Man-Against-Nature-Stories: Must they be a Zero-Sum Game?

I had the occasion to reread Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (which won the bard of Key West, FL, and Havana, Cuba, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954). At first appearances, The Old Man and the Sea is a zero-sum game where an old, poor fisherman who’s had a string of bad luck for some 80+ days, hooks an incredibly large fish and tries to land it. Inevitably, he does win his battle with the fish. He hauls it in (after the fish tows him far out to sea) but finds his catch is too large; it would probably swamp his tiny skiff if he tried to bring it onboard, so he lashes it to the side of his skiff and begins rowing back to his home port. It’s a long way and at a certain point, he rigs a sail, but returning to port takes a long time.

The story from beginning to end is one of suffering; the book is told with extremely simple language which makes the suffering more painful. The man suffers from bad luck and a lack of food. When his 80+ days of bad luck finally relents and he lands the large fish, his days of suffering at first seem to be at an end but then the sharks, attracted by his fish’s blood, close in and one-by-one eat the old fisherman’s enormous catch, so that by the time he returns to his home harbor, the sharks have stolen everything worth eating—only bones are now lashed to the side of the old man’s skiff. Perhaps the story is making the point that life can be a zero-sum game with a twist. Life itself can cause us to believe we’re winning at points, but perhaps by the end, life takes away our winnings. Our power, our wealth and our health diminish. Perhaps in the end, like the old man, as we head for the grave, we’re left with nothing but bones. It’s the old man’s many-days-long struggle and his memories of how he suffered and survived that he has to live on now. Not much sustenance there.

Why am I discussing man-against nature stories? It should come as no surprise to you that a similar-yet-very different story appears in my novel, Charging the Jaguar. (By the way, this story I’m about to tell you is not the main narrative of my novel. In fact it’s a side-light story but because it appears early in my novel readers might assume it’s the central story. It’s not.)

As our story opens it’s 1967, and a FARC lieutenant whose first name is Porfirio is sent on an overnight “Provisioning Mission” by his commanding officer to “liberate” livestock because the FARC camp is about to run out of food. The FARC is a revolutionary army in Colombia. Porfirio has been a screw-up practically his entire life, but in these early-morning hours while on this mission (after rustling 2 mature goat males and 12 egg-laying hens) he decides his screw-up way of life is over; from now on he will refuse to let his screw-ups stand; he swears he will immediately correct each screw-up the instant it happens, or “die trying.” He’s had it with living the life of a screw-up. He wants something better.

That’s when, during a rain storm, a lightning strike sets a tree on fire, which, in turn, stresses the livestock, causing the 12 hens to scatter, and the two goats to climb two adjacent trees.

Porfirio knows if he doesn’t return to his FARC camp by sunrise with his livestock he’ll be in danger of being assassinated by his commanding officer for incompetence—for continuing to be a total screw-up. (When most of the story happens it’s nearly 4:00 a.m. Sunrise is around 6:00 a.m.)

In this case, technology has no role in the solution Porfirio works out. Sure, he knows he could easily shoot the goats out of the trees, but he also knows that in this case he’d only be creating another screw-up for himself. He has no way of transporting the carcasses back to camp, so they would simply rot where they fell.

Porfirio decides to climb one of the same trees that his two goats climbed and “somehow convince” the goat (that’s perched on “the 63rd branch up”) to return to earth. How? Well, you’ll have to read the story. No spoilers here. I will tell you one thing though; magic has nothing to do with it. As one of my characters say, “There is no magic; that’s romantic clap-trap, and you know it.”

Hey, if you’ve ever had occasion to climb a tree and emotionally relate to a goat that’s perched on one of the branches—if you’ve ever had to use all your persuasive skills to convince a recalcitrant goat to descend a tree and return to earth, you’ll appreciate Porfirio’s challenge, and what he does to ensure he goes on living one additional day.

What Myth Do You Live By? Could You Turn Your Myth into a Best-Selling Novel?

The great humanitarian and mythologist, Joseph Campbell, challenged each one of us to ask ourselves, "What did you do as a child that created timelessness, that made you forget time? Therein lies the myth to live by."

As a child, I created an aqueous medium for myself that allowed me to swim in "timelessness." The chlorine water within my imagined swimming pool? I fantasized I was on a great adventure. It's not surprising to me now the novel I'm currently writing, Charging the Jaguar, is intended to deliver on my requirements of a great adventure.

The novel fits into a hyphenated genre called "literary-adventure." By doing a  Google search on that term I came up with some wonderful novels to read. Starting in next month's EWA, I'll be commenting on a truly great novel that was on that "literary-adventure" list, Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country.

Here's an interesting and relevant sidelight: Peter Mattiessen was a CIA agent in post-WWII Europe, specifically in Paris. During that time he founded a very famous literary magazine called The Paris Review. It turns out Mattiessen's position as editor of The Paris Review was his "cover story" as a CIA agent, his excuse, if you will, for spending so much time in Europe, especially in Paris, yet at the same time giving him free rein to move around at well. I'm telling you all this because it turns out my novel has something to do with the CIA and with "cover stories."

Charging the Jaguar takes place in Colombia in the year 1967. Because that's more than 50 years ago, it's technically considered "historic fiction." Yet the story, as the novel unfolds—as you will see when you read it—is written in present tense, something that adds value to its immediacy, I believe.

One of my principle protagonists is an American, a Peace Corps Volunteer from Secaucus, New Jersey, named Jake Lancer, a recent graduate of Rutgers Newark, who has been living in a remote northern Colombian pueblo—called Manaure—for only three months as our story opens.

Another is a Colombian, FARC Lieutenant Porfirio Ayuduarte-Robles. Porfirio is a revolutionary soldier who is attached to a FARC base deep in the jungle that's about a five-hour walk from Manaure).

Porfirio, an alcoholic since he was 14, has a reputation for being a perpetual fuck-up; he wants to quit drinking to save his life—not only so he won't die of alcohol poisoning or xerosis of the liver; but also so he won't be "Sent home to his Mamma" by his commanding officer, Colonel Pablo Velasquez-Gomez. That "sent home" phrase is FARC-code for being assassinated by the Colonel holding a handgun at point-blank range up to the side of his victim's head.

Colonel Velasquez has received word that an American living in the pueblo of Manaure has been acting suspiciously. He's been traveling around to different pueblos in the area collecting infrastructure information from the mayors of those villages. This gringo may have a legitimate reason for his activities, or he may be an undercover CIA agent.

Colonel Velasquez orders Porfirio to go undercover—using his code-name, "Jesus" and his "cover story" of being a local businessman—to find this gringo in his village of Manaure, and, in short order, become "best buddies" with him. Pablo sets up Porfirio to be Jake's judge and jury: If, after spending some time with him, Porfirio decides the American is an undercover CIA agent Pablo tells him he has his commanding officer's permission in advance to assassinate him. If Porfirio decides he's legit, he tells Porfirio to make up an excuse ("a business meeting has come up"), and return to the FARC camp and report to Pablo.

It just so happens that on the very same day Pablo sends Porfirio on that five-hour cross-country hike to Manaure, Jake has arranged for his Regional Supervisor, Steven Lee Hawks, to also come to his rent-house in Manaure and give him an appraisal of how he has been doing as a rookie Peace Corps Volunteer. Jake is fearful Steven Lee (who hails from Van Horn, Texas, by the way) might send him home because he's such a poor Spanish speaker.

That's what's known as "the set-up" of my story.

It goes without saying, the undercover FARC soldier, Porfirio, meets Jake. They become friends. Porfirio also meets Jake's regional supervisor, Steven Lee Hawks. Some might expect a comedy of errors. I see far more poignant possibilities for this "set-up." You'll have to read it to start to pick up on all the mixed and missed signals between the characters. (While my writing may be comic in nature, it's not comedy.)

(By the way Charging the Jaguar is a reference to Jake Lancer's character trait of impulsivity. If Jake were ever charged by a Jaguar, which is highly unlikely, he probably would not think to run away; instead, he might charge the Jaguar. No, my book title not a reference to charging the battery of an automobile that goes by the same name.)

Here are some background elements of my novel that have, at least in my opinion, the power to sweep me along on a great adventure. These are the "pre-conditions of story," if you will, that I crave:

 

--Powerful forces are at play. World governments are acting on a global stage. Names deeply rooted in our psyche—President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, the CIA, the Vietnam Conflict, Fidel Castro, Che Guevarra, Malcom X, Martin Luther King, Jr., "the long, hot summer of 1967."  Big personalities and events are in play. (For example, on October 9, 1967, the Bolivian Army, with the assistance of the CIA, assassinated Che Guevara.) Big, powerful, rumbling forces are on the move.

--You're being watched. You have come to the attention of some powerful official because you're performing a set of activities that might be totally innocent but, on the other hand, might not be.

--Laws are not uniformly enforced. There's ambiguity about what the law is and about what the right thing to do is. The privileged get away with plenty of, well, privileged activities. For those prepared to pay the price, justice is always available. But, like lobster at the dock, the price of justice varies daily. Corruption? U.S. corruption is nothing like you find in Afghanistan, Iran or Miramar. At least we have some honest public servants who tell the truth and refuse to be corrupted. How about in Colombia? We see the signs of corruption all around us. Those who live by their own code carry their own firearms, concealed or otherwise. They sometimes travel with their own army. Another pre-condition: You may have to become your own lawman or sheriff. You may even have to deputize yourself.

--Our borders are porous.Cross-border smuggling, human trafficking and other illegal activities are popular, to the point where ordinarily honest people start to ask, "Hey, why don't we start a syndicate of our own? How about a crime wave?"

Although these conditions pertain to my novel, they largely also pertain to most Westerns I grew up watching in movie theaters and on television. In fact, at one point in my novel Steven Lee Hawks (the one who grew up in Van Horn) tells Jake Lancer (who grew up in New Jersey) the area of Colombia he's living in is "cattle country" and in many respects resembles the Wild West frontier of the1870s. That's a direct reference to the kinds of stories and legends I created for myself to create timelessness when I was a child. It also happens to be a fair description of the area around Valledupar where I served in the Peace Corps in the 1960s.

Next month, I start discussing Shadow Country, the work of the truly great novelist and environmental activist, Peter Matthiessen. The region the title of the book refers to is an area of extreme southwestern Florida called "The Ten Thousand Islands," an area where the reach of the law is tenuous and the border is porous. For that reason it's an area that attracts people who may be wanted by the law in other more settled jurisdictions of the U.S.

The Book Thief, the Stolen Masterpiece, III

I believe at various points Markus Suzak's style of writing is literary; at others, it's anti-literary. By saying that, I mean Suzak sometimes pushes language beyond the limits of its meaning, to the point he sometimes misuses words or bends the meanings of words, or uses them in non-standard ways. This isn't always bad. Sometimes it can be exciting. Sometimes it can fall flat, or include awkward phrasing that pulls us out of the story. More often than not, Suzak creates subtle and moving moments using non-literary methods. To his credit, I never fail to understand what he's getting at. I admire him for trying new things. Overall, I'd rather he took chances and failed than never took chances at all. In my view that's what makes him an extraordinary novelist, and his novel The Book Thief, a stolen masterpiece.

For example, the method he uses to describe Liesel's anger at the mayor's wife who gave Liesel, the book thief, a novel entitled The Whistler, right after she fired Liesel's mother as her laundress. Liesel resented the book she was holding in her hand, and on page 261 we read, "In her hand, The Whistler tightened." Of course, we know what Suzak is getting at, but isn't that writing awkward? I think it is.

Liesel becomes so angry she decides to return to the mayor's mansion and confront the mayor's wife:

"Two steps at a time, she reached the door and banged it hard enough to hurt."

Just as a book can't tighten in someone's hand on its own, neither can one exactly reach a mansion door "two steps at a time," but once again we know what Suzak is getting at.

On Pg. 262, Liesel tells off the Mayor's wife, saying, "'You think you can buy me off with this book?' Her voice, though shaken, hooked at the woman's throat.

I don't know how one person's voice can "hook" at another's throat.

Next sentence: "The glittering anger was thick and unnerving, but she toiled through it."

At this point Zusak has lost me. Granted, anger can be unnerving but how can it be thick? How can anger glitter?

"Evidently, the mayor's wife was shocked when she saw her [Liesel] again.  Her fluffy hair was slightly wet and her wrinkles widened when she noticed the obvious fury on Liesel's usually pallid face."

If her hair was fluffy why would it be "slightly wet?" Fluffy hair is dry, no? Her "wrinkles widened?" Really?

The whole point of literary writing is—via an articulate narrator—to invite the reader into a world of deeper meanings and understandings, not a world of awkward phrasing.

Liesel finally tells off the mayor's wife: "You give me this Saumensch of a book, and you think it'll make everything good when I go and tell my mamma that we've just lost our last one [customer]? [WWII is bringing hard times to Germany and all businesses are losing customers.]

"The mayor's wife's arms.

"They hung.

"Her face slipped."

Zusak writes the above three sentences as paragraphs. He knows what he's doing. He's purposely being an iconoclast. I detect anger behind his decision to do that. That's why here I think he's being anti-literary. And by the way, "How does an entire face slip?]

"Liesel, however did not buckle. She sprayed her words directly into the woman's eyes."

I wonder "Was she spitting or speaking?" Now if Zusak had written, "She sprayed her words at the woman," or, better yet, "Her words sprayed out of her mouth," I would call that excellent writing.

In this scene, Liesel's anger becomes abstracted. I feel her emotions in a highly distant, muffled way. It's why at points I believe Zusak's writing isn't only non-literary, but anti-literary.

It's hard to believe the same writer wrote so beautifully, lovingly and movingly about Liesel's father, Hans. In fact the last hundred pages of the novel (the wrap-up when all the characters, except Liesel, die) are exquisite. Not one false word throughout. If you hang in for the entire 550-page ride, this novel will tear your heart out. It's why I still call it a masterpiece in spite of its flaws.

The most intimate relationship in the novel is the one between Liesel and her custodian dad. From the beginning, Hans has been associated with the accordion he loves to play and the accordion case he keeps his instrument in throughout the entire book. On page 527, the author lovingly turns Hans into an accordion, a living, breathing metaphor:

Here's a paragraph from a supposed short, hand-written book (a book within a book) Liesel herself wrote in first person that is also called The Book Thief. I think it's spellbinding—suburb writing:

"Papa sat with me tonight. He brought the accordion down and sat close to where Max used to sit. I often look at his fingers and face when he plays. The accordion breathes. There are lines on his cheeks. They look drawn on, and for some reason, when I see them, I want to cry. It is not for any sadness or pride. I just like the way they move and change. Sometimes I think my papa is an accordion. When he looks at me and smiles and breathes, I hear the notes."

Next month, I begin my discussion of a novel published in 2008 entitled Shadow Country. It's the work of a truly great novelist and environmental activist, Peter Matthiessen.  

The Book Thief, The Stolen Masterpiece, II

MEMO: Advice to budding novelists of all ages based on Markus Zusak's experience (written with tongue firmly placed in cheek): If you wish to write a great novel:

1. Become best buds with death. Adopt death's voice as yours. Better yet, appropriate death's voice. Steal it as you might steal a book. Then make that voice the narrator of your novel. (That's what Markus did.) 2. Learn to write like a fallen angel.

3. Give up your admiration for first responders. Admire your voice—the voice of death—as "way better" because now your voice is "the last responder."

4. Never, never, never (I mean it!) apologize for your last-responder role. Bring dignity, but not only dignity, bring regal nobility to your role as the last responder. Know that, in the end, there is no more essential a worker than you.

If you read last month's EWA, you know that by calling Marcus Zusak's novel, The Book Thief, a "stolen masterpiece" I don't mean to cast aspersions. In my view, Marcus stole it fair and square; it will always be his achievement, although one could say at this point (as with any great work of art) in a way his achievement is no longer his. Now it belongs to the ages.

So let me ask you, Dear Reader, if you narrated a novel as the voice of death, do you think you would have much use for metaphors or similes.

Well, guess what? In The Book Thief you will find very few of those (although I found a few and each was stunningly beautiful, for example….

• A downed enemy pilot: "His eyes were like coffee stains." (Pg. 490)

• Superhot metal cooling down: "The runaway tick-tock of cooling metal….sped up the minutes…standing there for hours." (Pg. 489) Then there was the sheer brilliance of this description: • "It was Steiner who noticed the small fire and the sliver of smoke farther down, close to the Amper River. It trailed into the sky and the girl held up her finger. "Look." (Pg. 488) • He will often humanize objects to make them humanoid. For example when Hans' team tries to prop up a bombed building so as to remain standing it has "elbows" sticking out of it at odd angles.

Every once in a while, you'll forget that the novel is being narrated by the voice of death, (You know, it's crossed my mind that perhaps it's not at certain points) and then you'll be brought up short when the narrator writes: "Far away, fires were burning, and I had picked up just over two hundred murdered souls. (Pg. 485)

Finally, I leave it to you. What can compare with this description? (Please direct all compliments to the voice of death. What's the voice of death's email address, you ask? (So you can compliment her, the voice of death, that is.) Good question. Here's another good question: What does the voice of death's inbox look like on the Tuesday morning after a long holiday weekend during the Delta Variant Reign of Terror?) Well, as I was saying when I was so rudely interrupted by the voice of death herself!

"Above me the sky eclipsed—just a last minute of darkness—and I swear I could see a black signature in the shape of a swastika. It loitered untidily above.

"Heil Hitler," I said, but I was well into the trees by then. Behind me a teddy bear rested on the shoulder of a corpse. A lemon candle stood below the branches. The pilot's soul was in my arms."

That description I just quoted is immediately followed by this, what I'd call death's ultimate LinkedIn self-reference. (He gives himself five stars. No lie!)

"It's probably fair to say that in all the years of Hitler's reign, no person was able to serve the Fuhrer as loyally as me. A human doesn't have a heart like mine. The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time. The consequence of this is that I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty and I wonder how the same thing can be both. Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die." (Pg. 491)

I'll leave you with this: (Note: Liesel is the hero of this novel. She is the book thief.) "In Frau Holtzapfel's kitchen, Liesel reads. The pages waded by unheard, and, for me, when the Russian scenery fades in my eyes, the snow refuses to stop falling from the ceiling. The kettle is covered as is the table. The human's, too, are wearing patches of snow on their heads and shoulders. The brother shivers. The woman weeps. And the girl goes on reading, for that's why she's there, and it feels good to be for something in the aftermath of the snows of Stalingrad. (Pg. 471)

MEMO TO ONE'S SELF: Learn to write like that and you'll write just like a fallen angel.

And just to think, officially this novel is labeled "YA" meaning it's recommended for and marketed to young adults—yes, sixth grade and up. If only adult literature was consistently as brilliant and inspired, which is to say, soul crushing, soul reincarnating, and soul releasing.

The Book Thief, a Stolen Masterpiece

Writing a great novel is a job for a writing magician, a conjuror of words. When a magician is working at the top of her game, experts always say, "Watch the hands closely. Inevitably one hand will be distracting you from the deception being committed by the other." That's why magic is called "sleight of hand."

In the case of writing a great novel, the "hands" aren't the words exactly; they're the key objects in the story, the conventions of the story, and the point of view from which the story is told.

Do I hear voices of protest insisting great novels are the result of great stories, themes, characters and villains?

While all those are legitimate elements in a great novel, it's my thesis that they are largely chimeras, illusions created out of the words that describe objects used in the story, or story conventions or point-of-view decisions that all add up to a unique or memorable way of telling the story.

My view here; tell me if you agree: We're all so accustomed to reading Holocaust stories, what's astounding to me is how any author could find a fresh, original way to write the story of a 12-year-old Jewish girl being cared for by foster Christian parents in a little town outside Munich, Germany during the Hitler years, from 1936 through 1945?

In the novel, The Book Thief, Markus Zusak finds that way and is able to construct a masterpiece work of fiction out of the most trite elements: Crowds giving the Nazi salute while shouting "Heil Hitler," Hitler Youth meetings, Nazi book burnings, Death Camps, hiding Jews in cellars, , just to name a few. You've seen them in movies and read about them so often they're practically clichés.

How does he do it? First, by beginning with a first-person narrator who is the voice of death. He equips that voice of death with a wicked sense of humor and the flawless sense of timing of a great stand-up comic. He bursts through all the pretentious seriousness and cultural taboos that surround death, and especially death during the Holocaust, and is able to bring us through to the other side where he can talk about it directly, simply, without flinching, because the narrative voice of The Book Thief is propelled by a heart-wrenchingly poignant, wicked sense of humor.

Let's start with page 1. The opening movement to the Prologue is entitled, "Death and Chocolate." Admittedly, Zusak is outrageous. He uses bold-face capital letters and text that is centered on the page to call attention to the "important things" which, without exception turn out to be big, important things. He's not kidding. And thanks to him, neither am I.

In the center of page 1, we see:

***HERE IS A SMALL FACT*** You are going to die.

Notice the refined tone with which Zusak has the voice of death opening The Book Thief: "I am in all truthfullness attempting to be cheerful about the whole topic, through most people find themselves hindered in believing me, no matter my protestations. Please trust me. I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Ageeable. Affable. And that's only the A's. Just don't ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.

***REACTION TO THE*** AFOREMENTIONED FACT Does this worry you? I urge you—don't be afraid. I'm nothing if not fair.

The voice of death goes on to say the only thing that haunts him are the survivors, "…the ones left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprise. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs." And that brings him to the story he's about to tell us" …about "A girl," "Some fanatical Germans…" "…And quite a lot of thievery…"

The story is one we might have read before, as I've already mentioned, repleat with Jews being hidden during the Holocaust, etc., except in The Book Thief, the voice of death narrates the story for us in the most heart-wrenchingly, matter-of-fact way.

At about the half-way point of the novel, we come across a mere 2-page chapter entitled "Death's Diary: The Parisians," which opens, "Summer came. For the book thief, everything was going nicely. For me, the sky was the color of Jews.

"When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up…

"I'll never forget the first day in Auschwitz, the first time in Mauthausen. At that second place, as time went on, I also picked them up from the bottom of the great cliff, when their escapes fell awfully awry.

There were broken bodies and dead sweet hearts. Still it was better than the gas. Some of them I caught when they were only half-way down. Saved you, I'd think, holding their souls in midair as the rest of their being—their physical shells—plummeted to the earth. All of them were light, like the cases of empty walnuts. Smoky sky in those places. The smell like a stove but still so cold.

"On June 23, 1942, there was a group of French Jews in a German prison on Polish soil. The first person I took was close to the door, his mind racing, then reduced to pacing, then slowing down…

"Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born. I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks. I listened to their last, gasping cries. Their vanishing words. I watched their love visions and freed them from their fear… I took them away… They were French, they were Jews, and they were you."

My heart weeps. And I ask myself, how could Zusak pull this off? How could he do this? Almost as if what Zusak has done in writing this novel is a crime. I'm quite serious. In his hands, in the hands of the voice of death, my heart is reduced to broken pieces.

And that's what I'm trying to get at in the title of this essay. While at first blush there might appear to be something cheap and underhanded going on, Zusak, the writing magician, the conjuror of words has managed to do the impossible: By writing a story about a teenager who lived in Germany during World War II, and who had an uncontrollable urge to steal books, he seems to have stolen this masterpiece right from under our noses. Yet he's done it fair and square, as any writer might, by the way he wields his words.

Next month: More about how Zusak did it, specifically by focusing on novel structure, narrative point of view and his descriptions of objects.

The Dirty Little Secret Writers Will Never Tell You.

Readers read bestselling novels to have their hearts broken. That's the dirty little secret. There's more to it than that, of course. But that's the secret. (I'm a writer and I just told you the secret, so my headline is a lie. No matter. It served its purpose, to entice you to read this essay. I hope you aren't offended by this.)

In order to work their magic, writers entice readers to fall in love with their characters. They want to have their readers' hearts to go all aflutter as they imagine how wonderful this story will be, as they emotionally invest in the story, and become captivated by in, engage their imaginations to, in a sense, make it their own.

Soon though, the writer intervenes, turns the story and smashes readers' hopes to smithereens. A good writer breaks readers' hearts by the millions. In the wreckage, the writer reveals the truth. Some of the more incontrovertible truths writers employ: Everyone dies. Everyone lies. The flesh is weak. Everything falls apart. We try to live our lives as though they are fortresses when in fact each of us is nothing but a grain of sand washed up on a foreign shore. Each of us is a stranger in a strange land.

In John Steinbeck's Of Mice & Men, "angry John" who, when he was alive and writing, as one critic had it, was "the most pissed-off writer in America," pushed this model to the extreme. His restless, compulsive pushing came out of his rage. In the end that's what made Steinbeck great and what he'll be remembered for.

As the novel opens we meet George & Lenny, two poor, barely functioning agricultural workers. George is taking care of Lenny, although the reasons for his commitment aren't totally clear. Lenny is physically extremely strong but not all there in the head. George conforms more to a person of normal intelligence, but has tremendous coping challenges. In fact, the pair abruptly left an earlier job just before Lenny was arrested. They're currently on the run.

I don't think any reader could ever exactly fall in love with these two broken men. But Steinbeck presents them as fully human if not very smart. Lenny and George have dreams of saving their money so they can have a "stake" of their own. Together they want to purchase a ranch, raise rabbits, and eek out a future. Lenny, for one, is incapable of imagining a future where George isn't in his life as his caregiver.

It's almost as if "angry John" is daring us to fall in love with these two deplorable, downtrodden clay fragments. Yet their humanity, dreams, and devotion to one another, especially George's (because he's closer to being "normal" in intelligence) is strangely attractive. I ask, "What does George know about Lenny that we're missing?" Ultimately, I believe we must succumb to the humanity John Steinbeck invests in both characters.

How does Steinbeck turn the tale, and upend the story, so Lenny and George are ripped apart? He introduces a black stable hand by the name of Crooks. Because there are no other African-Americans in that part of California at that time (that Crooks knows of at least), segregation forces Crooks to live alone. Because he is lonely, and envious of George and Lenny's togetherness, and because George has gone off for a few hours to be with other ranch hands, he asks Lenny to imagine the rest of his life alone, without George. This terrorizes Lenny. He poses the question to Lenny that breaks Lenny's spirit: "But what if George didn't come back?" George does return, but Lenny's faith in George and himself is shaken. His psychic universe crumbles. That sends Lenny into a tailspin of despair that leads directly to him having a conversation with the wife of another ranch hand, named Candy, and to a misunderstanding between them that leads directly to George using his tremendous physical strength to inadvertently break Candy's neck. In the end, in a crude form of justice, George assassinates Lenny with a single bullet to his head while Lenny fantasizes about the rabbit ranch he and George will never have because Lenny knows he "did something very bad."

I read Of Mice & Men for the first time when I was in seventh grade. From the first moment I began reading it, from the very first page, I knew that if this author could cause me to care about Lenny and George, these two lost, misbegotten souls and what happens to them, I wanted to be a writer. (I didn't know at the time that an appetite for breaking hearts was an essential part of the job description.) What touched my heart was how radically different these two men were from one another. The miracle for me was that despite all their differences, Lenny and George wanted to be together in order to live out their "rabbit ranch" dreams.

They reminded me of people I knew as a young man who were together in life yet radically different. Since that day (without knowing it at the time) I've been on this path. To write about both the toll and the gift that depression, trauma, fear, distraction, dreams, desire, and mental disability have on the human spirit and its innate desire to fight, to vanquish, to overcome in heroic terms. Now, finally, my novel Charging the Jaguar is nearing its final form.

The Need to Read.

Authors don't write bestselling blockbusters by total accident, although that sometimes happens. They do it intentionally, with premeditation. (I'm not saying they should be locked up for doing it, either.) They only appear innocent as they cleverly weave tales that give off—metaphorically speaking—pheromones that trigger in readers' dark subconscious an uncontrollable urge to read, rendering readers powerless to stop turning pages.

One irresistible reason for reading a story (or participating in any form of entertainment) occurs when a writer opens a story with two characters who could not be more different from one another.

Think of Oliver & Hardy, the two-man standup British comedy act that started in Vaudeville in the 1920s and made Hollywood films in the 1930s, as a formula for greatness. One big, the other fat; one easily embarrassed, the other constantly an embarrassment.

Abbot & Costello? The same thing. One thin, the other, fat. One short, the other tall. One slow, the other fast. One usually representing "what society would generally say," and the "slow" one spouting funny comebacks that dislodge the viewer from complacency. They make us laugh.

That is precisely the formula John Steinbeck followed in his novel Of Mice & Men published in 1937, just before he published Grapes of Wrath in 1939. You have George, who is short and thin, the smart one, hanging out with Lenny, who is big, strong, and slow—"slow of mind."

What is the one pheromone all these "opposite pairs" give off that trigger "must see" or "must read" reactions among audiences? I submit this formula immediately sets off in the audience's mind a need to read, demanding answers: Why are these two total incompatibles, together? I suggest this formula suggests the unseen presence of a more powerful (Older? Smarter? Other directed? Wise parent figure? Or perhaps "wise author figure?") that commands these "obvious incompatibles" to be, and remain, together.

Steinbeck, as usual, doesn't play George and Lenny, his "odd couple," for laughs; rather, the author pushes the characters to the extreme, thereby introducing powerfully poignant and tragic themes into Of Mice and Men. That is John Steinbeck's genius; to push his characters to the extreme. To know that if he didn't, he'd have nothing more than a humorous, stand-up comic act.

He does his "pushing" by making Lenny seriously mentally disabled. George has to continually tell (and retell) Lenny basic what's-happening-here-and-now information because Lenny seems to have a serious short-term memory deficit. From one moment to the next Lenny isn't able to retain basic life-facts—where they're traveling to and for what purpose?

At the same time George comes off extremely self-centered, if not downright selfish. Yes, there it is again, that word we've run into so often that dates back to ancient Greece and the legend of the totally gorgeous young man who finds the love of his life staring back at him in a pool of water. We owe so much to Narcissus, don't we?

The Giant Mystery we wonder about is not why Lenny hangs out with George (Lenny is completely incapable of caring for himself) but why George, essentially a barely coping narcissist, wants to hang around with a mental case like Lenny.

In every other respect, George and Lenny adhere to the typical, comic trope. They're unexplainable opposites. Lenny is large and extremely strong, "shapeless of face" while George is "small and quick…" "Every part of him was defined…"

Any reader in 1937 would immediately think of George and Lenny as representing the inchoate form of all those Hollywood comedy stand-up acts they watched and enjoyed in the movie theaters as they read Steinbeck's words on page 2: "..two men emerged from the path and came into the opening by the green pool."

Then Steinbeck gives us the first clue to understanding these two: "They had walked in single file down the path, and even in the open one stayed behind the other." Wow. That speaks volumes about how they see themselves and their relationship to one another.

The very next sentence: "Both were dressed in denim trousers and in denim coats with brass buttons." What do you see? The way that sentence reads today makes them appear to be two cute clowns. I see a foreshadowing of Waiting for Godot, the absurdist play written in 1952 by Samuel Beckett. I think that in the 1930s those words would not be taken as describing anything cute. They would be taken to describe two "working stiffs," two bums, what a Marxist might call "two proletarians."

Then we get, on page 2, the first reference to Laurel & Hardy: "The first man stopped short in the clearing, and the follower nearly ran over him."

That's right out of Laurel & Hardy's book of stock comedy routines. Everyone reading that sentence when the book first appeared in 1937, read it that way. Of course, they'd laugh. And they would have intuitively known that Steinbeck was starting with the known, but was doing what all novelists are bound to do, forge into the scary unknown.

Here's my experience with this novel: I can vividly remember when I first read it when I was in seventh grade. It would be no exaggeration to say that the instant I read it, my head exploded. It affected me that fundamentally. It changed my life.

Why? Because as different as George and Lennie were, that was, by analogy, how different my brother Marty, then 16 years of age, and me (my name was Charlie and I was 12) were. I was chubbier but smaller; my brother was thinner and taller. He was smarter about academic subjects. I was more intuitive about non-academic subjects.

Why were George and Lenny together? I instantly knew why. The same reason why Marty and I were together: Both boys' parents insisted on it.

John Steinbeck very cleverly cuts readers who wish to use this "different brothers with parents" as a crutch off at the knees. He quickly establishes that these two are in no way related. That's brilliant because it requires the reader leave the known and push off into the unknown.

This is what I remember distinctly: From the first minutes I read the opening of Steinbeck's novel "Of Mice and Men" I knew I wanted to grow up to become a novelist who could write this kind of story that by subtext forces the reader to intuit the presence of a higher force (God?) who commands the two extremely unlikely characters to remain together.

Even today I see the story as being about two personalities who couldn't be farther apart, who have absolutely nothing in common, who might actually be the voices of a single consciousness. What if the entire novel took place inside the head of God, who, after all, is the author of everything?

It goes right back of Cain and Abel, doesn't it? "Am I my brother's keeper?" Perhaps thinking about the recent Palestinian-Israeli breakout of violence, maybe the answer to that profound question is this: "If we're not each other's keepers, we should be."

Next month: More thoughts about the John Steinbeck novel that inspired me to become a novelist.

Understanding the Writer I am Becoming by Understanding John Steinbeck's Writing.

William Souder's biography of John Steinbeck's life, entitled Mad at the World, is informed by the breakthrough observations of James Gray, a literary critic who set down in a "slim but penetrating monograph" (according to Souder) a thesis that amounts to nothing less than a breakthrough way of thinking about John Steinbeck's body of work. This is Gray's thesis: The common element underlying all of Steinbeck's disparate works was the author's anger. Souder wrote, "He was America's most pissed off writer."

"All [of Steinbeck's] work," Gray wrote, "steams with indignation at injustice, with contempt for false piety, with scorn for the cunning and self-righteousness of an economic system that encourages exploitation, greed, and brutality."

When my novel, Charging the Jaguar is published, I'll bet thoughtful readers (for example, every one of my ExcitingWriting Advisory subscribers) will find the same anger in my writing as they find in Steinbeck's. (By saying this I hope you won't misconstrue: I'm in no way comparing the quality of my writing to that of Steinbeck's. I'm only comparing my tone of voice to Steinbeck's.)

Please allow me at this juncture to make a sharp left turn in my argument. (It will all make sense in the end.) Two "conditions" all high-quality novels have in common: 1) One of the characters is always a stand-in for the author; it's usually what readers and critics call "the point-of-view character." 2) Sometimes if you follow the "stand-in" character closely throughout his or her story-arc, you can get a "bead" on how the author feels about the material he or she is writing about, and sometimes how the author feels about himself in relation to the other characters and the larger story he is writing. This may sound like "esoteric writer BS" to you. General readers needn't trouble themselves with these thoughts, but I submit to you: Those novels that lack a strong point-of-view or stand-in character are weak in other respects as well, so having an obvious stand-in character in a novel is actually a good thing, a very good thing.

In The Grapes of Wrath, the "stand-in character" is clear from the novel's opening pages: It's Tom, the young man just released from prison for good behavior.

On page 255 in the edition I'm reading, you have Al, one of Tom's uncles, talking to a newly introduced character about Tom. At this point in the novel, Tom isn't present, but Al is saying about him:

"Tom. He's quiet. But—look out."

The other man, the newcomer, responds saying, "Well I talked to him. He don't sound mean."

"Oh, he ain't. Just as nice as pie 'til he's roused, an' then—LOOK OUT!"

My point is that the same can be said of John Steinbeck, the author, and of his career. He can be the nicest guy—he was a great and loyal friend!—as helpful to everyone around him as all get-out, but if he gets angry or gets his back up against the wall, or if his stand-in character does, LOOK OUT! John Steinbeck used his anger to create unforgettable characters; his unforgettable characters made the whole world want to read his novels, the kind that are translated into 19 languages or more. That is how each of John Steinbeck's novels rose to bestseller status, and then, beyond that, to "perennial classic" status, and beyond even that, to simply "great," propelled by the stand-in character's rage in each one. Of course, in the case of The Grapes of Wrath, that means, propelled by Tom's anger.

Let me describe one instance in Grapes where Steinbeck's anger paved the way for an unforgettable character who comes and goes in just a handful of pages, but who I submit changes the tone of the entire novel:

It happens when Tom and Al both drive to a junkyard to find a part they need to repair their Model-T truck. The worker at the junkyard, who's dirty and slovenly, is described this way (with some of Steinbeck's finest descriptive writing): "One eye [of his] was gone and the raw, uncovered socket squirmed with eye muscles when his eye moved." (Page 177.) Then, "The man shambled close, his one eye flaring."

What happens next was a tremendous surprise to me: Until then I had gotten the idea that Tom (via John Steinbeck) supported all downtrodden workers. But here was one example where the opposite was true and I remember feeling very surprised that, Tom, the stand-in character for the author, comes out verbally attacking this junkyard worker. In fact the short scene requires us—no, forces us!—to think in a very nuanced way about what Steinbeck is in favor of in the case of most workers, and what he objects to about this specific worker. And that's another one of the scene's strengths.

When the junkyard worker, this grotesque man with only one eye, shows no interest in his boss's business, saying to Tom and Al, "You can burn the goddamned place down for all I care," (Pg. 179) Tom turns on him, saying, "You stink!" at one point and "Wash your face!" at another.

Steinbeck then has Tom make some horribly crass, obscene comments about the junkyard worker to Al, right in front of the worker. What Tom says about this poor, downtrodden worker is nothing less than horrible.

The short scene forces me to remember that the one thing Steinbeck always championed was not only poor people, but poor people who show tremendous dignity in the way they go about working their jobs and living their lives. Take Ma, for example:

In the final pages of the novel (around page 400) absolutely everything has gone horribly wrong for the Joad family: The preacher, Casey, was murdered by a strikebreaker in front of Tom, and Tom, seeing the injustice of it, in a fit of righteous anger, murdered the strikebreaker on the spot. Now Tom is a wanted man. Police and strikebreakers are looking for him. He has an open wound on his cheek that will give him away, that truly makes Tom "a marked man." The Joad family, now led by Ma, has to leave the migrant camp and move on so Tom won't be discovered hiding in a folded matrass in the truck that's piled up with the rest of the Joad family's belongings. The family has run out of food. They've run out of everything, even pepper. Ma makes a meal with the family's last pennies. She holds it, the meal, the family, together, just barely. She is the last bastion of dignity and self-respect. She demonstrates tremendous self-possession at the very worst time. It's tremendously moving to me due to the stark contrast we had with the junkyard worker hundreds of pages earlier who had allowed himself to become slovenly, and go around dirty and smelly, without a patch over his missing eye, not even caring about whether his employer's place of business thrives or is lost in a fire. (That line of dialogue is eerie to me: "You can burn the goddamned place down for all I care.")

To my way of thinking the entire novel turns on this night-and-day contrast between the junkyard worker and Ma. The junkyard worker is self-indulgent and lacks self-respect. He feels sorry for himself and has stopped caring if he grosses out the people around him or lives his life with even a shred of dignity and decency. Ma, on the other hand, is strong and disciplined. She never feels sorry for herself. She displays tremendous discipline even as the end closes in on her.

So the question I ask myself always comes down to this: Would this contrast have worked better if Steinbeck (via his stand-in character, Tom) had been less angry at the junkyard worker? If he had cut that guy some slack and felt sorry for him for not caring, for not taking showers, and for not wearing an eye patch? No, quite the opposite. It would have fallen flat. Steinbeck had to be 100% pissed off at the junkyard worker to have any hope of making the contrast be instructive to the reader, of getting the reader, in fact, to feel a deep love, admiration and respect for Ma in the final pages. You see, Steinbeck's approach only works when the stand-in character's anger is fanatically extreme. And that's why Steinbeck loves being mad at the world, and why I do, too. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Understanding Grapes of Wrath: Death on the Road

There was one part of The Grapes of Wrath story that moved me to tears when I first read Steinbeck's novel in high school; so much so, I recalled it clearly when I re-read it only a few months ago.

The sections of the novel particularly moving to me were those that portrayed the death of the Joad grandfather as the family left Oklahoma, and later on, the death of the grandmother as they entered California. Both died while the family was on the road; the grandfather was literally buried by the side of the road. Those passages reminded me of what my mother told me about my grandfather who passed away before I was born; they also brought up for me memories of my grandmother who passed away when I was ten. (I grew up with my maternal grandmother living with my family.)

In Grapes, we're prepared for the grandfather passing by other characters' expressing concern about the health of another character, Rose of Sharon, a young woman who is expecting to give birth momentarily. Then we witness a dog being run over by a truck. (Yes, another small animal dies.) Then the grandfather is asked if he feels ill.

"You Goddamn right," said Grampa weakly. "Sicker'n Hell." He's dead of a stroke a few sentences later.

One of the characters expresses the thought the Grandpa started dying as soon as they left the farm. He couldn't stand to leave it. And that was what broke him.

Grapes of Wrath not only helps us understand the extent of economic agony suffered by so many Americans during The Great Depression of the 1930's; it helps me understand what my own family went through during that time. The novel dramatizes the swift and sudden reduction in the standard of living the Depression brought on for so many Americans;and how decisive it was in breaking people's spirits, health, and, ultimately, bringing on their untimely death.

In the last few months I had the good fortune of watching Ken Burns' six-part documentary series, Portrait of the Roosevelts, so, not surprisingly, thoughts about The Great Depression have been with me as we have all witnessed our country and the entire world rocked by the ravages of the Covid Pandemic. Aside from the horrible death toll, the pandemic has spread enough economic misery around the world to remind everyone (who wishes to be reminded) of The Great Depression.

I remember growing up and being told that during most of 1930s, my maternal grandfather, Sol Lieberman, owned and operated a menswear custom tailoring shop in East New York, Brooklyn, New York. He and his wife, Celia, lived in an apartment above the store. My mother, Edna and her two sisters, Pearl (older) and Doris (younger), grew up in that apartment above the store. As The Depression, which began with the Wall Street Crash of 1929, worsened through the1930s, Sol's once prosperous custom-tailoring business began to falter, not only because times were tough, but because ready-made suits, already sold in stores, began to be carried in catalogues which became increasingly popular nationwide throughout the 1930s.

Just as agricultural commodity prices collapsed (affecting the fortunes of the real-life Oklahoma farmers the Joad family is modeled after), deflation in the 1930s nibbled away at prices and profit margins for everything, including custom-made men's suits. During the first and second presidential terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt the American people were suffering through the modern-day Fed Bank's worst nightmare, deflation, wherein the less businesses charge for goods and services, the less money everyone has to purchase them.

By the end of the 1930s, Sol Lieberman's business was winding down. My father, Phil Lustig married Sol and Celia's daughter, Edna, and opened retail ladies' garment stores in New Jersey, first in New Brunswick, and then in Plainfield, a town to the north, in the center of the state. Phil was able to purchase a home in North Plainfield with a few extra bedrooms; Sol and Celia closed the store in East New York and headed west across the Hudson River to Plainfield. My mother's sisters, Doris and Pearl, also married and moved to Plainfield. My older brother, Marty, was born in the fall of 1941.

My father tried to put his father-in-law's talents to work in the Plainfield store, but his health deteriorated. He passed away while my mother was carrying me. By the time I came along in April of 1945, Sol was the grandpa I never got to meet.

I often wondered if like, grandpa Joad in Grapes of Wrath, Sol's death actually began years earlier when the new economic realities and customer preferences of the Depression forced him to leave his home in Brooklyn, an urban place he loved, and venture forth to a bustling suburb that was so dependent on automobiles, and to an ill-fitting way of life the men's tailor must have found strange at best, too big in some places, too tight in others. And then there was the thought of him working in his son-in-law's business. Could there be any question his heart wasn't in it?

By the time I attended high school and read Grapes of Wrath my family and I had already mourned Sol's death as well as the death of his wife, my Grandma Celia. She had always been the strength of our immediate family that was now centered in Plainfield and North Plainfield. It was 1955. A massive stroke took her away. I was ten years old at the time.

It should come as no surprise to you that this John Steinbeck novel along with another work of his, Of Mice and Men, both had something to do with me deciding to turn to writing novels late in my life.

I found inspiration and solace in novels that looked at life and death unflinchingly. I'm grateful to have been inspired by the best.

My Grapes of Wrath: A Life-Long Journey.

John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, originally published in 1939, tells the story of economic hardship in the Oklahoma Panhandle in 1937. A severe drought, made worse by poor agricultural practices and collapsing commodity prices, caused many family farms in the Panhandle (and in surrounding States) to fail and the farmers to be displaced. The drought triggered what was dubbed "The Great Dust Bowl." The displaced farmers were called "Okies." Once the land they farmed was returned to the banks for non-payment of their loans, Okies became homeless, jobless and penniless practically overnight.

 

Many Okies left Oklahoma in their Model "T" Ford trucks piled high with their belongings, following Route 66 headed for the fertile valleys of California where they had been told there were plenty of jobs available for "pickers," migrant laborers who helped vegetable farmers and fruit tree growers in California's fertile valleys pick their bumper-crop harvests. Unfortunately, unknown to the Okies as they drove west with their foreclosed farms in their rearview mirrors (and memories), so many displaced Okies arrived in California looking for work, their numbers depressed the wages they could earn as pickers. Economic disaster (It's the Fed Bank's worst nightmare, called "disinflation") stalked Okies wherever they went.

The Great Depression was a generational catastrophe far worse than the Covid-driven economic agony we're currently suffering through. A key reason: It lasted so long. The Depression began in October 1929 and only let up as the United States began gearing up for World War II in 1940. It was far worse than any other economic downtown America has ever experienced.

 

When you read the longer, more complicated, adult version of The Grapes of Wrath (rather than the simplified, shortened, expurgated version so many of us read in high school), you'll find it rewarding in the long run, although you might find it slow in places; and, overall, uneven.

This time around I noticed how often in Grapes of Wrath, instant death gets meted out to insects and small animals. To me it's analogous to how often Okies' spirits get instantly crushed under the weight of the tragedy they endure as they leave Oklahoma, and journey to California only to learn that, far from California being the Promised Land, their suffering has just begun.

In the novel's opening pages, a grasshopper finds its way into the cab of a truck that the principal protagonist, Tom Joad, is riding in. I remembered reading these exact words when I was in high school: "A grasshopper flipped through the window and lighted on top of the instruments panel… Joad reached forward and crushed its hard skull-like head with his fingers, and he let it into the wind stream out the window."

Strangely, I also recalled reading about a land turtle. I thought, surely I had imagined that. But, no, as I was reading the novel this time, there it was, the tough, strong land turtle, as indomitable as ever. When, early on in the adult version of the novel, an entire chapter is devoted to the land turtle's wanderings, I thought perhaps Steinbeck planned to turn him into a recurring character.

I also noticed that just a bit later we read about "Cats," or the Caterpillar Tractors used in the Panhandle by the foreclosed land's new owners to essentially push houses off their foundations and make them inhabitable. With a single blow by a "Cat" the Okies were chased off what once was their land, not only making them  homeless but forcing them to "move on."

 

The way the turtle's powerful legs  are described, and the way the Cats are described effortlessly pushing over houses are comparable. I believe a close reading of the "grown-up" version of The Grapes of Wrath makes it clear that John Steinbeck knew exactly what he was doing all along.

 

By the way, that land turtle I mentioned earlier very nearly gets run over by a truck, the same truck the grasshopper earlier jumped onboard.

A few pages later, we witness nothing less than a genuine turtle-tragedy, when Mr. Turtle flips over on his back as he mounts a curb, and, for a time, has all four of his powerful legs wiggling ineffectually in the air, until Tom Joad, happens upon him after leaving the truck. He picks him up, drapes him in his unworn jacket and carries him under his arm. He later tells another character he intends to give the turtle as a gift to one of the children in Tom's family.

A new biography of John Steinbeck authored by William Souder, a noted literary biographer, was published in 2020. A previous biography of his about Rachel Carson was recognized by The New York Times as "notable." Another he wrote about the life of John Audubon was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. It's extraordinarily telling to me that Souder titled his newest work, Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck. (I can't wait to read it.)

Now that I'm writing this essay and thinking about my reading experiences with Grapes and also remembering the John Hawks-directed movie of the novel starring Henry Fonda, I do believe "Hank" Fonda played that early scene (in which Fonda is riding in the cab of the truck) spot-on. The driver tries to politely find out where Tom Joad, who he had just picked up as a hitchhiker, spent the last four years of his life. The driver defends himself, saying, at one point, "Well, that ain't none of my affair," and at another point, "I ain't a nosy guy." That's when Tom Joad unloads on him, saying, "The Hell you ain't. That big old nose a yours been stickin' out eight miles ahead of your face. You had that big nose goin' over me like a sheep in a vegetable patch." A short while later Tom allows, "I done time." Then, as they arrive where Tom asks to be dropped off, he tells the driver, "I know you're wettin' your pants to know what I done. Well, I ain't a guy to let you down."

As the driver stops to let Tom off, Tom says a single word, "Homicide." Then he adds, "That's a big word. Means I killed a guy. Seven years. I'm sprung in four for keeping my nose clean."

Tom Joad sure knew how to make a vivid first impression on that truck driver. Ditto John Steinbeck, allowing his anti-hero, Tom Joad, to make a vivid first impression on The Grapes of Wrath readers.

Ask yourself about the hitchhiker in that scene: Are those not the words of a guy who, as William Souder put it, is "mad at the world?" I think so. Indeed, I can't wait to read Souder's biography. (The opening pages of his biography read like Steinbeck himself might have written them. (Wow!)