with Dickens...
Where should I start with him?
Good post, exactly, I'm gravitating to Steinbeck more and more I find myself cracking clown world conditioning. The America he knew, perhaps a little idealized, is the America that has always been worth fighting for. Reading Tortilla Flat atm and just loving it. He reminds me of why I told myself at age 18 I'll never be a great writer.
Him and Faulkner in fact, as I get older I'm acquiring a newfound appreciation for authors like these. Men whose prose soars without sounding affected.
I really hope you've read Grapes of Wrath.
Have a link to that documentary?
Grapes of Wrath is how I did.
this
also this. i'm from where he would write about and my county had a book burning for Grapes of Wrath when it came out.haha
it grew on us
nice trips.
start with Tortilla Flat, considered to be his best novella.
then either more novellas or Grapes
I got his collection of novellas. Already read Grapes and Eden, it's my favorite novel of all time. There is something so transcendentally comfy about Steinbeck.
ah woops, was meant for
I've been reading The Grapes of Wrath after recs from Yea Forums. It's amazing prose and the characters feel so real, salt-of-the-earth folk with morals put in shitty situations finding a path out of it
Thanks, i'll pick it up.
youtube.com
I don't remember now, but I think it was it. Anyway it was on YT, so you'll find it real quick.
I have also noticed that the older you get the more you enjoy classical literature. There's just something really adult to the way it unfolds: it doesn't grab you right away, you just get involved overtime and by the time you finish it you close the book and mumble: "Holy shit".
Thanks for the link. You're exactly right about literature. Descriptions of natural scenery used to be bore me to tears, but once I cracked my virtual shell a bit it is so much more vivid and alive to me.
There really are no good writers without good readers. You can spin a whole world in your head out a few lines of punchy prose, if your mind is an adult (and not just body).
Really? Of Mice and Men was one of the only books in school I really liked
What's his best book I've only read Of mice and men in school?
I just hated my school so it tarnished everything.
Grapes of Wrath, followed by East of Eden and Cannery Row.
Travels with Charlie is great if you want to know more about how he viewed America.
Btw if you like Steinbeck you might like Turgenev. They are not all that close really but from reading both I get almost an identical feeling for some reason. Dunno, maybe cause I'm Russian, so its closer to me
Thanks m8 I'll peep him, for me this is like a second renaissance for fiction
reposting from thread
I visited Salinas once, it was literally 90 percent homeless people and every other business establishment and street name was a Steinbeck reference. I visited chinatown in an attempt to find the place where the hooker house from East of Eden would've been and there were literally too many homeless encampments in the street for me to drive my car. i had to do a 180 and drive away from those crazy hobos
Kinda looks like Charls Carroll from MDE
Loved the first three opening pragraphs of Grapes of Wrath. One of the most virtuoso performances of naturalistic writing ever committed to paper.
TO THE RED COUNTRY and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more. The weeds grew darker green to protect themselves, and they did not spread any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale, pink in the red country and white in the gray country.
In the water-cut gullies the earth dusted down in dry little streams. Gophers and ant lions started small avalanches. And as the sharp sun struck day after day, the leaves of the young corn became less stiff and erect; they bent in a curve at first, and then, as the central ribs of strength grew weak, each leaf tilted downward. Then it was June, and the sun shone more fiercely. The brown lines on the corn leaves widened and moved in on the central ribs. The weeds frayed and edged back toward their roots. The air was thin and the sky more pale; and every day the earth paled.
In the roads where the teams moved, where the wheels milled the ground and the hooves of the horses beat the ground, the dirt crust broke and the dust formed. Every moving thing lifted the dust into the air: a walking man lifted a thin layer as high as his waist, and a wagon lifted the dust as high as the fence tops, and an automobile boiled a cloud behind it. The dust was long in settling back again.
When June was half gone, the big clouds moved up out of Texas and the Gulf, high heavy clouds, rainheads. The men in the fields looked up at the clouds and sniffed at them and held wet fingers up to sense the wind. And the horses were nervous while the clouds were up. The rainheads dropped a little spattering and hurried on to some other country. Behind them the sky was pale again and the sun flared. In the dust there were drop craters where the rain had fallen, and there were clean splashes on the corn, and that was all.
I just skimmed through this first time I read it. But there's such an ineffable richness to it now. I guess I just got older and mellowed out
I just finished his best book imo, The Winter Of Our Discontent. I think it covers his most important social and psychological issues
So did I but there are a few books I did like, OM&M and Huckleberry Finn rose above the shitty school context
Have you read Grapes of Wrath/East of Eden? Is it really his best? I'm gonna have to check it out
Yes I've read almost everything he's written. I thought it was by far the best.
Based, I'll look for it then. Thanks
Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
Looks like Paul Walker
dios mio...
>Lean, rich
These metaphorical adjectives are opposed. When people use these terms--in relation to food, of course--one means unctuous while the other means without fat. I appreciate the flourish though. Nice try.
>Hemingway as an unreachable perfection
It's because you have the English skills of a fifth grader.
English is my second language, but I have a C1 certificate, so my English is pretty good. I don't read fiction in English all that much.
What author has a style better than Hemingway's in your opinion?