Posted on 04/19/2009 3:23:37 PM PDT by JoeProBono
The Grapes of Wrath, published exactly 70 years ago, can be seen as a prophetic novel - rooted in the tragedies of the Great Depression, but speaking directly to the harsh realities of 2009, writes Steinbeck scholar Robert DeMott. Steinbeck's epic novel, which traces the harrowing exodus of Tom Joad and his family from blighted Oklahoma (where they are evicted from their farm), across the rugged American south-west via Highway 66, and on to what they mistakenly hope will be a more promising future in California, is considered by many readers to be the quintessential Depression-era story, and an ironic reversal of the rags-to-riches tale favoured by many optimistic Americans.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
I read “The Grapes of Wrath” first when I was fifteen as a History assignment. That and “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and “The Great Gatsby”. Absolutely unforgettable: captured the 1920’s and 1930’s for me perfectly.
Americans often butcher the English language in a manner that is nearly unforgivable, but when they decide to put pen to paper properly they can write like a house on fire. These three novels hover somewhere in my top ten favorites of all time.
He would have taken his earnings from the book and bought the NASDAQ at 5,000, The DOW at 14,000, Realestate in 2007, and Light Sweet Crude at $140.00.
That was a great movie.
I once read an interesting book about Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. One of the things which I remember was when Zelda first met Hemmingway who was an old friend of Fitzgerald, She told him that Hemmingway was a phony.
Later Hemmingway took F. Scott aside and told him Zelda was insane. The interesting thing according to the author was that both Zelda and Hemmingway were correct.
Steinbeck’s communism glared through that book like Ayn Rand’s materialism glares through “Atlas Shrugged.” It is really a very ugly book. I love literature, but Grapes of Wrath was really a barely concealed manifesto. Nothing about America worked right, not at all.
As noted earlier I detested “Grapes of Wrath” for its strident agenda, but I liked “Gatsby” and loved “For Whom The Bell Tolls.”
One of my favorite novels of all time.
Nostalgic and starry-eyed lefties should be required to read Grapes...if only for Steinbeck’s slap against FDR and the Agricultural Adjustment Acts (AAA) Roosevelt oversaw the destruction of countless tons of produce and hundreds of thousands of livestock animals at a time when millions of people were going hungry. It also had the effect of putting thousands of cotton sharecropper types like the Joads on the street because the landowners could make more money from letting the fields lie fallow (government subsidies) than from collecting rents on the sharecroppers.
Remembering the Forgotten Man, my a$$.
This time the Calli’s will be migrating as refugees from California to Oklahoma.
A great line, among many, was when Casey (John Carradine) is arrested and handcuffed in a migrant camp. He’s sitting patiently in the open deputy’s car when someone asks him what he’s done. He puts on a satisfied smile and says, “I talked back!” A great definitive moment of a downtrodden guy sticking his thumb in the establishment’s eye.
Have never read the book, but this movie is one of John Ford’s best.
This happened not in Oklahoma but near Kerman Ca in western FResno County. By the time I came along in 1933 they had acquired a larger farm by agreeing to pay future tax assessments to the water district that had foreclosed on dozens of farms.
Some of the richest farmers in the valley are Steinbecks Okies.
California got where it didn’t want them.
Listen to the lyrics of Woody Guthrie’s,
“If you ain’t got the do-ray-mi boys.”.
You had to have a certian amount of $$$
to cross the state line.
And Woody Guthrie was Stalin Lite..
Here ya go Granny... Looks like it was Erskine Caldwell who also wrote Tobacco Road http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erskine_Caldwell
Thanks for the quick reply. Sometimes when my brain cannot find a word I need, it drives me crazy...Yep, he’s the one...
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