JOHN STEINBECK

During this Covid time, I've done a lot more reading than usual, both fiction and non-fiction. 

With libraries closed, I recently scoured our family room bookshelves to find two classics hidden among a row of Sue Grafton mysteries and a few Stephen King chillers.

John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden awaited. I had read the Grapes of Wrath in high school but had little memory of it save the hardships of migrants who travelled to California in the 1930's. East of Eden tells the story of early settlers in California during the early part of the twentieth century.

Both are powerful period pieces and so many of Steinbeck's messages and insights still resonate today.

On enduring the pandemic....

"Lord, how the day passes! It's like life --so quickly when we don't watch it and so slow when we do." 

About aging...

"Do you think it's funny to be serious when I'm not even out of high school?" she asked.
"I don't see how it could be any other way," said Lee. "Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn't in time."  

About social inequality....

"For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I", and cuts you off forever from the "we." 

About gender differences....

"Woman can change better'n a man," Ma said soothingly. "Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head."

About true happiness...

"If a fella needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do'll make him feel rich - not rich like Ms' Wilson was when she give her tent when Grampa died."

I'm always on the lookout for truth and wisdom, qualities readily found in these two wonderful reads.