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.
