It’s a f%$%$#$ Steinbeck. Just read it.
After a recent trip to Monterrey I thought it appropriate to revisit a long lost friend. John Steinbeck. An American treasure for those of you don’t don’t know. Author, winner of the Nobel Prize, explorer and man who has a center in his honor(Salinas, CA). Tortilla Flat is not my favorite Steinbeck book, but it’s still worthy of your time. My favorite, “The Pearl” comes in just above “The Grapes of Wrath,” which is used to torture American school children sometime during their formative years. I hated the book in school, as did everyone I know, but as an adult it’s a remarkable read. Tortilla Flat, like The Pearl, is a very short book. 174-pages. It’s like a precision, literary tool that slices into your heart because it reveals what you already know, and sometimes fear, about the human animal. Any schlub can write a 1200-page wooly beast, but only the master can tell the whole story, and nothing but the story, in 174-pages. Read it.
Comments 2
There is no finer writer than Steinbeck who can capture in word the most noble, and notorious, character in us all. Tortilla Flat is another fine antidote for the modern world.
Chris,
I like this Sea of Cortez journal as well.