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About Me
17 comments:
This post got Chirpa Chirpa Cheep Cheep stuck in my head! No!
miller
Oh man, I know how ugly of a mood sudden car problems can put you in. Good luck!
600 bucks, axle problem not a clutch problem. i view that as a plane ticket that isn't going to get bought and it's bumming my trip. i'll post tomorrow. talk amongst yourselves. i wish someone would explain their love of the grapes of wrath to me. if i see one more character say "somepin" or "acrost" or "oncet" or "twicet" i'm going to fry that book up in a pan of lard and use it to feed my fambly.
Lard? Boy, you must have been rich! We had to use margarine.
Grapes of Wrath is one of my all time favorite books. Perhaps that's your trouble with it.
You spent some time in Lincoln. I'm surprised you don't pick up the "acrost" and "warsh my car" dialect from the Okies that moved out there in the '30s.
Pretend it's a story about furless shrews. No wait, not shrews. What sort of hairless varmint do you/did you work on? I'm trying hard not to say "furless beaver" but I think it just slipped out.
we was aponderin' about messin' with naked mole rats but decided agin' it. on accounta they'se all messed up like. and they'se gots no fur liken to clothe tha fambly and ta hep us get acrost. we gots to get acrost.
now i see why steinbeck did it. it's powerful fun.
I just read Grapes of Wrath for the first time two years ago. I have to admit that it took me a while to get into it. Once I did though, whoohee. It really did blow my mind. Then I read and re-read three more Steinbeck books. East of Eden was purty good too.
Let us know when you are done so that we may discuss further.
Miss B
Despite my usual reading of non-fiction I read grapes of Wrath last year and it just slayed me. I loved it. I had tried to read it when I lived in the northwest and didn't get into it but once I moved to the valley I just loved it.
As far as the writing in dialect, what about it bothers you? I have read some things where it distracted me but this wasn't one of those cases.
-natalie
Ouch! a jab at a Lincoln. I wasn't going to go down that road, but someone beat me to it. 'cause I fixin' to recollekt sum o th' townfolk might mebee be kin th' Okie thats jallopied on it back on then a spell.
Yeah, the book's got some dialect (but not like Irvine Walsh or Roddy Doyle; lord).
It can take a while to get into "Wrath" and the things that made it such a contemporary sensation back in 1939-40 aren't really easy to see, I suppose.
It's not so much the dialect it's the relentless sentimentality I can't stand. The story itself is a real page turner (as I said I'm already two-thirds in and can't stop). I want to see what happens to the Joads, I just can't stand Steinbeck hammering me over the head with theme of Okies with hearts of gold (salt of the earth, etc.). I get it already, they're great and businessmen are bad. It's sort of like the noble savage thing. By making Native Americans purely good in any movie or book or whatever, you render them two-dimensional rather than showing them as real people with a mix of good and bad. It's not any closer to the truth than showing them as bloodthirsty killers. Does that make sense? I'm not saying the book's terrible I just want to hear why people love it so much. I was with it at the beginning but now it's driving me nuts.
That was me with that nonwitty entry right before yours dissing on Lincoln right after I said I wouldn't (I hate it when I accidently post anonymously; it makes me look like a pajamahudeen wacko -- when I'm SO not).
Yeah, the Depression-era thing of deifying the downtrodden and demonizing the upper classes was sort of literary red meat in that period, and it can seem trite now. I read "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" a few years ago, from the same era, and it's magnificent, but it grinds to a screeching halt at times with the occasional Marxist-type polemic. And I'm like the biggest lefty in the world; it's just that when reading that in the 21st century it seems like an overstated point, and with Steinbeck or Carson McCullers, made blunty without any flair or irony. But when you put it all in the context of the times (quarter of the nation out of work, Okies being shot at, banks literally starving people to death, evil despots rising to power in Europe), you can see how writers were gettin' riled up to rant, with good reason. They felt an obligation, I suppose.
You skipping over every other chapter that explains The Machine?
Maybe I like it since my fambly moved out to California for work in 1960. I didn't realize I wasn't from Kentucky for years since that what was always talked about.
It ends just like Star Wars. The Death Star (aka Model T) explodes, but not really. And you find out the hero has been wanting to hump his sister the entire time.
Don't worry, someone will right the new Grapes of Wrath in a few years as the US continues its downward spiral.
That should've been "write" not "right" and are you in for a CV joint replacement? You could do that one yourself, you know.
Beckler:
I completely agree with you as to Steinbeck's lack of restraint. Thinking of it as a political text with a story rather than as a novel helped me deal with those issues, but in terms of artistic merit I've always found the soapboxing to be trite and boring. Grapes of Wrath (like the Jungle and the Octopus) is a great political novel, but I tend to think it's not a particularly great novel, or perhaps (to a lesser extent), the politics derails the art.
Now Cannery Row--THAT'S a great novel.
CK
it's not my favorite Steinbeck, but the story is essentially my grandfathers'.
and even after having heard his a hundred times, i still love it.
that is the most useless and self centered literary analysis ever. but, that's why i love it anyways.
There ARE charcters in GOW that are somewhat 'grey'...what about the drunkard and the deadbeat dad? I don't get PG's point...also, saying Flannery O'Connor lacks style is a very odd observation.
- Patrone
smitty-thanks for ruining the ending. And yes, I just paid 600 bucks for two CV joint replacements, or something, it's not really clear to me.
You guys are helping me out by reminding me of the extreme times. I know that, but the term okie has become such a harmless joke that I should remember that it really was that bad. The supposedly grey characters aren't really grey, though. They still have hearts of gold. Actually, the deadbeat dad is pretty much a naive jerk, that's true. And Rosasharn is pretty immature and selfish. She bugs the crap out of me. Now I'm just thinking out loud. But you guys have given me food for thought and I'm going to keep reading. They're in the government camp in the part I'm reading right now and I guess it bugs me how smug Steinbeck seems about how well this communistic system works (damn commie). And then he's rapsodizing over the toilets and clean bathrooms, but aren't those things products of the industrial revolution that he's been railing against the whole book?
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