i cannot decide.
i loved of mice and men

the red pony is the biggest piece of literary-rectal-meat i have ever read.

and grapes of wrath... good, but at parts,. boring as ... urm
... really really boring things.


oppinions?

I read The Grapes of Wrath for the first time when I was about 13. It had a pretty big impact. I was later forced to read it in the context of a grade 12 English class and this made me very hateful of everything including existence – imagine “studying,â€

I'm sorry to report that he was an overrated, sentimental hack as a writer.

CRAP

As far as I'm concerned, East of Eden could quite possibly be the greatest book ever written. A long and garrulous one indeed, but the way this story unfolds is pure literary magic. These days people are so caught up reading Beat literature that guys like Steinbeck have almost become marginalized. Many of the beats are brilliant, but Steinbeck, Hemingway, Fante Sr., Fitzgerald, and London mustn't be forgotten- in a weird way they help keep reality intact.

Stef wrote:As far as I'm concerned, East of Eden could quite possibly be the greatest book ever written. A long and garrulous one indeed, but the way this story unfolds is pure literary magic.

I concur. I didn't expect to like this book but it was absolutely fantastic. I read Of Mice And Men just before it and it reminded me how great Steinbeck is. Mind you he doesn't give the leading ladies a sympathetic character.

Angus Jung wrote:I'm sorry to report that he was an overrated, sentimental hack as a writer.

CRAP

Agreed.

He had nice penmanship.

Another reason to lament Robert Aktman's passing is that he'll never get to make The Wayward Bus into a movie. This is a wonderful book, an overlooked gem, and it perfectly suits Altman's overriding interest in disparate groups of people thrown together and forced to interact.

I haven't read East of Eden for some mysterious reason, but these books are not crap:

The Wayward Bus
Of Mice and Men
The Grapes of Wrath
Cannery Row
Sweet Thursday


I also hear that the journal of the Sea of Cortez, whatever it's called, is lots of fun.

i've only read The Grapes of Wrath and i liked it...i know some of his stuff (most commonly cited is The Pearl) is supposed to be pretty darn bad...but then East of Eden is supposed to be very good...i know i don't have a whole lot to go on, but since i liked the one book i've read and since i'll assume i'd like at least one more i'll say NOT CRAP...

I first read Grapes Of Wrath, from beginning to finish when I was 14.
I thought that was a fucking achievement considering English was not my first language.
You guys would never fucking understand this anyway.

Reading from pages to pages (took me about 1 week), I could sort of visualize everything ! Amazing.

20 years later (yep ! You gotta fucking believe me !!), I managed to find the DVD of that movie here in sunny Malaysia.
I was so fucking happy !!!!!!!

Still, I haven't seen it, just keeping it maybe will never watch it I guess.
I don't want the movie to ruin the scenarios that I have in my head !
Fucking Ha !

I also read Cannery Row. Something like, fuck... can't remember exactly.
Well, that's because I had read about how Raquel Welch was suing her film company for giving that role to Debra Winger !

When I was 18, I had to drop out of college cause I was real po'. I took a job as a switchboard operator at an insurance company which was located across the street from the downtown branch of the Columbus library. I had my own little office off the mailroom in the basement and never saw anyone, save the company president who would stop in on the coldest days and ask if I was still riding my bike to work.

I was very embarassed about not going to college and decided to read a bunch of books, my own little pre-fab literary canon, so I didn't feel so much like a degenerate on the road to a lifetime in retail.

I would trudge over to the library a couple of times a week with friend's English syllabi stuffed in my pockets and then would read for hours a day between connecting the phone calls of the Columbus Life Insurance Company in various accents for $6.25 an hour.

The first book I read was East of Eden and it entranced me with its great golden imagery of the Salinas Valley, Catherine, a most excellent if a little simplistic female protagonist, humble Lee, the Chinese cook who spoke in Pidgin to be privy to better conversation, and mighty Samuel. There are very few books whose characters stay so clearly with me, but this one, the story of Cain and Abel re-cast over a couple of generations, just sticks.

The deep satisfaction that came from reading this book--it made me paint, it made me read the Bible as literature for the first time--compelled me to read nearly all of Steinbeck's other books in that year and a half that I answered phones from 8 to 5. They all let me down after that wonderful golden book.

Winter of Our Discontent pleased me just a bit, but just because he left the end dark.

East of Eden stays in my top 15.
I still vote crap.

edit: numerous spelling and grammatical errors