Los santos inocentes, versión rancho. ( )

(blank)

Putting aside the more complicated aspects I had in my relationship with the Old Left, in the past—me missing his valid points about class, while becoming enraged about the stilted academy rigidly defending and enthroning guys who placed women firmly on the sidelines of life, and for whom people of color, even among the poor, (!), scarcely were…. Non-mythological…. Right?…. [The first time I read Steinbeck seriously was with, ‘Grapes of Wrath’; I’m not convinced that that’s a better book, than this one. Certainly more…. Prestigious, no?]

But yeah: just to reflect that, we were plopped down in a chair with no way out, in some classroom, and got “The Grapes of Wrath” put in front of us, [n.b. this was, the first time, or whatever, who knows: but definitely not the first serious time], with no say about the choice of book, (we weren’t homeowners, after all: the system was paid for by adult property-owners—and served their perceived needs to accumulate prestige, basically), and had no choice if we didn’t like this big ass book to read, other than to slack. Years later, I read it, under the theory that maybe my elders had been right and I had been wrong, and I was just crushed under the weight of the grandiosity, and the issues already mentioned….

And all that time, the library was stocking copies of “Of Mice & Men”, a short, readable adventure, [turns out it’s not an adventure, but it is readable], it seems like: a sexist adventure, it sounds like—but an adventure nonetheless…. [I was imagining it might be a bit like I imagine that Victorian story, “She”, will be, lol…. Religious folks want you to know: it can’t be sexist if it’s not about sexiness; salesy sorts want to throw that bundle at you: sexiness, sexism, and salaciousness: throw it all in the cart, 35% off if you buy it before I stop loving money at midnight tomorrow!]…. And an adventure of ordinary men, without…. (shakes head) “I don’t think people should do business with China. Of course, I just finished a $20 million deal with a Chinese national: but I’m the only one who can be trusted with, burdens like that. Lemmings like you: absolutely not. So that’s why, on this fine late spring day, in the year of Jesus Christ, American President, 2015, I have decided to announce my intentions to run for the honorable office of….”

~(snaps fingers) But I didn’t catch his diction, god-darn it.

(shrugs) So yeah; I don’t think I would give thousands of dollars of my own money, even if I did have it, to create a bronze shrine in a field somewhere to Steinbeck—or create an endowment for a fund to support a Steinbeck literary journal; whatever would be more popular~ it would make no difference to me…. But yeah: I may come to appreciate him more, than I do Frank S. Fitzgerald, right…. (I jumble up the names for anybody: good or bad, it’s almost always good to crack open dead ossified notions and rigid functions of speech, you know….)….

Incidentally—someone is typing some very religious-language thing in the seat next to me; I was about to watch S1E2 of Black-ish, and this girl is not going to be the mom on that show, right…. She hasn’t got the dialect down, right…. But yeah: religion, Christianity, can be hugely class-based. Poor people are sometimes more likely to be Christian, because the church presents itself as ~power~, and the people who run the system don’t buy that argument, as often, right…. But yeah: poor people (like children) are excellent sheep/furniture for Christians, but a poor Christian is usually trying fervently…. Like, that language right…. “The ultimate power rests with the kings of the Middle Ages, the power rests in Latinate English and men’s eyes…. Power, glory, dominion, and pizza night, together are the four angels of the kingdom….”

~Like, a poor person in church mode isn’t trying, LITERALLY, financially, not to “be” poor: but they’re overwhelmingly trying not to DO, poor, so to speak….

Class is by no means a dead issue, and the 1930s happened in the USA as well as in Germany, although racism-in-Europe is the perfect culture-war-left, thing, for some people, right…. Of course, some people on the right probably hate FDR and Hitler about the same…. Pretty soon, we’ll discover that they were in cahoots together to bring down America, right…. (It will become an absolutely, True Fact! 😮)….

There are worse things, than the JS after whom no “Bach” name follows, lol….

But yeah: I wish that old lady had been chill, so I could have showed her the thing, like, Look, they don’t care about no old man, when he’s cool! (front) Everyone is happy; there’s an old man; (back) Everyone all chill and cool: ain’t no old man, we gone and told him, go away, right….

~Can’t talk about shit like that with church folks. ‘Silence! Rich people are talking….’ ~(“God” atmosphere)….

Anyway.

…. It seems cute. A fun little adventure story, you know. It’s funny how immediate and trivial novels can be, right. (“Can reading novels make you hate your so-called friends less?”). If I wrote this, people would tell me to shut the fuck up, and start talking about things that matter, or better yet: just shut up, right. ({corporate news analyst batting against an underhand toss} Yes, that’s right. The problem is that the little people, the unimportant people, get to express themselves. You can make money off them that way: make them more likely to surrender their life-energy peaceably when it is demanded of them. Like in, “The Matrix”. But any expression, by the little people, whatsoever, introduces instability into the system: the risk of chaos. The thing to do, is to let them have their pathetic expression, and then guilt them for it—pretend it’s for their own mental health that you’re hazing them, ironically enough.” “I’m just glad that, through the many changes wrought in time and space by the system and by rebellion, the system has managed to change and adapt, to hang on, and stay current.” “Buy soap! Buy bug spray! Help out Craig C. Corporation! I’m sorry. I wasn’t supposed to say that.” “Aww, that just shows…. That we’re honest! Transparency in the government! Not like Rebel State Zed, right?” “Yes, thank you. Good save.” “A real human being, right here, everybody.”).

But yeah: I can remember, when I thought that paragraphs about nature were ‘vague’ and pointless, right…. It wasn’t too long ago: looked for a book, I was looking for, not-life, right; not-life, not-trivial….

~And it’s certainly cute. We might wonder if we’re looking for an understated but very central sort of colorism, right: the little, dark, devious, capable, untrustworthy Mediterranean, and the large, pale, heroic, stupid, tragic, human Teutonic, right….

—But yeah: three or four full decades before, say, “Rocky” (1976), when, in the aftermath of civil rights, Mediterraneans and Teutons were deciding, to finally, and unambiguously grant each other full-personhood status, right….

What was it that Langston Hughes said? “Life writes poems”? You know I believe that, obviously….

…. Interesting:

—Worker’s wages were high, sometimes. A single, unattached able-body & mind male worker could have a decent life, in certain respects.
—But knowledge of disabilities, or the disorder of codependence, was essentially non-existent, right.

And of course:

—Beans with ketchup. That’s a curious idea. People get very rigid ideas about foods and traditions, like everyone is the Edmund Burke of the restaurant trade, right. ~My grandfather stipulated the correct corrections to The Right Proper Book of Condiments, (c. 813 AD), necessary for the 18th century: and all you fools must obey, right. (I can’t even start with EB. “This will all get bloody.” Prophecy or pre-judging? What should they have done? “They should have gone on in the ways of the fathers.” The absolute French monarchy essentially folded under its own weight in 1787, creating a vacuum, for lack of ability to pay its own way in the world, pay its own bills. How do you go on in the way of the fathers: when it’s impossible? “Silence. Silence: you fool.” Yeah, ok. “Britain will invade. Order will be restored. The armies of Britain will preserve the English garden that is Planet Earth in all the centuries. This is my modest proposal.” So modest, the English. “(nods, absentmindedly).”).

But yeah: ketchup and mustard are essentially sauces. There is no essential difference between ketchup and mustard, on the one hand, and…. You know, “proper, expensive” sauces, basically….

Anyway.

…. Incidentally, I think I did read this. They bullied us into reading both the long and the short Steinbeck, at different points. I remember being bothered by the dialect-apostrophes. If I wrote like that: I could go to hell, right. I could literally, go to fucking jail, right…. And they wanted you to identify with that worldview: colonialist classism. Then they hand you working-class fiction with dialect spellings, and it’s like…. What were the names of the countries in “1984”? Basically, you know, whatever they were called: Russia Russia Russia is the enemy, when we crush Russia with our Chinese allies, life will be good, finally; we’ll finally enjoy being slaves, etc. And then: one fine day, China China China; China is the enemy, when we finally crush the Chinese with the help of our Russian allies…. And if you ask questions, they get “confused”. “No, that’s literally not the case. This country has been at war with the Russians and allied to China for a thousand years; the situation you are describing, is, simply not the case….”

Right? They literally explain how the system works: and then, if you point out that that’s how they literally fucking run, ~~~their own goddamn literature class~~~…. It’s like, the next step, is to have you talk to a man with a large gun, who isn’t too bright: and gets very angry.

Because what you’re describing: simply is not the case, right.

…. (growling) “Knowledge is subversive. And anyway: it’s dishonest. It’s dishonest to live in a country, believing your own country to be rotten: and that’s all you get, for rooting around your nose, in things that aren’t any of your business, and which people haven’t always said.”
(a laugh of contempt) “What the hell is wrong with these people? Of course I have a right to know that the system is rotten…. How in God’s name can I be expected to run the system—if I don’t even know how it works! Uneducated lemmings! They’re an embarrassment!…. No no: don’t teach that one anything. It’s a waste: it’s a waste, of time, and of ~my~ money….”

…. I guess it is sorta curious from a gender POV too: the intelligent nervous-angry adult male and the stupid unconsciously-violent “child” male, right.

(Star Wars) “It’s an older code, sir, but it checks out.”

…. Cheap, minimalist interiors, plus, “those Western magazines ranch men love to read and scoff at and secretly believe”.

~I guess the corresponding women’s mythology would involve expensive, busy interiors, and those film star magazines that housewives love to read and scoff at and secretly believe, right.

…. “…. dressed in blue jeans”

The Danes call jeans, cowboybukser: cowboy-pants. They are not Danish, right, those pants….

…. Let me tell you about the guys: there was the blacksmith, Whitey, he was so clean, he used to make his own shampoo out of the beans we fed him, and he left some for you—and that’s the honest truth, I’m not playing you—and then there’s the stable buck: but we just call him Epithet. Last Christmas, we shook his hand, and then the very next day, we kicked him in the teeth, but this Christmas, I think we’ll do something special….

~Yeah: it’s like he’s really trying…. John was really trying, sometimes, anyway…. But yeah: it’s like, I forget the name psychologists give to it, like the crowd effect, or something, right: some random guy falls down with weakness on Generic Number Avenue in New York, and, since a million and a half people pass him by, each person has a negligible individual responsibility: so of course, they all ignore him, and he freezes to death, instead of getting Tylenol and living another day, right…. (trying to point like an aristocratic tutor from the 1500s) “You know, I think that John Steinbeck de-racism’d American literature…. (shrugs) Let’s just watch ‘Madame Web’. It’s about a white girl, a Millennial, and she sticks it to the zoomers.” ~(general murmurs of agreement)

…. It’s hard to tell exactly what JS thought about the issue, or even what he wanted-to-think, wanted-to-promote, but it is similar to the situation that it’s “patriotic” to complain about: Colombian guy stocking shelves, customer asks a question, he finds mi-amigo-el-gringo-del-norte, says, Lady need help; lady walks away muttering about stupid immigrants.

…. Family ties: the closest thing to altruism, permissible. You want to be nice to somebody, lie, and say you’re family, sure…. But it’s all very suspicious….

…. Curley. Like his name is Blackie, or Illegitimate Son…. In a weird way, it takes a lot of chutzpah, not to censor the press; you know. “Yeah, that’s what I said…. Why? You got a problem with the way things work?…. Punk?”

…. And this is why women write books now, omg, (chuckles). “Helen of Troy was not a heartless bitch: a novel” (Not just a disposable tart series)

~Where do you think JS is going with this, right…. I mean, obviously Lennie is going to kill someone, right, but….

—It’s like: someone runs over a pedestrian on the sidewalk with their car, (“people shouldn’t be so close to the road!”), and the cop, who saw the whole thing: puts his hand to his chin, to consider his journey….

~(Downfall Hitler slapping the table in Full Blitzkrieg Mode) She offered to do whatever I wanted! She offered to do! Whatever, I wanted! (hands) If she weren’t another man’s property: I would have destroyed it! (wants an answer) Was the first man who woman murdered—a Jew? No! It was Christ!
~(white woman tears out in the hall)
~(helpful white woman) Well, isn’t this a nice look for you, little missy!

…. Gosh, an attractive man is maybe a king, nobility, perhaps an inventor, a scientist, a “temple dancer”….

And an attractive woman is Satan reborn as a rat, you know. 😮‍💨

[But yeah: be awesome; it’s ok….]

(chuckles) (sigh-laughs) Fuck this country, right…. (smiles, shakes head) Fucking morons…. Morons, everywhere you go….

…. Maybe if they were going to kill the four weakest of the nine pups, they could have had the temple dancer/senator/king, say a prayer for their souls, make a little thing of it. As opposed to killing them, the way you might exchange cards in a card game, you know.

…. And yeah:

—Lemme tell ya a secret about Weirdo-Name. (Lennie and Curley and Slim: these are not real names, people. And then randomly: George. Like, SUPER-normal. It would be like, a gaggle of Botswanan missionaries trying to re-bleach Whitey, and then like, one dyed-in-the-wool country fucker, like, singing: When I think, the Fourth of July…. I think, of you…. And then the African guys holding themselves very stiff: and one blurts out randomly, Praise Jesus…. Like, I don’t know: it’s just not healthy, it’s not a good spectrum: it’s either…. Like Renaissance Fair Car Oils, or…. Like a runaway tradhusband, you know. It’s like, This is not okay. You people need to pull it together. Displaced middle class stiffs and pre-hippie weirdness isn’t so bad, but…. Is this really what life is about? Talk to me, baby. But yeah….) Weirdo Name…. Screws his WIFE. Yeah, yeah. He doesn’t just punch the time clock: he does SEXUAL WIFE STUFF…. He prepares for it.
—(shakes head) “There will come a time when the church will not abide sound doctrine.” That’s what Paul said, AFTER, he got done killing people, home boy. After he got saved: he sent a warning through the Portal, to warn Doctor Watson!

~Like, what do you do with this shit, right. Fucking, people…. No, I don’t mean like, fucking-people, like a verb phrase; I’m talking adjective phrase, homie….

…. It’s an interesting story. Things continue to crop up, naturally enough, thematically: but in a similar way, of a similar hue and nature—like, I don’t understand art~ but maybe if you had a red and a green, together they’d make an orange or a yellow, right: new things would emerge, along similar lines. And the plot, too, isn’t THAT surprising. To be fair to me, even Very casually directed movies, include some scenes that are hard to literally predict, right…. It’s certainly not an uninteresting story, by any means. Within the limitations set down, it’s rather well told. Of course, these people couldn’t have understood themselves without limitation and exclusion: to use a less American sport-example than baseball, a tennis court is almost only lines, right? It’s a system of limitation and exclusion imposed on free flying tennis balls, you know…. ~shrugs~. I mean, it is what it is. You could even say that, sometimes, they understood their lives; it’s an interesting story.

…. This isn’t bad writing. Much of it is pretty good. Not surprising, from our vantage point in time. But it’s competent, and sometimes is even rather well told.

…. Being put on a pedestal strongly militates for defanging—against being taken seriously, essentially—but it is a good story. It’s like that Tolstoy novel that no one is supposed to read: ‘Resurrection’, except for the lack of the trial crap, and what would, for anyone other than Levin himself, be extreme-excessive-length, right…. It’s not a story you write to be liked, in the conventional way: none of those “conversations” we all dutifully have—Oh! And YOU feel as the others do, as well! How good! We all feel, as those others do. It is good to feel, as those others do. ~I guess a conservative would think that morality, essentially.

Right? It’s something else; that other thing. Not anti-joy, but anti…. ‘Morality’, you know.

…. Yeah, it’s not an adventure, right. People don’t know how to divide things up on their minds. How to talk or classify. Half of our laws, at least, are about being clever enough and wealthy enough to be worthy to be even considered by the law, right…. Rationalist civilization holds that stupidity is unworthy, essentially immoral: practically a crime…. And of course, the American touch is the mob justice, right: classic.

But yeah: childish males are dangerous beasts, you know?….

A simple point, but, crushing, right….

⚰️

And yeah: it’s very American…. All the Euro empires like Russia and America have their tyrannical laws and weird court crap, so there are many stories here in the USA like a sort of ‘Resurrection’ type thing, but something about the un-brain’d large man who kills shit because he’s confused, and the situation getting handled by mob justice, makes you want to go, USA! USA! USA!

This is our story….

(shakes head) And yeah, people talk about things like, if it’s not to hard to work the pages into your day, that it ain’t worth shit, right; and the other way, is to defang-by-pedestal, right….

But yeah: it almost makes you believe in the court system and the 21st century—it really, almost, does. The current century becomes plausible, if still not quite believable, lol.

…. Childish aggressive males are defs a problem in most human societies, though, it seems to me, yeah….

…. Although the nature writing doesn’t drive the plot, which is of course centered around the human world, it doesn’t constitute one of the most pleasant parts of the book: which is very true to life for both the 20th century civilization, as well as the one on the earth, today….

And yeah: if someone had taught George Milton to see continuity, despite the obvious differences, between his strength and weakness, his capacity for work and his need for, shall we call it, non-work: or perhaps just weakness~ yeah, to see the continuity between that, despite the obvious differences, for a human, and writing like, “The deep green pool of the Salinas River was still in the late afternoon. The sun had left the valley to go….” ~and so on, and so forth:

Then, he could have described his situation, in a way that would have had an enormous different…. Settle, you know; it would have settled different.

Which isn’t to say that there aren’t other issues: why it always has to be male executives “running”, the engineers, so to speak, (and to put aside the issue of math, or whatever, which isn’t actually the most highly paid skill: but yes, “I eat math, for breakfast” ~’Madame Web’…. God, that was a terrible movie….), because men are just more likable than women, right; and that’s why there has to be war and class and alienation: because men are more likable than women—and so men have got to hurt each other; because that’s the male thing; the likable thing, right….

~In the end, man just has to try to find the woman in him, right…. I know: not the most traditional working-class-male point-of-view…. It’s not that class doesn’t matter: because it obviously does…. Class and gender are both the one prejudice that we’re proud of, right. (You’re not supposed to think about what people tell you too hard, or look at it systematically.) Of course, back then, race was also the great prejudice we were proud of, right…. Of course, since that time, there’s been a mental-slight-of-hand, you know….

I’m not trying to be precious. Animals do have an intelligence, and any intelligence, can be disturbed, right. But I think that without doubt, it was the humans and not the mice, who constituted the most disturbed species population, of the Salinas River Valley, you know….

~I mean, I hate to take Agent Smith’s side: but he’s not a poorly-written or one-dimensional character, for all the BS floating around in his noggin….

…. “Aunt Clara”: yes, virtually ALL of the moralists in society, with the exception of virtually all of the paid professionals, in society, are women…. Including the moralists in a man’s own head, right….

How well do the “women” (and or…. “Aunt Clara”, lol), perform their task…. When they’re essentially taken to task with how inferior they are, simply as women: pretty much, from the day that they’re born, right?….

In this way, the “morality” of inferiority is…. Born!

…. “Gonna do it soon…. No, Lennie. I ain’t mad. I never been mad, an’ I ain’t now. That’s a thing I want you to know.”

And as a matter of fact, you should know that things always work out in this country, Mr. Small: say, let’s you an me go see that movie made by that man, Frank Capra: we could make a day of it….

~But yeah: as much as I tentatively have this plan to take an interest in the lower rungs of the legal trade, somewhere, and as much as this book paints a picture accurate rather than complimentary of, illegal justice, basically…. But I mean, even today: if this were to happen somehow, given what the courts, and especially the prisons and all that shit is like…. It’s like, one of the two variations on illegal justice seems more humane, you know, than the judges and the courts and the prisons and the legal beatings by the professional guards and the mumbo-jumbo Latin bullshit, you know….

(shakes head) Out sitting by a tree, or with a woman, you can believe in this place…. But a lot of the rest of the time, it’s like…. Motherfucker, you know. God damn this…. “civilization”, you know….

People say it, like it’s a good thing, right.

what an amazing book. One that sticks with you, even after it's over.

I think the last line is, by far, the most upsetting part. ( )

Have read this a second time for book Club and just as good second time around.

I just love Of Mice and Men and am delighted to have read my second Steinbeck book and enjoyed it so much. This is the story of two friends George and his large simple minded friend Lennie who are both drifters with nothing in the world except each other and a dream of owning land and settling down raising rabbits and "liven of the fatta da lan" and having peace in their lives. I love the characters of this book and how Steinbeck describes them, they get right inside your head. The plot of this novel is so simple yet very sharp and well written and the reader is drawn very quickly into the story. While reading this book I could see other book that I have read came from the characters and plot of this novel. This is a very small book just over a 100 pages but a wonderful read that leaves you wanting more of Steinbecks wonderful story telling. A 5 Star read. ( )