What's wrong with me?
Why don't I see the charming knaves and bums, the Knights of the Round Table, the glorious good paisano in the book? Where is the faithful friendship, the good deeds, the nobility they write about in reviews and reviews? Why do I see just drunks who are only busy looking for where to get food, wine, and sometimes women? Who either commit their base deeds without thinking, or, even worse, give them a theoretical basis, soothing their conscience?
John Steinbeck III was an American writer. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939 and the novella Of Mice and Men, published in 1937. In all, he wrote twenty-five books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and several collections of short stories.
Yes, this is a dodgy novel, a classic of the genre, the adventures of a cunning crook who cheats good-hearted philistines. Separate funny stories from the life of the crooks. Of course, it can be fun to read about how a crook cheated a greedy merchant or stole something from another thief, especially if that crook evokes sympathy and his victims do not. As a rule, the victims of knaves are unpleasant and nasty characters, and their deception is seen more as punishment for stupidity, or for an even nastier act.
That's not the case in Tortilla Flat. At first, I enjoyed reading it, I liked the beautiful language the book was written with, I was amused by the shenanigans and silliness of the characters, but then I got more and more dreary.
First of all, the characters had no purpose. They didn't help the peasants to teach the greedy boi a lesson, they didn't ridicule the cruel and foolish rulers, and in the end they weren't even looking for Madame Petukhova's treasure! More precisely, the goal was to have a glass of wine. Or better yet, two. Or three. And so 365 days a year.
Second, they constantly covered their thoughts and actions with beautiful words: "Your friends care about you," "Your friends are suffering because of you," etc. And in reality all the caring was primarily about yourself. It is quite possible to steal and drink your pants or a blanket from a friend, it is quite possible to steal the savings of a lifetime, and it is quite possible to beat you to a pulp for it. Such is the rigors of male friendship. Even their friendship with Danny was more a concern for their own well-being, for without Danny they were all vagrants without a roof over their heads.
Third, all these shenanigans are monotonous and boring. Steal, steal, steal, steal. The peak of cunning is to wait until the owner turns away, to steal things from the yard.
But that was half the trouble. It was quite possible to laugh at the story with the treasure or the vacuum cleaner. It was the baby story that got me. Danny's friends brought in a guy with an infant. Everyone knew right away that the baby was very sick and wanted to call a doctor, but the baby's father said no doctor because he didn't trust them. They put the baby in a makeshift cradle and tried to feed him. Then they sat down to drink wine. The father said that if you keep telling the child that he will be a general, he will grow up to be one and live the high life. So everyone came up to the child from time to time and said, "Manuel, you are going to be a general." And the next time they came up, they saw that the baby had died. Such a mishap. But they all admired the baby's father because he wanted the baby to be a general and live well.
- It's a shame," Danny finally said, "that so few parents care so much about their children's happiness. And it's even sadder for us that the little one died, because having such a father deprived him of a truly happy life.
And that's where I broke down. Perhaps I, as a naive untrained reader, didn't understand the full depth of the author's intent or feel the full height of the spiritual aspirations of these simple-hearted and open-minded people, but they all became terribly unpleasant to me. Just as I disliked Venichka, who was sitting at the bedside of a seriously ill child, drinking Lemonade and smearing snot.
Alkars are alkars in Africa, in Monterrey and in Moscow. It's just that the Monterrey guys don't have the Russian self-indulgence that Venichka has, it's simpler, but the essence is the same.
You can romanticize anything, even the drunkards from Tortilla Flat, but not for very long. When you read a couple or three stories about them, it's kind of fun. But when there are a lot of those stories, it gets scary instead of funny. No matter how the story starts, it ends with a binge and a fight, because it can't end with anything else.
By the end of the story, all the romance slides off the characters in dirty bits, and no matter how hard the author tried to sprinkle paisano with gold sequins from King Arthur's table, he could not radically go against the truth of life. Danny, drunk as hell, fell into a shit ravine and broke his neck, the "friends" burned down the house and went their separate ways, without even really attending the funeral of his "friend.
This article was sponosred by Glen Williams
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