Este ambicioso tomo incluye tres libros y un par de apéndices, del periodo donde el escritor comienza a ganar el reconocimiento del público en general. Mis comentarios para cada libro por separado se pueden ver aquí:
The Long Valley
The Grapes of Wrath
The Log from the Sea of Cortez
The Harvest Gypsies

Read The Grapes of Wrath as a child; the others in this volume, not yet. I love the Library of America volumes because of the author chronologies, the long lasting construction, and the silk place marker.

I’ve never been so struck by the ending of any piece of fiction. I literally gasped. Then I sobbed.

Poetic. Political. Polemical. And dead on.

I re-read many of Steinbeck's books in winter for a conference I had planned on attending. Didn't make it to the conference, but enjoyed the reading. The end image of Grapes of Wrath still leaves me speechless. I especially enjoyed "The Long Valley" this time around.

At one point John Steinbeck was regarded as one of the world's great writers. His reputation carried him all the way to the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

Steinbeck's standing has fallen dramatically in recent decades, and I must say I agree with this reassessment. This volume contains Steinbeck's celebrated novel The Grapes of Wrath; The Log from the Sea of Cortez, a non-fiction account of his expedition to the Sea of Cortez with his friend, biologist Ed Ricketts; and a series of short stories collected under the heading The Long Valley. It closes with The Harvest Gypsies, Steinbeck's polemic about migratory agricultural workers in California's Central Valley.

To my mind The Grapes of Wrath suffers from all the defects of the explicitly political, topical novel. A great novel comes into creation when a writer sets out to tell a story and manages to touch something important, sometimes without even realizing it. The explicitly political novel suffers from the need to touch all those plot points needed to convey the political message. That makes it much more difficult to maintain a coherent line toward something deeper, and the writer often isn't even that interested in doing much beyond making the political point. The result is a novel which may be good, but never rises above the middle-brow. The Grapes of Wrath is perhaps the best example of this phenomenon in American literature.

Steinbeck had a decades-long friendship with biologist Ed Ricketts, who lived on the edges of society by his own choice and made his living selling biological specimans to school and university laboratories. In 1940 Steinbeck joined Ricketts for an expedition to the Sea of Cortez, located between Baja California and mainland Mexico. Ricketts apparently was an indelible character, but the book (published in the early 1950s) comes off more as the story of a road trip for middle-aged men with no great thoughts being expressed. They never went deeper than tidal pools to collect specimans. Scuba gear didn't yet exist, but as a diver myself I have to wonder whether Steinbeck and Ricketts resented their inability to go deeper and see more, or whether they simply accepted it, perhaps without even thinking about what they had missed.

The stories of The Long Valley are an uneven collection. Some seem trite, with unconvincing and unrealistic plot twists. One the other hand, the four stories previously collected as The Red Pony are marvelous. These stories often are thought of as children's or young adult literature because the central character is a boy named Jody who appears to be about 10 years old. However, the stories are filled with incisive details and insights into the characters of Jody, his parents and grandfather, ranch hand Billy Buck, and others who pass through their corner of the central valley. The stories look unflinchingly at the characters' shortcomings and their sometimes snarky and unkind treatment of each other. This steady gaze and Steinbeck's obvious understanding of people like this makes the characters fully rounded and gives the stories some genuine bite. For my money, The Red Pony is the best thing Steinbeck ever wrote.

Without The Red Pony I would give this volume three stars, but since it is included I will bump the rating up to four.

byby

I was born in Oklahoma City and have spent most of my life living in the state of Oklahoma. What can a native Oklahoman have to say that is bad to this classic of world literature? Nothing that is intelligible.

Steinbeck's writing is engaged throughout this tragic tale of the Joads. Though clearly a piece of socialist propaganda it does not hit the reader in the head with what it is in the same way that such pieces as Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" does. By that, I mean it is a really good story.

The Joads leave their Oklahoma farm due to bank forclosure and the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck's characters are three-dimensional. He paints the events and places acurately as the Joads attempt to survive as produce pickers in California.

And there is a character that has to be inspired by another great Oklahoman, the ballad writing protester Woodie Gutherie. I highly recommend this book.

《Steinbeck》short stories in  transport you back to another time and space. Feels so vivid. John Steinbeck has a gift of making breakfast and coffee sound so delicious.
described a very interesting, unconventional, and original character Ed Ricketts (a biologist who interacts with hustlers, pimp, Madam of a whorehouse etc). The log part about the scientific expedition feels a bit boring and dull, although I do like the analogy between animals and human race in places. Evidently, the author is concerned with industrial evolution and its impact on human race, which is also the theme of .
The story of the Indian boy who found a pearl stuck. After throwing away the pearl, ‘He was a free man again with his soul in danger and his food and shelter insecure’. ‘The great drive of our people stems from insecurity’.
Throughout the text, the author mentioned Chinese poet Li Po(诗仙李白）several times due to his love of alcohol. I find this very interesting.

I really enjoyed "The Grapes of Wrath and Other Writings" -- wonderful writer!

Interesting collection.

O carte superba..am calatorit cu familia Joad din Oklahoma pana in California, am fost alaturi de ei prin toate greutatile lor...mi-am facut sperante impreuna cu ei, sperand ca pana la urma vor avea o viata decenta, in casuta lor alba..fara foame , fara grija zilei de maine..dar...Trist...Oare e o coincidenta ca am citit aceasta carte fix in momentele astea cand mii si mii de refugiati vin in Europa? Oare cam asa este si viata lor in zilele astea , cum a fost viata familiei din carte? Cred ca da..
Cartea asta statea in biblioteca mea de cela luni bune, pana cand am pus mana pe ea si nu am mai lasat-o. Mi-am dat seama ca sunt atatea vieti de trait, care stau pe rafturile bibliotecii mele si asteapa sa fie descoperite...

I was excited to read The Grapes of Wrath, as I recently became a Steinbeck fan and this is perhaps his most famous novel. But I was not impressed. He's a little too narcissistic when he gets in his descriptive mode; I like meat, not flowery appetizers. The plot is merely every other chapter - the in-betweeners are pure scenery. The language is pretty crude, too (which I don't mind overlooking if the plot compensates for it), and about half way through the book I realized I was forcing myself to read it. I wasn't excited about it; there was no page-turning, no voracious need to know what happens next.

I appreciated learning more about the American of that time period (and I did learn a lot), but frankly, I'd rather look it up on Wikipedia.