I am giving Cannery Row 3 starts. Here are some thoughts that I posted on my blog: https://gregshistoryblog.blogspot.com...

Moon Is Down:-



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Cannary Row:-


About the down and out and small fry and the manual labour workers and so forth, and their lives -

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The Pearl:-


One of the shortest and yet one of the best of this writer, which is saying a lot. How a poor person who is given a hand by fortune is not allowed to have it by social hounds, until he comes to a decision about what is best for his family.

Gets to heart.
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East of Eden:-


John Steinbeck is not only one of the most famous writers, and generally also a very respected one, but more than anything he transcends often from good writer to a great one. This is one of the works that is evidence of his quality that is at once magical and great both.

East Of Eden rises above the mundane and the unusual, the common and the evil, the different characters that it describes, by the good and the superlative, the aspiring human spirit and the calm, comprehending one; the courage of one and the silent tragedy of another.

It is not just the mirroring of Adam and Charles with slightly skewed images in Aaron and Caleb, and the questionable source of the money fo Adam's father mirrored in the beyond question source of Cathy's - it is the whole lot of people.

Especially Samuel and his whole clan, on one hand, with Adam's chinese housekeeper and cook on the other with his elders who went through years of learning to ponder on a question that had nothing to do with their ancestral culture. And found the answer, too!

It is Olive, with her stoic encouragement of a pilot she thought was in trouble; her sister who spread delight and peace and joy like a delicate but definite perfume in hearts and lives and brought smiles of expectation to those that expected to meet her, and herself died selently of a heartbreak. Another one who married an inventor, who went on trying, at the expense of making money - in fact spending all he had for his experiments.

Samuel's horse who had a grand name because he had nothing else. His wife who cared for her large family with the very little that their land could provide, and did not worry, only worked and provided and organised. Samuel who knew that Adam's Chinese housekeeper was more literate and erudite than his pretense to the contrary for sake of conforming to the local social prejudice, in order to blend into the background.

So many charcters unforgettable - and so many lessons implicit and otherwise.

Of course, one may complain Steinbeck went with the more socially acceptable norm, in depicting evil in the accepted form in prevalent cultural prejudicial terms of Christian and Islamic heritage, by personifying it as a female - while evil rages far more often and far more visibly out there in garb of male gender. Think nazis, think Stalin, think kkk, think paedophiles and other abusers.

But one cannot expect everything from everyone, and if Steinbeck did not rise above all of his upbringing limitations, he was only human.
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Oddly, Cannery Row is my favorite Jack London story. It's extremely sentimental, and apparently a tribute to a friend of his from Monterey. I still need to finish East of Eden.

reading Cannery Row.

Doc, Mack & the boys, Lee Chong, Dora. Great parties--outrageous frog hunt and consequences LOL[return]Brilliant; the writing first struck me as the essence of masculinity--not in the flamboyant Hollywood way, but in the rock solid knowledge that this is a man in whose hands you can relax. It was an odd reaction given the subject matter, but it was my first Steinbeck at the time and the feeling was palpable.[return][return]These people are so real, I'd know them on the street.

Read The Pearl & East of Eden. Both 3 stars.

Read the Moon Is Down

classic literature,fiction,epic literature,family,historical fiction,cain and abel,California,brothers,favorite

I came to this mainly for "East of Eden," but also read "The Moon is Down" and "Cannery Row." I'm glad I read multiple stories, because it shows how skilled Steinbeck is in various genres and different kinds of stories. He's no one-trick pony. "East of Eden" is magnificent. A long, sometimes arduous story, but a good story nonetheless. Steinbeck really has a knack for developing characters in a way that makes you love them or hate them. He is so good at describing both nature and psychology. Glad I read these.

Reading "Travels With Charlie encouraged me to spend time with an old friend. I had never read Cannery Row, and not surprisingly it was much better than the movie. The Pearl had been recommended to me years ago by Jonatan Powers and it certainly was the best short story I have ever read.

Nice grouping of Steinbeck novels.

Only needed to read East of Eden. I will also read Cannery row.
My favorite American Lit author. Just loved this story.