I am probably in a minority of people of my era who had not read this American classic many years ago. It is not as long as the page number would suggest, as the 2008 edition I got includes a wordy but enlightening 70 page introduction by Robert Demott and I somehow got the large print edition. Most versions are 420- 620 pages. My education in classics has finally been updated. The Introduction puts the novel into context and carefully dissects the controversies surrounding it.
The interesting technique of alternating short almost entirely narrative chapters with long ones that contain a lot of dialogue greatly enhances the story. In the short chapters the author offers generic commentary about the plight of the dispossessed starving farmers like the Oklahoma Joads during the Dust Bowl year of 1939, and their desperate decision to go to California, with false promises of utopia. This is interspersed with biting commentary about the capitalistic factory farmers, and the possibilities of what might have been. In the long chapters, he details in granular detail what actually happens to the fictitious Joads as they, and thousands of others pursue their false dreams of jobs, homes, security and wealth in California, only to find the same capitalistic factory farmers offering them nothing. There is no doubt about the far left leanings of the author leading some to call him a communist.
With about 60 pages to go, I went to bed and had a deep REMS dream about how it would end and how the author would tie up all of the loose ends. But today, finishing the book, I realized that it doesn’t end- it just stops as the young lady just delivered of a stillborn, offers her breast milk to a starving man.
At least four times as long as “Of Mice and Men, the authour’s second most famous novel of the same era, which I also enjoyed, this one provides much more detail of the strife of the Americans during the Great Depression.
5/5
The Passionate Reader 