So it starts as you lay there awake, in the quiet hours of night, lulling your head to be hushed of those deafening thoughts, faces, voices, you kept on getting day long, as you con your head into forged drowsiness, and it starts dawning on you, the coiled snake sitting in the corner of your mind tilts its head, clogs every nerve in his coil, deep-seated thought of being all alone in this universe of biological process over process strikes you to the core, universal loneliness houses your whole being, Our uniqueness makes us special, makes perception valuable - but it can also make us lonely. This loneliness is different from being 'alone': You can be lonely even surrounded by people. The feeling I'm talking about stems from the sense that we can never fully share the truth of who we are, we can never talk the next soul of our inner happenings, the loneliness of this kind eats our being and we device heavens, If not in this life, but in the life to come, we don’t want to be this alone, but there are some stories who teach us the inevitability of it, no matter how far we travel in pursue of a dream land, we will always be alone!
“Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head. They’re all the time talkin’ about it, but it’s jus’ in their head.”
What if just in our head it all is, what if we are always been delusional by definition, of people we thought we loved or were loved, of sickness we thought were cured, of people we thought we’d known, of souls we thought had touched, of love we thought had lived, of memories we thought had faded, of faces we thought had gone, or weren’t there at the first place. This is the story of unloved and alone, of George Milton and Lennie Small, the story of two antithetic coming together in bond only death dared disrupt. The story of the dream which dwelt all just in head and inspired them to work from place to place in the wake of depression years in America.
Steinbeck’s characters are suspiciously caricaturesque,as if placed there just for that purpose, with no backdrop stories of their own, no life before the opening scene, a giant-structured low at wits character to be paired with equally short-statured but quick-wit George who protects Lennie from the harms of his world, they dreamt of rabbits and a farm where there won’t be having any masters, a land of their own, in the times of impossibilities and hunger extreme, universality of their dream takes the reader in awe of ingeniousness of the writer, nihilistic viewpoint of life being a journey from zero to zero is too much loud in undertones of his prose, the dream of a land of their own was a driving force to keep their heads up the consuming loneliness which seems to be ever prevalent in the air that all characters breathe in.
“There is a terrible emptiness in me, an indifference that hurts” said Camus in his last manuscript, this emptiness echoed through this sad tale of shocking ending, the ending we were given the hints of from the very start, the ending we kept denying to accept till the very end...

The best laid plans of men and mice often go awry.

Such a short book, only 112 pages, but its powerful.

Not an awful lot happens, the pace is slow, your strolling. Your meet George, Lennie, spend two days together and finish where you started but I'm sure you wont feel the same.

I didnt expect much from this novella, total credit to Steinback, he has created a lot in very few words. In fact I've read much longer books that will prove to be less memorable.

This is a definite cigarettes and whiskey kind of book and well worth reading.

written by a man

چه فضای دل‌نشین و قابل تصوری داشت!
از رمان‌هایی که خوندنش خیلی لذت‌بخشه و توی ذهن آدم می‌مونه.
ماجرای دوتا دوسته، یکی معمولی و یک کمی کندذهن و بزرگ‌قامت و قوی. که اینا می‌رن یه مزرعه‌ای کار کنن و و حالا ماجراهایی پیش میاد.

رمان قوی‌ای هم بود. مثلا اتفاق‌هایی می‌افتاد و می‌تونستی اون اتفاق رو تمثیلی برای اتفاق اصلی کتاب در نظر بگیری. ینی می‌فهمیدی که همه چیزش چفت و بست خوبی داره.
حین خوندنش با خودم گفتم چقدر شبیه نمایشنامه هم هست. انگار می‌تونه یک نمایش بشه. ولی وقتی کتاب تموم شد مقدمه رو که خوندم دیدم اصن قضیه همینه. اشتاین‌بک می‌خواسته تست کنه ببینه می‌شه رمانی رو طوری نوشت که بشه نمایش‌نامه‌ش کرد؟

توصیفات خیلی زیبایی داشت و گذر زمان هر صحنه رو خیلی زیبا با گذر آفتاب مشخص کرده بود. شخصیت‌ها جذاب بودن و ماجرا جذاب پیش می‌رفت و در کل یه بسته‌ی جذاب و خوندنی بود!
به همه پیشنهاد مي‌کنم!
گول اسم قدیمی‌شو نخورین. اصلا حوصله‌سر بر نبود.

ــــــــ

مرور مفصل‌تری بر این کتاب در سایت آوانگارد نوشته‌ام که در اینجا قابل مشاهده است!

اینجا

How does one rate a Holy Tome of English Lit, when one found the reading experience to be extraordinarily average. . . nay, even sub-par?

I suppose the real question is, am I, like some people, a vote whore who will slap the Big Uno on it, and then index all the book's inadequecies, ignoring all the things the author did well? This will probably gain my review the most interest.

Or shall I, like a dignified book reviewer, give it a Trio, and calmly explain both its flaws and its high points?

Uno it is.

Here's why I thought Of Mice and Men sucked balls:

1. WHAT'S UP with the main character who has no personality other than being large and, like the lame interpretation of Frankenstein from the 30's movie, friendly-yet-stupid and unaware-of-his-own-strength? Super-lame.

2. WHAT'S UP with the other main character who seems to like nothing more than shitting on the big dude's self-esteem, and pointing out how much his own life sucks because of his friendship with said stupid friend? He's not an orgasmically charming fellow himself. In fact, he's Eeyore.

3. WHAT'S UP with the most interesting character being in one fraggin' chapter? I found the black character fascinating, and in this one scene he established himself as more intriguing than anyone else in the whole flippin' book. Then? We never hear from him again.

4. YET AGAIN, Steinbeck makes the main female character a sultry temptress. The way he makes all women into sultry temptresses, you'd think he had a Bible fetish or something. She's the least sympathetic character in a book full of characters I didn't sympathize with.

5. I'm now bored with the numbering system, and shall stop doing it.

Two Steinbeck novels have I loved: East of Eden is one of my very favorite books, and The Grapes of Wrath is also terrific. But this reads like a mediocre Tennessee Williams play, and I frikkin' HATE that guy. Why? It isn't just because of weak characters in this book. It's also because the whole premise of this book sucks, and the ending sucks even more than the premise. It's a snowball of suckiness, culminating in a bang that left me confused, yet simultaneously indifferent.

Perhaps it's because similar plotlines have been littered around the modern age like horse shit at a circus, but DID ANYBODY NOT know EXACTLY WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN from page 10 on? Anyone? Beuller?

Get it? Like. . . movie reference? Nevermind.

Anyway, this sucked. There's no Wishbone episode of this'un, and it's because a Wishbone episode of this would've made kids commit suicide. It's depressing, yet depressingly lame as well.

And there wasn't one damn mouse in the whole book. That's false advertising.

A powerful exploration of loneliness and helplessness!

The tension and pathos in John Steinbeck's "playable novel", OF MICE AND MEN is palpable. It tells the story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two itinerant field workers in 1930s depression era California. Milton, a cynical, intelligent man, by a combination of habit, intent, solicitude, friendship, love and, one might even say, bad luck, has allowed himself to become the surrogate father or brother for his companion traveler, Lennie Small. Small, (undoubtedly a name chosen by Steinbeck for its irony) is a retarded adult with the social skills and gracelessness of a young child, trapped in the body of an enormous and physically powerful man.

Forced to run away from their last job when Small was wrongfully accused of rape, Milton and Small have now found a quiet farm and a crew with which they hope they work long enough to accumulate a stake. They want to buy a small piece of property that they can farm for themselves. Lennie's sole childlike dream for retirement is to live with his friend George and "tend rabbits". But, once again, Small's complete lack of adult social skills and the failure to understand the magnitude of his own strength undermine their dreams when Curley, the owner's mean-spirited and small-minded son draw Small into a fight and his lonely wife uses her attractiveness and feminine wiles to draw him into a conversation that ends in tragedy.

OF MICE AND MEN is a short novella. At only 118 pages, it can be digested in only two to three hours. Written as a "playable novel", the story is told almost exclusively in dialogue with the intent that it would translate easily into a three act play. Such small bits of narrative and exposition as exist in the story actually serve more by way of stage directions and hints as to the scenery backdrop that might be used in the live stage production that Steinbeck envisaged when he wrote it.

But for all its simplicity and brevity, the power and pathos of the themes of helplessness and loneliness embodied in Steinbeck's story is not to be denied. As with so many other classic novels that I've finally had the good sense to read over the last two years, I feel like I've not only come late to the party but all of the other party-goers have already come and gone. Well, I'm sure I wasn't the only one but if you're one of the few people who read and enjoy classic literature in the English language, OF MICE AND MEN deserves a place on your must-read list.

Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss

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 four-paned 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 leather-working 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 been 6-7 years 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.

I've been on a Steinbeck kick again, reading and rereading his books, marveling, as usual, at his brilliance and freakish ability to create an entire story with such sparse prose.

I decided to reread Of Mice and Men after not having read it in at least two decades, and I wanted to approach it from a mechanical perspective; study his style, rather than get pulled into the overpopularized story.

Yeah, right. As if you can resist the force of being pulled into one of John's stories. Even the Tin Man would crack at this tale. I WAS knocked out by the mechanics of the story, but I was also crying by page 45, when one sad scene foreshadows the coming of the bigger sad scene.

It is a mesmerizing short novel, crafted by a literary genius, and if you're reading this review as a newcomer to this story. . . wow. . . it gives me goosebumps to think of your fresh perspective.

Devotion
Before finishing the first page you realise you’re reading an authentic poetic piece of literature. As with other John Steinbeck works, his recognition and homage to hard economic times in America, and the transient drifting workforce is so vividly portrayed.

Lennie and George are two immortal characters that live well beyond the pages of this book. It is a heartbreaking story of loyalty and love, of friendship and society, and of hope and despondency. Lennie is the main discussion point in the book and it is such a sad story about the impact of a serious personality disorder, and how it can have devastating consequences to the person living with it and those around them. I did, however, think a lot about George and how he had enabled the friendship to grow and how he tried to provide a protective shield around Lennie. He was constantly reciting statements with Lennie that he may need if ever challenged or actions to follow if confronted. They dreamed and chatted constantly about the smallholding they had been saving for. They would have different crops and animals (particularly rabbits for Lennie) and be masters of their own domain. Life can be cruel when hope and aspirations can be dashed with an unforeseen event and twist of fate.

The story does have a sexist feel to it in the sense that the woman (not given a name in the story) was the downfall of Lennie and was only ever referred to as Curley’s wife. There is an inference that she was Curley’s possession and perhaps her behaviour was to illustrate she did not want to be the possession of anyone but wanted the freedom to be with as many as she liked.

After the incident, George showed sincere and deep love for Lennie in resolving the issue in a way which was best for Lennie while leaving himself with remorse, guilt and loss. Not to mention the trouble he would have been in if the authorities found out what he had done.

Why oh why did it take me so long to read this book – don’t make the same mistake. I highly recommend reading this moving and literate masterpiece.

A small warning first folks!
Do you know?
Your skin is the largest stuff in your body, if you spread it flat, it can cover two meters on your most expensive marble floor. No matter even if it is Lux TOUCH!
And what do you think about the TOUCH? A ten or twenty seconds gentle stroking or even a small rub anywhere on this two-meter wide hull of your living ship can trigger Oxytocin (a social bonding hormone).
But too much secretion of it may scupper the ship. So be careful!

Now the book ….What a crazy book! A build-out for me ….. And a heart-rending too!

I remember the mention of the Salinas River in the East of Eden. When I opened this book, its mention appeared at once again on the very first line,

n  “A few miles south of the Soledad, The Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank……” n

This river seems to be of high substance in the life of the author. Rivers infuse into you a sense of spread and proliferation, and in my case dread too. When I saw a river the first time from very near, I was weeping, my parents said. I don’t remember, I would have been as small as a 15 kg cement bag, clung to the shoulder of my mum then perhaps! I might have become skeptical about the dubious intention of its approaching billow towards me, but when I grew up and saw the sea first time, I felt the opposite; I wanted to hug it 'in whole'. I felt no fear. The dread was gone.

Gentlemen! Note that by the time I first saw the blue vast sea in front of my eyes, I had neither read the “old man and the sea” nor the John Steinbeck mention of any Salinas river. But now I perceive that sea and rivers are great natural infusing agents that prompt a sense of penmanship even in a common mortal. Forget about the geniuses like Steinbeck or Hemingway!

As I imagined, two lads, George and Lennie, appearing from the brush, through the undergrowth on the first few pages, talking blamelessly in a very engaging manner in their typical dialect, on the bank of a river, lighting their fire pile from dry leaves, warming their cans of beans in the flame cracking up from those twigs, I at once felt the river has yet again achieved its purpose, a tale is born!t

John Steinbeck, whose miraculous narration I had come across with, the first time in his multi-generational saga East of Eden. That time I was pressed to the core…Utterly impressed. Here in this book, he took me this time from the bank of the river to the nomad sort of lives, settling and unsettling into the vast ranches near California, those barley barns, where I found these young fellas, on their respective bunks in a bunkhouse. Someone lay still in the bed, the others playing solitaire flouncing the cards, another pushing his gun under the bunk after cleaning it, and a lazy one sleeping facing the wall drawing up his knees to his chest.

n  “Guys like us that work on ranches are the loneliest guys in the world they got no family they don't belong no place. They come to a ranch and work up stake and they go into town and blow their stake”n

Their way of talking was naïve, that dialect. Those unprocessed sentences coming out of their mouth. Just awesome!

n  “He ain’t bright, hell of a good worker, though, hell of a nice fella, but he ain't bright”n

And their boss or manager talking to new recruited boys, hoping to make a sound team of workers,

n  “I gotta pair of punks on my team that don’t know a barley bag from a blue ball. You guys ever bucked any barley?”n

And those funny conversations, the swamper talking about the previous occupant of the bed,

n  "Last guy that had this bed was a blacksmith- hell of a nice fella and clean a guy as you want to meet…Used to wash his hands even after he ate.” n

Those who have read this book, don't you think guys the book is about TOUCH, The psychology of TOUCH. Those TOUCH of the mouse inside the pocket of that strong-fat-innocent fellow, Lennie, who keeps tapping its fleecy dead body in the beginning. And George throwing it away, infuriated towards his mate, saying dead mouse is of no use!

“George:-" What you want of dead mouse anyways?”
Lennie:- “ I could patted with my thumb while we walked.”

This fellow Lennie wants to TOUCH whatever is soft and whatever he likes. That's a leaning of his feeble mind. And don’t forget those repeating conversations about alfalfa, about rabbits, about puppies throughout the story. Aren’t they all fleecy fluffy kinds of stuff? Don’t you think whatever turn the story took in the last, was just because of TOUCH?

And who think the title of this book is misplaced, they did not get it right. Perhaps!
Did you not see the “OF” just before Mice and Men. Put “TOUCH” even before “OF” in the title and you may know what the book is about. Run-of-the-mill advice from me!

Were both the protagonists of this book, the sick fellows?
Or the only fellow who was sick was Lennie?
Or was the real sick George?
Was this book about mental sickness or about nomadic life?

No. I think this book was about TOUCH and about MICE… And of course about MEN too!

And while I finished this book, with much unexpected and heartbreaking end, which left me pondering over the situation for quite a long, I felt too much pity for the poor guy, who had too much faith in his mate. I felt after the completion of this novella as if I was coming out of a dense wood after getting lost for some time. And then flashed in my mind, some lines of W.B. Yeats, I read recently.

“The woods of Arcady are dead,
And over is there antique joy
Of old the world on dreaming fed
Grey truth is now her painted toy
Yet still she turns her restless head
But O, sick children of the world
Of all the many changing things
In dreary dancing past us whirled”

This book moved me to some other dimension, I am telling you guys!

موش‌ها و آدم‌ها برای من جز همون مجموعه کتابایی بود که باید یواشکی و دزدکانه از توی کتاب‌فروشی برمی‌داشتمش و سریع حساب می‌کردم و می‌پریدم بیرون! چرا؟! چون اضطراب سنگینی نگاه دوستان و مردم که با خودشون بگن: «عه! دیگه این که همه خوووووندن!!» اذیت کنندست.
بهرحال، خیلی خیلی حالم خوب میشه وقتی مترجم مقدمه رو می‌بره آخر داستان و با خیال راحت به خواننده اجازه می‌ده بدون مقدمه چینی بره شخصیت‌ها و داستان کتاب رو لمس کنه و در نهایت نظر خودش و محتوای کتاب رو بهمون می‌گه.

شخصیت لنی خیلی دوست داشتنیه البته قطع به یقین فقط در رمان!!! ، چرا که اگر در زندگی واقعی همچین کسی از اطرافیانم وجود داشت دلم می‌خواست هر روز بمیرم و رنج کشیدنش رو نبینم!


پایان: پانزدهم شهریور ماه سال ۱۴۰۲

«Άνθρωποι και ποντίκια,
Τι κι αν σχέδια καταστρώνουν.
Ως και τα πιο καλά, συχνά στραβώνουν»
Ρόμπερτ Μπερνς.

«Άνθρωποι και ποντίκια»,
ένα ολιγοσέλιδο, μεγάλο αφιέρωμα στην λογοτεχνία.
Ανάγνωσμα που Δεν αφήνει κανένα αναγνωστικό απορριπτικό δικαίωμα.

Λεπτομερής, περίπλοκη, αξέχαστη ιστορία,
γραμμένη απο την αμόλυντη πένα του Στάινμπεκ.

Η επαρχία της Αμερικής του 1930 που θέλει να ζήσει,
να επιζήσει, να συνεχίσει να υπάρχει,
έστω και μέσα στην μεγάλη κατάθλιψη της εποχής
και την προκλητική αναδόμηση της κοινωνίας.

Τα πλάσματα της στερημένης ελπίδας χάνονται απολαυστικά μέσα σε μεθυστικά όνειρα κατασκευασμένα απο παραπλανητικές χίμαιρες και ατομικές ουτοπίες.

Πως αλλιώς να το χαρακτηρίσω εκτός απο ένα απλό, λιτό, απέριττο αριστούργημα.

Κάθε πρόταση, κάθε χαρακτήρας, κάθε λυρική περιγραφή της φύσης, δημιουργεί ένα πεζογράφημα λαϊκής ποίησης, ελεγείας, θεατρικής πιστότητας
και αρχαίας τραγωδίας με εξελιγμένες μεθόδους
ύβρις, άτις, νέμεσις και τίσις.

Οι διάλογοι μεταξύ των ηρώων,οι εκφράσεις τους, οι προτάσεις που συντακτικά και χρηστικά δομημένα περιχύνουν με απλούστευση κάθε έννοια, κρύβουν βαθύτερη, βαθύτατη σημασία.

Αμερικάνικο όνειρο, ρατσισμός, σεξισμός, προκαταλήψεις, αμάθεια, αναπηρικές επάρκειες,
υλικές ανεπάρκειες, αδίστακτες αδικίες,
ένδεια κάθε είδους
και πλασματικές διεκδικήσεις με μη αναστρέψιμες αποτυχίες.

Ένα αγρόκτημα στην Καλιφόρνια φιλοξενεί όλα τα είδη της ανθρώπινης φυλής, εχθρικά συμφιλιωμένα τόσο μεταξύ τους όσο και απέναντι στο φυτικό και ζωικό βασίλειο.

Όταν δεν ονειρεύονται απολυτρωτικές διεξόδους, προκαλούν μια μόνιμη κατάρα αφοσίωσης, ευπάθειας, κριμάτων, θλίψης, οργής, κατωτερότητας, απομόνωσης και αθώων, αγνών εγκλημάτων.