Grapes of Wrath

In my first post I had mentioned books. There are so many of them and even after reading thousands of them, I feel that there is a big world to explore. Here is one that has found a relatively longer span of attention for me despite the addition of several that I read after them. Steinbeck is essentially an author who believes in putting all the focus and merit to the story itself without making a conscious effort to make writing look like an art. And I guess that is what makes writing an art in itself. "Grapes of Wrath" is a writing that has the strength to make you forget that someone actually wrote it. Some time back I had taken some of my pieces to the author I like the most and what he had to say was that it made for a 'good diary writing'.. To be honest, it did not make a lot of sense to me. I looked at it as a diplomatic way of telling me that it is bad writing. (I guess it was and that is the reason I will think a million times before posting it here.) After reading Steinbeck, I simply couldn't try and put a face to the author. I could not even put a face to the characters. They appeared to be on a stage (something thats charecteristic of 1980s bollywood potboilers) changing clothes and faces and backdrop and even the events.. But they managed to keep the story same. One has to agree that that is the art and mastery of writing.
I have been reading and re-reading this book for last couple of weeks and haven't been able to get over it. The backdrop, the politics, the facts behind the fiction, are all a different world to me. Separated by several decades. Yet, there are factors that connect you straight to the book. Tom is a man who reminds you of someone you wanted to be in school after being expelled. Ma stands for strength in adversity. Pa for being an understanding human being. Amidst everything, the characters Steinbeck has created are ephemeral yet so touchingly representative of human strength and dignity. The language of the characters is also communicative of the understanding of the lot Steinbeck has wanted to portray. The Scriptures' discussion between Tom and Ma when she comes to ask him to go (and her understanding the fact that children, especially adoloscents are likely to make mistakes in the heat of the moment) has a stark resemblance to the discussion of Indian scriptures I have overheard travelling to my village. It makes you wonder about the irony that when you are engrossed in reading such stories in fiction, you get appalled. But when you are just skipping through the newspapers, you miss the stories. There are quite a few Joads living out there, but we do not have the time to read through the stories in between the lines of the news columns. To sum it up, Grapes of Wrath is like a huge picture on a very large canvass that portrays the human life with a perspective that is way larger than we choose to adopt towards life. A must read.

PS: So is East of Eden and many other Steinbecks......