If Steinbeck wasn’t dead he’d be the greatest living America Author!

 Have you read Steinbeck at school?  Or just not read anything he wrote at all perhaps?  Well, I suggest that you are missing out on one of America’s greatest Authors.  I’m not English student, and I can’t tell you too much about structure of English, or the use of language.  But basically the way in which he builds up the personal relationship between the reader and his characters is really something quite special.  By creating individual characters, which we are drawn to, Steinbeck allows us to be taken through broad, abstract events, or ideas from a personal perspective. 

One might look at any of his books to see this combination of the personal and the broad.  In East of Eden he follow often tragic lives, with personal details about families, births, deaths, relationships, and illness.  But over all this, is the idea of sin, salvation and free will. 

Every book seems to follow this amazing two tier system, whereas the details of individuals lives take up on a tour of a bigger landscape.  In the Grapes of wrath, depression and mass migration are viewed through the eyes of families, through abortion, with tragic clarity.  Even in his autobiographical ‘travels with Charlie’ Steinbeck uses his own travels across America to illustrate the changing nation, and the political issues of the day.   

When an idea is abstract, like economic depression, or sin, or complex, like free will or redemption we can often be lost, bored, or confused in it all.  It can also sometimes seem so impersonal, and so distant.  By bringing in people who we are make to really care about, Steinbeck personalise these broad themes, in a way that is seldom achieved.  If you haven’t read Steinbeck it is therefore my suggestion that now is the time!!