Book Corner – November 2018 (2)

The Winter of Our Discontent – John Steinbeck

Taking its title from the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Richard III, this was Steinbeck’s last novel, published in 1961, charting the trials and tribulations of Ethan Allen Hawley. When we first meet Ethan he is down on his luck. His family fortune, he comes from whaling stock, have been dissipated by the recklessness of his grandfather and father and a mysterious fire which sent their boat to the bottom of the ocean. Ethan is just about making ends meet as a shopkeeper in a store owned by an immigrant, Alfio Marullo, who entered the country illegally as it turns out. Ethan is contented in his humdrum existence, finding solace in the rows of cans and groceries on the shelves of his store which he addresses in his morning ritual.

What characterises Ethan is his honesty but soon forces shake him out of his comfort zone. On Good Friday, perhaps like Judas, his resolution is shaken by the temptation of thirty pieces of silver. A sales rep enters the shop and offers him a bribe which he rejects, a fortune teller, the town’s femme fatale, Margie Young-Hunt, relays the news that the cards reveal that he will be wealthy and he is provoked by the remarks of his wife, Mary, and the dissatisfaction of his children to consider improving his lot.

The fascination of the book is the moral dilemma in which this honest, upright citizen finds himself. Ethan debates whether he should stray from his hitherto impeccable code, at one point, in a fine piece of sophistry, reminding himself that “a crime is something someone else commits.” He also provides a bleak reading of the direction of America in 1960: “a year when secret fears come into the open, when discontent stops being dormant and changes gradually to anger.  The whole world stirred with restlessness and uneasiness as discontent moved to anger and anger tried to find outlet in action, any action so long as it is violent.”  By dispensing with his moral compass, he is merely following the zeitgeist.

Ethan’s plan is to defraud his childhood friend, the local drunk, Danny Taylor, who owns a piece of land that developers are anxious to get their hands on in order to build an airport, and to turn his boss in to the immigration authorities. But Ethan is uneasy at heart and the book draws to a conclusion in a way that leaves the reader to make up their mind as to what precisely happened. To my mind, he draws back from doing away with himself, the key passage, surely, being his thought that he must try to help his daughter “else another light go out.”  But Steinbeck leaves matters deliberately ambiguous and the finale is open to other interpretations.

It is a remarkable and disturbing analysis of someone’s moral decline. In truth, at times it seems a little superficial in its analysis and at times the plot line seems wildly improbable. But the mental anguish that Ethan experiences is one that the reader can associate with. Sometimes desperate situations require desperate measures.

For the literary critic, the book is unusual in that it broadly uses two narrative voices, the opening two chapters of each of the two Parts being in the third person and then the remaining chapters in each section featuring, predominantly but not exclusively, the voice and thoughts of Ethan himself. Stylistically, though, Steinbeck writes in a clear, vigorous manner and the quality and pace of writing carries the reader along, even if they have some qualms about the plotting.

I didn’t consider it to be as good as Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden but was well worth reading.

Book Corner – September 2018 (1)

East of Eden – John Steinbeck

Published in 1952, this was the book that Steinbeck was building up through his career to write, or so he claimed. He wanted to describe the rich farmland country that is California’s Salinas Valley for his two sons, to whom the book is dedicated, and the most empathetic character, the Irish dreamer and fount of knowledge, Samuel Hamilton, is based on his maternal grandfather. The narrator of the story, as we slowly start to realise as the novel progresses, is the youthful author himself.

It is a sprawling novel, brutally realistic at times but with moments of comedy, illuminated by Steinbeck’s taut writing style. Taking its title from Genesis 4.16 – and Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the Land of Nod, on the east of Eden – on one level it explores how the intertwined destinies of the Trasks and the Hamiltons mirror those of Cain and Abel.

The book is littered with biblical allusions. The names of all the major protagonists begin with either a C or an A – Charles and Adam, Caleb and Aron, Cathy Ames and Abra. Cain was a “worker of the ground” and Charles is a farmer and Caleb makes a small fortune by speculating in bean crops. Abel is a “keeper of sheep” whilst Aron trains to be a shepherd of human flocks by training to be a priest. God rejected Cain’s gift, leading him to kill Abel. Cyrus rejects Charles’ gift, provoking his son to launch a near-murderous attack on his brother Adam, while a generation later Adam rejects Cal’s gift of money as tainted from exploiting people’s needs and urges him to follow Aron’s example. Following his rejection, Caleb reveals to Aron that their mother is a prostitute, a revelation which unhinges Aron who then goes off to fight in the First World War and is killed.

There are many more parallels but it would be wrong to see the book purely as a re-run of the Cain and Abel in an American setting. It is about rejection and whether we can be really certain that someone loves us, even someone we think is close to us. It also explores an idea that has fascinated many a writer from the time of the great Athenian tragedians onwards – whether humans have free will to make their own decisions and take their own course of action.

Perhaps Steinbeck sums the philosophy, or perhaps theosophy, that runs through the book in this paragraph; “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. .” The key to understanding the book is the Hebrew word, timshel, which means thou mayest. After the murder of Abel, God speculates whether Cain will overcome sin. The word he uses is timshel, mistranslated in the King James version of the Bible and other subsequent editions as thou shall. In Steinbeck’s world, man has the ability to choose a path between good and evil. His ability to overcome evil is not pre-ordained.

Literature is full of femme fatales and Cathy Ames, the mother of Caleb and Aron, is right up there as one of the worst monsters. Indeed, she is described as a monster when Steinbeck introduces her and her malevolent influence shapes the saga. The most fascinating character, I thought, was the Chinese servant, Lee, whose diligent researches unlocked the key to timshel and who, with Samuel Hamilton, knocks some sense into Adam Trask.

Despite its somewhat heavy subject matter, it is a fast and entertaining read. Thought-provoking and entertaining is a powerful combination.