(no subject)

Julie's started reading The Grapes of Wrath to me. It's one of her favorite books, and one I'm surprised to find I never even opened. It's quite nice so far. Steinbeck's very strong with cinematic detail--I guess the half-case against him is that he's too much so, gets caught in the goings-on of reality, where you can't not eventually hit a false note and where no false note is tolerable? And, more importantly, you wander too deep into reality and you maybe lose the reason you had for visiting it. Julie's confused why people never even mention The Wayward Bus, possibly her favorite book, to praise it or even attack it, the way they attack East of Eden, and I see what she means. It's all character sketches, united by a loose Canterbury-Talesish narrative arc. And I have to say it's pretty lovely. Maybe it's because I see so much of Julie in it, but it's awfully good. He does hit some of those false notes, and sometimes too much of a movie note, or a c. 1950 magazine story note; but for the most part his knowledge of how people and things work, and work together, and his kindness, are pretty damn remarkable. The last character sketch is probably the most powerful. Basically an attempt to destroy hate, the whole book: know someone well enough and you just can't. Needing to hate, we avoid this knowledge; and to protect that evasion, avoid the knowledge that it is an evasion. At his best, Steinbeck's a fair stab at an American George Eliot.