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Summary
Summary
A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression
They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation.
Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within their grasp. But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations of a flirtatious woman, nor predict the consequences of Lennie's unswerving obedience to the things George taught him.
"A thriller, a gripping tale . . . that you will not set down until it is finished. Steinbeck has touched the quick." -- The New York Times
Author Notes
In recent years Steinbeck has been elevated to a more prominent status among American writers of his generation. If not quite at the world-class artistic level of a Hemingway or a Faulkner, he is nonetheless read very widely throughout the world by readers of all ages who consider him one of the most "American" of writers.
Born in Salinas County, California on February 27, 1902, Steinbeck was of German-Irish parentage. After four years as a special student at Stanford University, he went to New York, where he worked as a reporter and as a hod carrier. Returning to California, he devoted himself to writing, with little success; his first three books sold fewer than 3,000 copies. Tortilla Flat (1935), dealing with the paisanos, California Mexicans whose ancestors settled in the country 200 years ago, established his reputation. In Dubious Battle (1936), a labor novel of a strike and strike-breaking, won the gold medal of the Commonwealth Club of California. Of Mice and Men (1937), a long short story that turns upon a melodramatic incident in the tragic friendship of two farm hands, written almost entirely in dialogue, was an experiment and was dramatized in the year of its publication, winning the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. It brought him fame.
Out of a series of articles that he wrote about the transient labor camps in California came the inspiration for his greatest book, The Grapes of Wrath (1939), the odyssey of the Joad family, dispossessed of their farm in the Dust Bowl and seeking a new home, only to be driven on from camp to camp. The fiction is punctuated at intervals by the author's voice explaining this new sociological problem of homelessness, unemployment, and displacement. As the American novel "of the season, probably the year, possibly the decade," it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940. It roused America and won a broad readership by the unusual simplicity and tenderness with which Steinbeck treated social questions. Even today, The Grapes of Wrath remains alive as a vivid account of believable human characters seen in symbolic and universal terms as well as in geographically and historically specific ones. Ma Joad is one of the most memorable characters in twentieth-century American fiction. It is her courage that sustains the family. Steinbeck's best and most ambitious novel after The Grapes of Wrath is East of Eden (1952), a saga of two American families in California from before the Civil War through World War I. Cannery Row (1945), The Wayward Bus (1947), and Sweet Thursday (1955) are lighter works that find Steinbeck returning to the lighthearted tone of Tortilla Flat as he recounts picaresque adventures of modern-day picaros. The Winter of Our Discontent (1961) struck some reviewers as being appropriately titled because of its despairing treatment of humanity's fall from grace in a wasteland world where money is king.
Steinbeck also wrote important nonfiction, including Russian Journal (1948) in collaboration with the photographer Robert Capa; Once There Was a War (1958) and America and Americans (1966), which features pictures by 55 leading photographers and a 70-page essay by Steinbeck. His interest in marine biology led to two books primarily about sea life, Sea of Cortez (1941) (with Edward F. Ricketts) and The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951). Travels with Charley (1962) is an engaging account of his journey of rediscovery of America, which took him through approximately 40 states.
Steinbeck was married three times and died in New York City on December 20, 1968 of heart disease and congestive heart failure. He was 66, and had been a life-long smoker. (Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Guardian Review
You can't blame theatres for scheduling productions that will get guaranteed audiences, but you do wonder whether Birmingham Rep would be mounting a stage version of John Steinbeck's classic novel if it weren't a set text for thousands of teenagers. But at least they do it handsomely, and there is much to be said for the fact that the production hasn't been put in the hands of meeker talents. Cast to the hilt, it is directed by no less than the Rep's newly appointed artistic director Jonathan Church. And a very good job he makes of it too. No, the difficulty here is the adaptation itself, which raises questions about the whole issue of page-to-stage adaptations - why do them unless they are more than just a quick substitute for reading the book? This version (for which nobody is credited, so maybe Steinbeck did it himself) is faithful to the novel, offers us both characters and motivations, and bowls along. You certainly come away knowing the story, but you don't come away with any richer an experience than if you had stayed at home with the novel. There are simply not enough good reasons why these two and a half hours are in theatrical form. Watching it, you suspect that Church knows this too, and is making a big effort to disguise the fact. Designer Simon Higlet's impressive set recreates in detail the Californian ranch where George and Lennie land up, and Tim Mitchell's beautiful lighting follows the emotional arc of the play, turning from toasty sunsets to blue flinty shadows as disaster overtakes the men and dreams fade. George Costigan turns in a good performance as George, and his relationship with Mathew Kelly's appealing Lennie, a giant of a man with the IQ of a small child, is totally convincing. But you find yourself wanting less narrative and more theme, and wondering whether it is possible to inject the same kind of theatricality into these male-dominated classics as Shared Experience has done with girly literature such as The Mill on the Floss and The Magic Toyshop. Until November 24. Box office: 0121-236 4455. Caption: article-mice12.1 Designer Simon Higlet's impressive set recreates in detail the Californian ranch where George and Lennie land up, and Tim Mitchell's beautiful lighting follows the emotional arc of the play, turning from toasty sunsets to blue flinty shadows as disaster overtakes the men and dreams fade. George Costigan turns in a good performance as George, and his relationship with Mathew Kelly's appealing Lennie, a giant of a man with the IQ of a small child, is totally convincing. - Lyn Gardner.
