Steinbeck, the magnificent…

 

(image from fullposter.com) 

John Steinbeck is one of my all time favorite writers.  I’ve just re-entered “Tortilla Flat” and so get to be in his world for a spell.  It’s a world I know because the whole bulk of my life has been spent along the same kind of coastline.  I just finished the part where his character Pilon tried to trick the Pirate out of his treasure.

You cannot help but laugh at the sweet human humaneness of the thing.  His “boys” — the paisanos, and what they each mean to each other.  One thing I love is the writer’s earnest heart, and the simplicity!  It’s a beautiful thing to witness on the page.  I think I’ll go back and read “Cannery Row” next, just to stay in his realm a little longer.

“In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.”

That’s something Steinbeck said above.  If that isn’t the best statement I’ve heard about writers I don’t know what is, at least I can’t think of one now.  As a child I was always escaping into books.  I’d find them at the library by walking up and down the stacks.  That’s how I found him.  I think I read his “Grapes of Wrath” first.

Guess what?  He started a sentence with “And…” sometimes I do that too, and I wonder if it came from reading him so long ago in my early childhood.  Maybe.  It’s a rebellious kind of thing to do, isn’t it?  Starting a sentence like that, and it was right there in “Tortilla Flat.”  I loved seeing it.

My guess is that Steinbeck’s angel is watching over those striking writers right now.  And those paisanos are going to stick together because that is what writers are made of.  The greatest damn stuff in the world.