Quote of the Day (John Steinbeck, on the Impact of a Light)

"It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone." — American novelist and Nobel Literature laureate John Steinbeck (1902-1968), The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)

Quote of the Day (John Steinbeck, on the ‘Slow, Eating Agony of a Lie’)

“The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost. That's a running sore.” —American novelist and Nobel Literature laureate John Steinbeck (1902-1968), East of Eden (1952)

A (Sort of) Appreciation: John Steinbeck’s ‘The Pearl’

Few works of fiction left so little impression on me in my adolescence as The Pearl. In no small way, in its simple style and obvious symbolism, the 1947 novella by John Steinbeck reminded me of another short work of fiction: Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.

The reaction of Steinbeck’s contemporaries, as summarized by the Nobel Prize laureate’s biographer Jay Parini, could also have applied to Hemingway’s Pulitzer Prize winning book: “naïve” and “simplistic.”

Quickly dismissing both books, I thought little about them for many years, especially after reading longer, more complex works of their creators—erven though, over time, I would continually see them in bookstores and libraries because of their presence on high school or young adult reading lists.

But, re-reading The Old Man and the Sea about a decade ago, I found numerous passages that reminded me of why I was drawn to Hemingway at his best: lean, pure, powerful prose. Similarly, Steinbeck’s empathy for the common man and bone-deep familiarity with their work routines and aspirations for a better life—undoubtedly developed in hours of manual labor in childhood, youth and early adulthood—shine through so much of The Pearl.

At heart, both authors were consciously striving to answer their critics by demonstrating that recent mediocre work did not mean that their best days as writers were behind them, that fame and success hadn’t softened them. At the same time, they transformed their naysayers into malign forces threatening their principal characters (interestingly enough, Latino males who become stand-ins for their creators’ creative midlife crises).

Hemingway’s humble Cuban fisherman Santiago finds himself beset by sharks as he hauls back a marlin, the biggest fish he’s ever caught. Steinbeck’s Mexican-Indian pearl fisherman, Kino, must deal with his fellow villagers, all of whom want a piece of his expected wealth from discovering a priceless pearl, —with some even plotting to kill him for it.

Like other writers who produced prolifically while constantly challenging themselves, Steinbeck’s output could be uneven—marked by highs (The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden) and lows (The Wayward Bus), with his energy often dissipated by outside projects such as film work.

But, if The Pearl doesn’t possess the power of, say, Of Mice and Men, it tells a simple story vividly, with the timeless force of a Biblical parable.

The novella centers on Kino, who, despite his poverty, has lived happily in a hut in a rural village of La Paz in northwest Mexico, with his wife Juana and baby Coyotito.

Then a scorpion stings Coyotito, and though Juana sucks out the poison, the wound keeps swelling, forcing the family to seek emergency medical attention to save the boy’s life.

What I didn’t notice when I first read The Pearl around 45 years ago—but what struck me with full force now—was Steinbeck’s deep compassion for Kino and Juana, who yearn for the freedom from insecurity enjoyed by Anglos. It comes to the fore when the fisherman goes to seek help from a white doctor:  

“This doctor was of a race which for nearly four hundred years had beaten and starved and robbed and despised Kino's race, and frightened it too, so that the indigene came humbly to the door.”

The doctor, stout to the point of caricature because of his greed (“His voice was hoarse with the fat that pressed on his throat”), won’t attend to the baby without payment.

A miracle seems to present itself when Kino comes upon the pearl. But it’s not just any valuable object: it’s a giant “Pearl of the World.”

When Kino celebrates his good fortune by dressing to show off, it shifts the entire social fabric around him, because it enters “into the dreams, the speculations, the schemes, the plans, the futures, the wishes, the needs, the lusts, the hungers of everyone, and the only person that stood in the way and that was Kino, so that he became curiously every man's enemy.”

No wonder that “All manner of people grew interested in Kino—people with things to sell and people with favors to ask.”

What had been a basic use of the money that could come from the pearl—just enough to save a life—has rapidly degenerated into the community’s greed and Kino’s paranoia about protecting his treasure.

Several aspects of this tale made me remember what a compelling voice Steinbeck was for me when I first read him as an adolescent:

Nature: Steinbeck was enthralled by California’s rivers, coast, and farms from an early age, and his novels frequently reflect this sense of awe in the presence of the environment and how it interacted with its inhabitants, as seen in this passage from The Pearl: “The dawn came quickly now, a wash, a glow, a lightness, and then an explosion of fire as the sun arose out of the Gulf. Kino looked down to cover his eyes from the glare. He could hear the pat of the corncakes in the house and the rich smell of them on the cooking plate.”

Sympathy for the underprivileged and marginalized: Steinbeck did something fairly daring for his time—put at the center of his narrative not just the kind of “forgotten man” so often found in fiction beginning with the Great Depression, but a Latino. Even more so than today, a member of such a group would have been dimly understood, at best, by Anglos. Having traveled to Mexico many times—and encountering so many immigrants from Mexico in the Thirties and Forties—he could render their struggles with great understanding.

Toxic masculinity: Women can bring shake and shatter men with their seductiveness in some Steinbeck novels (Of Mice and Men, East of Eden), but more often they stabilize families grown unexpectedly shaky by the weakness of men. In The Pearl, he dissects how false dreams lead men to abuse their partners—specifically through Kino, whose fury at the sensible Juana results in physical brutality, expressed through similes with Biblical overtones: “Kino looked down at her and his teeth were bared. He hissed at her like a snake, and Juana stared at him with wide unfrightened eyes, like a sheep before the butcher.”

A keen grasp of communal psychology: Although a diverse city has so many different components that it is hard to ascribe a particular characteristic to it, a small community is different, as Steinbeck expertly conveys. Perhaps because of his long friendship with marine biologist Ed Ricketts, he realized that towns like Kino’s were like organisms:

“A town has a nervous system and a head and shoulders and feet. A town is a thing separate from all other towns alike. And a town has a whole emotion. How news travels through a town is a mystery not easily to be solved. News seems to move faster than small boys can scramble and dart to tell it, faster than women can call it over the fences.”

Will The Pearl continue to maintain its place on today’s high school reading lists? It might. An article in my local newspaper, The Bergen Record, made me roll my eyes when teenagers offered their opinions on J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (narrator Holden Caulfield was too “whiny”) and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (“boring”).

However, The Pearl seems to have escaped much of this groaning. It offers a character that many minority and underprivileged students find recognizable from their own backgrounds. 

Moreover, it conveys a lesson that youngsters of all backgrounds should learn—and adults from all walks of life should be reminded of: the most priceless things in our lives are what sustains our spirits rather than what fills our bank accounts.

Quote of the Day (John Steinbeck, on Texas as a Mystique)

“I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.” — American novelist and Nobel Literature laureate John Steinbeck (1902-1968), Travels with Charley: In Search of America (1962)

Something to keep in mind, as the nation focuses on Lone Star State debates on abortion, COVID-19 policy, and—perhaps most basic—the meaning of its history.

Quote of the Day (John Steinbeck, on America’s Westward Movement)

“Jody hardly knew when Grandfather started to talk…. ‘I tell those old stories, but they're not what I want to tell.…It wasn't Indians that were important, nor adventures, nor even getting out here. It was a whole bunch of people made into one big crawling beast. And I was the head. It was westering and westering. Every man wanted something for himself, but the big beast that was all of them wanted only westering….

" ‘We carried life out here and set it down the way those ants carry eggs. And I was the leader. The westering was as big as God, and the slow steps that made the movement piled up and piled up until the continent was crossed.

" ‘Then we came down to the sea, and it was done.’ He stopped and wiped his eyes until the rims were red. ‘That's what I should be telling instead of stories.’"—American Nobel Literature laureate John Steinbeck (1902-1968), “The Leader of the People,” in The Red Pony (1937)

The Red Pony was my first John Steinbeck book, and though I have read several more since then, this quarter of interconnected stories has resonated the most with me, along with Of Mice and Men.

“The Leader of the People” especially interested me with its themes of generational conflict (garrulous Grandfather annoys taciturn son-in-law Carl with his oft-told tales of pioneering and Indian fighting), the fascination of boys with adventure stories, and, as seen here, the meaning of the Western movement for the American spirit.

The devastation of the land, the displacement of Native Americans, and the violence and sense of loss involved in this migration are as necessary and important to recall as revisionist historians have told us over the last few decades.

But future historians would also have to incorporate what the California native Steinbeck sensed, over four decades after the U.S. Census Bureau officially declared the closing of the American frontier: that “westering” was possible not just because of a spirit of individualism, but also because of the aspirations and cooperation for the public good on those wagon trains crossing unfamiliar, untamed land.

For anyone wondering, the image accompanying this post shows Jack Elam as Grandfather in the TV movie version of The Red Pony, with Henry Fonda, Maureen O’Hara and Clint Howard as, respectively, the father, mother and young boy. It was broadcast in 1973, around the same time that I read the book, and though not as well-made as the 1949 big screen adaptation starring Robert Mitchum and Myrna Loy, I can still recall it vividly, nearly a half-century after the only time I viewed it.)

(This post is dedicated to the memory of my good friend Ann, who died three months ago. I am sure not only that she loved reading The Red Pony, but also that she would have enjoyed teaching it to her high school students.)

Quote of the Day (John Steinbeck, on His “Very Strong’ Strain of Irish Blood)

“I am half Irish, the rest of my blood being watered down with German and Massachusetts English. But Irish blood doesn't water down very well; the strain must be very strong.”—American novelist and Nobel Literature laureate John Steinbeck (1902-1968), “I Go Back to Ireland,” Collier’s, Jan. 31, 1953, collected in Americaand Americans and Selected Nonfiction, edited by Susan Shillinglaw and Jackson J. Benson (2002)

I don’t think I can wish my readers a “happy” St. Patrick’s Day—there will surely be no marching or celebrating this year. But in the 1840s, when they first came to this country, they didn’t have much to cheer about, either, what with a famine that turned into a plague in their home country and bigotry that awaited them when they came to these shores in absolute desperation.

How did they endure it? Faith, humor, sheer will—and uniting together, as tight as can be, when they were rejected  by native Americans who could have acted more tolerantly and generously but didn’t.

I worry that the current Coronavirus crisis will not only continue to split Americans into warring groups, but that it may even fracture the solidarity of groups yearning to break through, as the Irish were, after long years, finally able to manage. We must not let this happen. 

Let’s hope that the ethnic solidarity celebrated by Steinbeck remains just as strong not only within Irish-American, but among those who have taken their place as emerging groups in America. It may be now, as it was then, the only to survive.

Quote of the Day (John Steinbeck, on the ‘Net of Good and Evil’)

“I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?” —American novelist and Nobel Literature laureate John Steinbeck (1902-1968), East of Eden (1952)

Quote of the Day (John Steinbeck, on Loneliness and Storytelling)

“We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say and to feel—‘Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.’” —American novelist John Steinbeck (1902-1968), “In Awe of Words,” The Exonian, 75th anniversary edition, Exeter University (1930)

Quote of the Day (John Steinbeck, on the ‘Warmth of Summer’)

"What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness?" — Nobel Prize-winning American novelist-playwright John Steinbeck (1902-1968), Travels with Charley: In Search of America (1962)

I’ll try to remember as the temperatures hover around 90 degrees, with humidity to match…