Here is the quote from Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath to demonstrate just why his name ‘the mother road’ was adopted with such tenacity.

"...and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads, 66 is the mother road, the road of flight."

[The full quote is much longer - see if you can find it the next time you read The Grapes of Wrath]

In Claremore I enjoyed the Will Rogers Memorial Museum- a tribute to the cowboy/actor/columnist/philanthropist who was the richest man in showbiz in the 1930s. His famous quote is ‘I’ve never met a man I didn’t like’, and I think people must have been hard pressed not to like him back. 66 is also known as Will Rogers Highway aside from its other monikers (my favorite still being ‘The Mother Road’, from Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath)and I am more interested in trick roping classes than I am ever likely to let on.

Impressive was the JM Davis Gun and Historical Museum, the world’s largest privately owned collection of guns and related artifacts with over 20,000 pieces. I love a shiny rifle- 30 in a fan array: even better. The ancient Chinese hand canon and the 1,200 German beer steins deserve note as well. Mental image of slamming a stein down on a oak table in a dim pub with conviction. I don’t really pound tables in conviction, but I would if I had one of these ancient steins. That’s the unspoken contract implicit in owning an antique stein.

I adore wandering around antique cars, so I was delighted when it turned out that there was a cars show the weekend I was in Claremore. It was like a carnival with rides and vendors and raffles- and of course all those gorgeous cars. To remember: 1956 Ford Sunliner convertible. 1955 ford Fairlane Crown Victoria. and I love the 70s Chevy trucks.

Pero "De ratones y hombres" es también, por encima de todo, la historia de un sueño.

Steinbeck nos presenta el sueño de George y Lennie de tener una vida mejor y de cómo este sueño (que se ve a todas luces y desde el primer instante como una utopía para el lector) es el desencadenante, junto con la escasa inteligencia de Lennie y su inversamente proporcional fuerza, de todos los actos de George y Lennie a lo largo de la novela.

No voy a explicarlo (para quién no lo haya leído), pero el capítulo final es una de las partes más importantes del libro, invitándonos a múltiples reflexiones: ¿es correcto lo que hace George? ¿es moralmente reprobable? ¿hasta qué punto? sin duda nos ofrece la posibilidad de reflexionar acerca de la amistad y lo que estamos dispuestos a hacer por un amigo dadas las extremas condiciones en que se desarrolla el final de la historia.

¿Qué hubieras hecho si te encontraras en la misma situación? creo que la respuesta a esta pregunta nos puede dar una idea de quienes somos y cómo afrontamos la vida.

DE RATONES Y HOMBRES
John STEINBECK

ISBN 978-84-350-3494-4
Trad. de Román A. Jiménez
Páginas : 168 - Formato : 12 x 18 cms.
Encuadernación : Tapa dura
Precio sin IVA : 9,62 €
Precio con IVA : 10,00 €

John Steinbeck

ISBN 950-9009-00-8

Esta es una de las mejores novelas de Steinbeck, con su estilo ágil y con su excelente caracterización de los personajes. Es una novela corta muy recomendable tanto para lectores exigentes como para lectores que quieren ir más allá de los best sellers.

Steinbeck describe de forma magistral lo negro que puede ser un ser humano cuando es movido por la ambición. El personaje principal es Kino, un pescador pobre que tiene ante él la posibilidad de dar a su familia una estabilidad que él nunca antes se imaginó poder ofrecer. Su hijo Koyotito es para él lo más valioso que puede existir y Kino lo sabe muy bien. La ambición que nos muestra Steinbeck no es únicamente la de Kino sino la de el resto de los pobladores de la región, pobres y ricos, puesto que la ambición no conoce niveles socioeconómicos.

Creo que en la vida de toda persona llega al menos un momento en que se tiene que tomar la decisión de hacer lo que va con las convicciones y tener ciertas consecuencias por la decisión tomada, o bien hacer lo que va en contra de las convicciones y tener otras consecuencias muy distintas. Por ejemplo, cuando una persona se corrompe se trata de un hecho que marca la vida hasta de las personas que lo rodean, se trata de una decisión que marca de por vida puesto que es un círculo vicioso, éste es alimentado por la ambición, que dado que llevó a la corrupción es un deseo enfermizo y por lo tanto no tiene un límite para ser saciada. Creo firmemente en que hacer lo correcto y respetar las convicciones llena más que seguir un deseo enfermizo que nunca podrá ser llenado y que además marcará negativamente nuestras vidas. También que a toda acción corresponde una reacción de igual magnitud sólo que dicha consecuencia puede ocurrir en cualquier momento antes de que terminen nuestras vidas.

Steinbeck nos dejó 'La Perla' no solamente para disfrutarla sino también para hacer una introspección muy importante dado que la ambición no es ajena a ningún ser humano.

Esta es una novela que toda persona debería de leer.

Chinezii ridică Olimpiada asta la un grad de iluzie/grandoare globală. Au talent, sunt mulți, puterea lor e dată de Număr. Și când îți mai bagă și o voce inocentă de șapte ani în deschidere, nu poți să nu te înduioșezi și să-i privești cu condescendență. Va fi arma noului război. Un zâmbet pe buze și în colțul ochilor unei fetițe de 9 ani. Da, nouă ani. Lin Miaoke. Parcă suntem într-o scriere de-a lui Steinbeck, copii care "salvează" lumea și o re-vrăjesc.

Manipularea sentimentală și înduioșarea capitalistă se mută în Beijing. Da, Made in China !

I just keep yearning to see the world - and I have not even seen my country as a whole. The pieces I have met do not even constitute a small part of entirety. They are just disjointed pieces of a jig saw. I wish I could travel through my country as completely as he traveled his. He might not still have seen a Nation, but he saw them together, changing through state borders. I don't think anyone ever sees a whole nation - perhaps foreigners do it more completely, but it is worth giving a shot to know the place that made you more deeply .

Quizás Steinbeck sea el escritor estadounidense más famoso y representativo del siglo XX, ganó el Premio Nobel de Literatura en 1962. Durante su vida se dedicó a varias actividades con las que buscaba el reconocimiento, extrañamente cuando finalmente logró el reconocimiento mediante premios como el Pullitzer y el New York Drama Critics Award se recluyó en lugar de aprovechar la fama que tanto tiempo buscó. Su obra principal es Las uvas de la ira, que fue prohibida en California.

En general todos sus libros son ricos mosaicos de personalidades y anhelos dentro de una misma sociedad. En mi opinión Steinbeck es un maestro en la descripción de las distintas personalidades, y lo hace en una forma concisa y determinante. El hecho de que Steinbeck venga de una sociedad y familia de diferencias culturales lo hace una persona que puede escribir sobre los diferentes motivos que pueden tener hasta las personas con formaciones similares.

Es un autor al que definitivamente recomiendo. Entre sus obras se encuentran

De ratones y hombres

Tortilla flat

A un dios desconocido

El autobús perdido

Las uvas de la ira

Al este del Edén

La perla

Los hechos del rey Arturo y sus nobles caballeros

Cannery Row

Russ works with Mom and Dad, and he's one of those scientists with contagious love and enthusiasm for his work.

He studies and teaches a variety of different subjects, and his grin shows an understanding that they're all connected. And if your truck breaks down in the middle of the desert, I hear he's a wizard with baling wire and duct tape.

In 2004 while on a research trip, Russ, Mom and Dad discovered a woolly mammoth skull buried in a cliff in Baja. It's an exciting and sad story involving shovels, guns and broken ladders. The photos from Dad's camera are amazing. I'll see if he's posted them anywhere.

This week, Dad and Russ and Sara are teaching a class at a research station in Moss Landing, near Monterey. Their class consists of 15 math and science teachers from across the country. This is a multi-day chautauqua (a series of interesting discussions in interesting places).

I drive down to hang out with them in Monterey, stopping to eat at a great little roadside diner. Cindy runs the place, and I don't leave hungry.

I catch up with Dad at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I still can't get enough of that Jellies exhibit.

...but the real treat today is the chance to visit Ed Ricketts' laboratory. If you've read Cannery Row, you're at least a little familiar with him.

Ricketts was a marine biologist, and his work was one of the most influential factors in the disciplines of environmental preservation. He was also the real-life influence for many of Steinbeck's characters, including "Doc" in Cannery Row. His lab is located in Monterey, and is usually closed to the public, but educators can request special access.

A lot of important work happened in this little place.

Once we're inside, Russ reads a passage from Cannery Row which describes the place we're sitting.

Afterward, we wander around and explore the small house and lab.

The roads are closed all around Cannery Row today, for the arrival of hundreds of motorcycles in a very cool event called MotoGP.

I can't stay for the festivities, but here are some good pictures.

Random assertion: The location of a laboratory is usually at least as important as its contents.

Steganographic data: 1846/4.2

   "When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of the stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, I don't improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself.
     When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from. Next he must plan his trip in time and space, choose a direction and a destination. And last he must implement the journey. How to go, what to take, how long to stay. This part of the process is invariable and immortal. I set it down only so that newcomers to bumdom, like teen-agers in new-hatched sin, will not think they invented it.
     Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process; a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blow-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. I feel better now, having said this, although only those who have experienced it will understand it."

Both Miller (writing during World War II) and Steinbeck (writing about 20 years later) seem to have a decent enough grasp on the shortcomings and paradoxes of Americans and American society. But of course, Miller is violently livid, and Steinbeck vaguely romantic and sentimental. He even sentimentalizes the causes, the roots of our most innate problems. Really, both are getting tiring.

So I'm also retreating periodically to Knight's anthology of biographical sketches and work by what she calls "writers, artists and muses." The only one I'm really taken with so far is Joan Vollmer. She wasn't even a writer, but she basically started the first Beat salon in her apartment in the 1940s. Oh, and she got William S. Burroughs writing -- all she had to do was lose at Drunken William Tell. Had she lived longer she probably would have written at least a memoir, and I may have had a totally different image of her, since the writings I've read so far from Carolyn Cassady and Edie Parker Kerouac are, well, boring. Dry and humorless. To read what Edie wrote about Jack is to get the feeling he hung around her just for fun at her air-headed expense. To read Carolyn Cassady's recollections is to remind myself how much I don't want to end up like her -- struggling to keep up a stable relationship with a man who just wasn't built for them.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. I guess I'm in a harsh mood. The thing I'm realizing is that the moment of truth or the crossroads or whatever you want to call it wasn't buying the ticket and saying goodbye. It's this. Being here and having things be shitty and weird, knowing that they're going to have to stay shitty and weird for a bit before they get any better. I didn't feel like I really had any choice in leaving, and I still don't. All the difficult decisions are the ones I'm making now. That I've been making since I got here.

It's a lot of new people, and figuring out when to move closer and when to pull away. It's old people in painful and bewildering new situations. It's staying up all night with ghosts of people I miss like hell and don't dare speak to. And of the ones I do speak to, I don't dare tell them. It's remembering that as this whole thing was taking shape someone I admire and respect called me courageous. And it's wondering.

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop houses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, 'whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,' by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peep-hole he might have said: 'Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,' and he would have meant the same thing.

What a stab of homesickness! If those words don't evoke Tofino and Ucluelet, i don't know what does. (No offence, friends.)

The beast's similarities to Lennie are uncanny. Although Gossamer was created by a mad scientist, he shows the mindless compassion and innocence to furry animals, especially rabbits (just like Lennie), and on several occassions repeats phrases such as "Which way did he go George?" The fact that he calls his scientist master "George" is what initially tipped me off. His continuous efforts to hurt Bugs Bunny seems to me to be an obvious allusion to Steinbeck's character, but i have found no evidence that Chuck Jones, the cartoon's creator, had Lennie in mind when he introduced Gossamer. Does anyone else see this, or am i just mislead in some way?

Steinbeck always wanted to be a writer, and a good one. It is fortunate that he was good, because he never doubted his ability, even when he was poor.

He can't resist moralizing, when it comes to politics. I don't doubt that his opinions were informed ones, and true and strongly held, but he was definitely the type of man who liked a soap box. Again, it is fortunate that he was a well known writer, otherwise perhaps he would have become a crashing bore. I suppose, though, that the impact of reading his powerful piece on The Trial of Arthur Miller would have had greater impact at the time than reading it fifty years later, when no one cares about communism any more, sandwiched between a biting piece about race relations and another defending the behaviour of America in Korea.

He's quite a hawk, Steinbeck - it kind of surprised me, since (by modern standards) he's generally on the bleeding heart liberal side of the scale. He even supported Vietnam, although his wife says that he changed his mind after visiting, but was too ill to write of his new views. He died shortly after his visit, in 1968. He loves war machines - actually, it seems that he just liked machines, and the army always gets the best toys. To give an example: the article I'm reading now (Puff, the Magic Dragon) states in astonishment that this oddly named aircraft can 'spray out 2,800 rounds a minute - that's right, 2,800. In one quarter-turn, these guns fine-tooth an area bigger than a football field and so completely that not even a tuft of crabgrass would remain alive.' He goes on to give further details of these wondrous weapons - not because he loved killing - whenever killing comes up he abhors it - but because they are just so cool.

Steinbeck is a powerful writer, and reading of events and even every day life of the America of the past from his perspective is fascinating. But you're not supposed to read short articles one after another. The author starts to seem trite, and his words repeat. In a book, the author controls the experience and can keep the interest, but articles are things to glance at and move on from and don't always benefit from such sustained attention. Fortunately, the topics change.

The best is saved until last - a series of articles writen for a book of photography, called America and Americans. If you're looking for analysis of what America is then this is the place. Beautifully written with insights that seem fresh and pertinent today, and pertinent beyond America.

He is the man, that can write good.

Week in and week out katee and Josh seem to rock the spot like Bosquiat minus the herion.(Line completely stolen from Gym Class Heroes) ANYWAY, they did it again. First with the Waltz. From my professional Waltzing career I can tell you first hand that they did well and Joshes pants did fit nicer. A subtle something that has been occurring over the last two weeks…the attention shifting away from Josh and to katee in a positive way. Sure Josh was bouncing a little tonight but shit wouldn’t you if your balls went from being in a vice grip (samba pants) to swimming in a ocean of freedom? I think so. Here is the video. Try not to focus on Joshes bouncing and more on the cool lifts like katee winding down his leg like lights around a Christmas tree.

Then by “coincidence,” the couple got brand new to the So You Think You Can Dance stage the Bollywood style of dance. Look that shit was for sure rigged. The producers knew they were trying a cultural dance that was brand new and they couldn’t fuck it up and embarrass that culture. So what did they do? They rigged the pull from a hat routine and made sure their best couple danced it and made it look good. Their plan did not back fire. Katee and Josh smashed it and spun on their knees all the way to the top ten. (In my opinion)

On an update for So You Think You Can Write (Write…Write) I soared into the top ten with a stellar performance with my contemporary rendition of judge F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in which all the main characters are trolls living inside Gotham City and the green light was the Bat symbol. Dr. Suess remains the leader in the competition but all of the judges agreed that his latest effort of one fish two fish red fish blue fish will not cut it if he wants to walk away with the title. In a write for your life competition John Steinbeck was eliminated due to no one feeling bad for the unfortunate endings of any of his characters.

I’m still waiting for the Judges to realize that the show is not about them but about the dancers. What a novel idea. Nigel the attention-grabbing whore annoys me frequently. Also, I really do like Gev and Courtney but the judges saying that they are the best couple? If that’s the case I’m black.

Everyone needs to check out the best solution to Joh McCains VP and look out for tomorrows post on the modern day superhero you never knew almost existed. (Hint: He’s from the Wu Tang Clan) Vote for Katee, read all the middlest most recent and tell your friends. We love big families here.

10. The Alchemist. By Paulo Coelho. I would recommend this book to almost anyone.

9. Heart of Darkness. By Joseph Conrad. The perfect frame narrative. Read it to taste the heaviness, experience possibility in Kurtz and fear in Marlow. Not to mention, Apocalypse Now is based off it, as are Peterman's final words in The Chicken Roaster episode of Seinfeld.

8. Till We Have Faces. By C.S. Lewis. Darkness. Terror. Depth. Mystery. Narnia for grown-ups.

7. The Scarlet Letter. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Because Hawthorne has to be on this list, and we've all read it and under-appreciated it at the time. Also referenced in Seinfeld's "The Pick".

6. The Brothers Karamazov. By Fyodor Dostoevsky. It took a couple readings, but it's darkly funny, and wrestles with grace, guilt, religion, power -- pretty much everything. And, it may have the most famous chapter of any novel, ever (The Grand Inquisitor).

5. The Power and the Glory. By Graham Greene. Politics, religion, and a priest on the run. Put it in the hands of one of the greatest 20th century writers and you're doing pretty well.

4. One Hundred Years of Solitude. By Gabriel García Márquez. The style and language are about the best things going for literature right now. Plus, he has a great first name.

3. Les Misérables. By Victor Hugo. Two million people went to his funeral, for goodness' sake. It'll make you want to be a better person.

2. East of Eden. By John Steinbeck. If you have a hard-back copy, the picture on the jacket alone almost puts it in the top spot. Also, go spend some time in Central California after reading this.

1. Anna Karenina. By Leo Tolstoy. When William Faulkner was asked how to write fiction, his answer was, "Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina."

Mad Jack

I once went to a book club, which actually turned out to be the tennis club meeting for drinks, in Italy, full of overblown soulless girls looking for guys with money or a free English lesson (preferably both). The leader then stands up and introduces the book he had brought "It's called 'On The Road' it's by this guy called Jack ker-oww-ak and it's basically about traveling and drinking." Idiot. If he didn't like the book, then that's fine, but he did like it... he just didn't get it.

In the middle of the night we overtopped the lights of Palm Springs from a mountain road. At dawn, in snowy passes, we labored towards the town of Mojave, which was the entryway to the great Tehachapi Pass. The Okie woke up and told funny stories; sweet little Alfred sat smiling. The Okie told us he knew a man who forgave his wife for shooting him and got her out of prison, only to be shot a second time. We were passing the women's prison when he told it. Up ahead we saw the Tehachapi Pass starting up. Dean took the wheel and carried us clear to the top of the world. We passed a great shroudy cement factory in the canyon. Then we started down. Dean cut off the gas, threw in the clutch, and negotiated every hairpin turn and passed cars and did everything in the books without the benefit of accelerator.

(On The Road)

The thing which strikes me most about Kerouac is that he is the archetypical Rolling Stone. The great rambler, forever moving on in search of something, kicks, adventure, freedom, himself, mysticism. His America unfolds as a microcosm of himself. He always gets within its sights, but can never quite grasp it... one thinks of Moses staring wondrously at the Promised Land. He gathers no moss as he moves, painfully but lovingly ekeing out his dialogue with his "Great Mother Earth", and can do nothing but move on. Steinbeck is similar in ways, but also quite different... then he was writing from the viewpoint of old age.

The Gallant Mr. Steinbeck

Well, the battered copy of Travels With Charley that I own has seen a few places now. I was given it by my dad who must've had it for eons. Scrawled with biro from someone's (probably my) childhood, minus its brown 1960s dust jacket. It has character. I'm afraid I will always be one of those people who like their books to be battered and broken and with folded-over corners, with pen notes scribbled in... "well read". Some might say "abused" but I don't think this is the case. I love and cherish my books, but if they are to have any value to me, they have to come with me on my travels, be that to work on the bus, or on an airplane heading off to some other land. In fact, the more I love the book, the more likely it is to visit the world with me, and hence the more likely it is to get "beat" along the way.

It seems to me that Montana is a great splash of grandeur. The scale is huge but not overpowering. The land is rich with grass and color, and the mountains are the kind I would create if mountains were ever put on my agenda. Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans. Here for the first time I heard a definite regional accent unaffected by TV-ese, a slow-paced warm speech. It seemed to me that the frantic bustle of America was not in Montana. Its people did not seem afraid of shadows in a John Birch Society sense. The calm of the mountains and the rolling grasslands had got into the inhabitants.

(Travels With Charley)

Traveler and rambler as he might be, Steinbeck is no rolling stone. He has his family safe back at home, he's got provisions, stocks and supplies, money in the bank. Yet he still goes out there to discover. He's not trying to discover himself; he's already quite sure he knows who he is. he goes out to discover the country, and to return with that, and whatever turmoil that knowledge might bring, to his life, his roots.

The first and fundamental aspect of these books is that they could have been written yesterday. They touch the great nerve of the human soul in general, and in particular, of that ephemeral entity, "the great American Novel".  If you like, these two then represent the colliding point of the American Dream. The original phrase "rolling stone" comes from an old adage -- but it's not an exhortation to movement and the rock n roll lifestyle -- it's a warning: don't be a rolling stone, or you'll gain no moss (roots). But after Dylan got hold of it it's hard to see that original ethos in the phrase we know today. To be a rolling stone, or not to be a rolling stone? And isn't that the Dream embodied? The pressure to go on, move up, get out; juxtaposed with a deep yearning for a homestead somewhere, basking in warmth and loving?

I guess what I'm looking for, as my two heroes look down, is a synthesis. I will try to live the crazy life of Kerouac, the nights, the wilderness of the soul, the exuberance, and to merge that with the staid and mature longing for human and worldly balance of Steinbeck. We will, after all, be coming back home at the end, and I'm planning it pretty well (I hope) but the plan will mostly play second fiddle to the quest, the excitement, and the emotions of the trip.

With this in mind, I open up my guidebook.

The Guidebook

It's about the only guidebook we could find that covers the whole USA and not just a part of it. That gives us two benefits: first, it means that we get all the info we need in one inexpensive handy little package; and second, it gives us enough information (what's there to see, some major landmarks, dates, festivals, towns that we wouldn't want to miss) without giving us too much information and spoiling the adventure. In keeping with a desire to create my own dialogue with life, I'd like for the trip to take us as much as we take the trip, and with my three books for the guide, I think we'll do a fantastic job.

Whilst watching John Carpenter's graphics laden thriller 'The Thing' (1982) the other night after a solid 9 hours of t-shirt folding, I noticed that there were seemingly notable references to another great American storyteller; John Steinbeck. Being that I am a fan of the work of both these men I thought that I may enjoy attempting an essay about the similarities between such visionaries.

The most obvious connection was that 'The Thing' contained several apparent homages to Steinbeck's controversial strike novel 'In Dubious Battle' (1936). Both these stories explore the mentality of group man, where the pack itself becomes the stories central character, depicting how otherwise rational men can be consumed with fear and bloodlust when facing an unknown adversary and spurred on by the actions of those that surround him. Both stories involve a feeling of domestic territory being invaded by an unidentifiable adversary and portray the paranoia felt throughout the group as formerly united workers grow suspicious of one another, not knowing who to trust. Of course the underlying factor within both pieces of work is the American fear of communism spreading, both tales echo the 'reds under the bed' paranoia that was felt throughout America for 50 years of cold war. Carpenter highlights his apparent empathy with Steinbeck by naming two central characters 'Doc' and 'Mac' after two of the main characters from 'In Dubious Battle'. However the one factor that is overwhelmingly similar between Messrs Steinbeck and Carpenter is that they are both called; "John".

Note: Anybody that was expecting a serious, in depth, insightful, research piece describing similarities between these two great artists; gutted mush. I don't have time for that anymore, this was simply some half baked notion I came up whils drunkenly watching 'The Thing".

My Grandfather's Son, A Memoir by Justice Clarence Thomas. It has taken me about a year to get around to this. But I read it through quickly like one would see a movie. Beneath the public life of a man there is always a story. And behind Clarence Thomas there is a good story, an American story that took him from Pinpoint to the Supreme Court of the United States. The story involves our own story as Americans, and the story of faith in Jesus Christ through family strife, poverty, injustice, a grandfather's eccentricities that would at length mold the man we see, prejudice and pain, love and regret, hope and new life. I commend it highly.

Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. For the odd few among us who really care what "Adoro Te Devote" means ("a simple, heartfelt, Eucharistic hymn, the most famous of which would be J.R. Woodford's (1880, Bishop of Ely) "Thee we adore, O hidden Saviour", or who seriously would inquire about the Zillerthal Evangelicals were (a body of Protestants, living in Zillerthal, Austria, who left the Roman Catholic Church in 1829 and the following years, were ordered to leave by a decree from the provincial estates of the region, and were resettled at Erdmannsdorft in the Prussian territory), this volume is a treasure. A thank you to Oxford University Press is in order. I am proud of my 1958 edition, though there are, of course, newer ones, newer heresies, more recent innovations, other people who have come on the scene, and so forth. But I am quite content with my edition. It does all that I need it to do.

Romans by John Murray. I like Murray on Romans more than any other. Read Barth on Romans and this. Murray is an interpreter of St. Paul to the Romans. Barth is a preacher of Barth in front of Romans. There is a considerable difference. For excitement you migh want to try one. And for accuracy on the text you will most certainly need to read the other.

Murray on Romans 7 and Romans 11 is worth having the book and reading it from time to time. His conception of what Paul is saying in Romans 11 remains, to me, unassailable. Paul is saying that a large mass of Israel, even as they were hardened and turned away, will be revived and engrafted in to the one true Church. He awaits nothing short of a tremendous revival. I read this and grow excited. For as the Church now encircles the globe, and moves Eastward, I expect that we shall begin to hear of the conversions of souls in the Middle East. And how glorious that will be! When the glorious Gospel of peace quiets the spirits of the children of Ishmael, the world will have to pause. The age-old war will, no doubt, continue, but the preachers of grace will be the very men who today go about so violently. Then they shall be subdued, not by the might of men, but by the power of God's love in Jesus Christ. And that shall be the final wall to be destroyed. Then, the floodgates of the revival that swept in Europe in the Reformation, and pushed on to the New World as Columbus arrived, and the pilgrims settled this new country in North America and George Whitefield preached the Gospel up and down the colonial coast bringing in masses of people, and as the Methodists and others brought it further west in the United States and throughout Canada, as the Gospel went, through the 19^th century missionary movement to the far reaches of the East and into the Pacific islands, and in the Twentieth Century the flood of cleansing revival has baptized South America, and awakened the great peoples of Africa (and I think of men such as my friend Henry Luke Orombi, the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda), has moved upon China and India, will finally break through to the ancient Hebrew peoples and "all Israel shall be saved." I praise Jesus Christ and look in wonder at what He is doing and want to be part, as I am allowed, to urge this Gospel upon the hearts and minds of others! What more glorious labors could there possibly be?

And all of this from a few lines in Murray's Romans. He is dry. He is barebones. This is not prose for prose's sake. This is interpretation for the Church. And it is marvelous in my eyes. I commend him to you.

History of the English Speaking People, "The Birth of Britain" by Sir Winston Churchill. I enjoy reading Sir Winston because no one seemed to see the American century arising quite like him. And it was no assault on his British prejudice, for he saw America as an extension of the British Empire and thus applauded her ascendancy. This first volume in the series, of course, is more about the founding of the British nation and much is said about the place of Rome and the Danes and the Normans. But the way that Sir Winston writes makes one think that he is always going somewhere, and of course he is. He is always concerned with how this English speaking people arose and how they went to the ends of the earth, taking with them their religion (Christianity), their system of government (amalgamated as a supreme democratic rule through the governments of Rome and other invaders), and of course their customs.

If you were to stay with Sir Winston to his conclusion in 1900, then you should read the book that I read last year, The History of the English Speaking People Since 1900 by Andrew Roberts. He opens with this moving scene:

"As the first rays of sunlight broke over the Chatham Island, 360 miles east of New Zealand in the South Pacific, a little before 6:00am on Tuesday, January 1, 1901, the world entered a century that for all its warfare and perils would nonetheless mark the triumph of the English-speaking peoples. Few could have suspected it at the time, but the British Empire would wane to extinction during that period, while the American Republic would wax to such hegemony that it would become the sole global hyper-power. Assault after assault would be made upon the English-speaking peoples' primacy, each of which would be beaten off successfully, albeit sometimes at huge and tragic cost. Even as the twenty-first century dawned, they would be doughtily defending themselves still."

But without Churchill's insights, we would miss the sweeping epic that led us to that moment.

The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944. I have not read a better author on World War Two. An Army at Dawn, which won the Pulitzer Prize, was one of my favorite books two years ago. I devoured it in a few readings. I must say that I taking more time here. But the result is the same. Beyond all others, Rick Atkinson the reporter is helping us to re think the War through his "lower" history of how it felt to the men with boots on the ground.

Berlin Embassy by William Russell. Reflections on a great capitol city being transformed and disfigured by Hitler and his monster regime from an eyewitness account make for a great read.

W.H. Auden, Longer Poems. I love reading Auden as I enjoy reading Donne. Both were men who followed a road to Jesus Christ through a road of self-destructive sins. But their intellect was sharpened by what they saw along the way. I like this book as much for his longer poem called, "For the Time Being" as I do for anything else. This reflection through the Church Year, dedicated to his mother, reveals the faith of Auden, but through a glass darkly, and through moods murky. Auden is not a precise theologian, of course, nor does he convey the sense of God's grace like Donne does. Indeed, Auden can be as obscure as his personality. But his words provoke a sense of Advent, which has its place, I think. He begins, as one should begin a work on the church year, with Advent:

"Darkness and snow descend;

The clock on the mantelpiece

Has nothing to recommend,

Nor does the face in the glass

Appear nobler than our own

As darkness and snow descend

On all personality.

Huge crowds mumble - "Alas,

Our angers do not increase,

Love in not what she used to be;'

Portly Caesar yawns - ‘I know;'

He falls asleep on his throne,

They shuffle off through the snow;

Darkness and snow descend."

Auden closes out the church year with these words, a summary of all of his experiences and reflections:

"He is the Way.

Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;

You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.

He is the Truth.

Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;

You will come to a great city that has expected your return for

            years.

He is the life.

Love Him in the world of Flesh;

And at your marriage all is occasions shall dance for joy."

That line sums up, not only the Christian life, but also the life of a minister of the Gospel. And all of this "For the Time Being."

A Jonathan Edwards Reader By Jonathan Edwards, John E. Smith, Harry S. Stout, Kenneth P. Minkema. This Yale University Press anthology is outstanding. If you are wanting a one-volume reader look no further.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I read this book in one sitting. I thought about it for days on end. The characters are so real, the situation so possible, and the writing of John Steinbeck so powerful and beautiful, that I could not forget it. It is grotesque, in a way, and pitiful. But I think I have known these two men, George and Lenny. And as an oil field worker in South Louisiana, not a ranch hand in the Salinas Valley, I have seen them. Their tragic story reminds me of Louisiana. But having lived in Monterey, California, and hiked through the mountains that protect the rich, dark earth of that valley, I read Steinbeck and think of him as an eccentric, brilliant neighbor. Talk this one out after you read it.

I continue the adventure. And I speak to students of the Word, ministers of God's Gospel, and pastors-in-training: read widely, but wisely. Read carefully. Read to gain insight into Creation, Fall and Redemption. Read to diagnose and treat the human soul with the balm of God's grace in Christ. You will sharpen your skill to do so by reading the great novels as well as history and biography. Learn to read poetry, and even fantasy. Consider the greatest theologians, and follow the faithful ones. But in all things, read to the glory of God.

And that which I proscribe, I do pray to do myself, and ask forgiveness for my failing to read what I should read, and for reading what is unnecessary as well as well is unprofitable.

Please visit The Call with Mike Milton for more entries and resources for Gospel ministry.

I'm researching an ancestor of mine (or piggybacking off the research of my step-father), McDonald Clarke- known by many as "The Mad Poet" and revered for his eccentricities and his innocence.  He often found himself poor and alone, but many, including the best poets of his day, marveled at his uncanny ability to smile in the face of cruelty, to find decency in anyone and to seek out the stars through a large hole in his attic-room roof, rather than suffer the misery of defeat of being poor.  In his poem, Humility, Clarke writes,

"Do you call me poor, you slugger? // Won't Posterity let me hug her, // And won't she hug me back again? // Isn't my pen // The Sceptre of Eternity, to wave //  Over Earth's grave?"

And we are by no means poor, but we feel the pinch and empathetically are suffering with the worst off for we know these are families not unlike our own.  And because we have had to worry at times in our own lives about from where our next meal might come.  

The beauty in these times is that they are less superficial.  Sincerity seems to flow in all art, music, from the pen.  These are times when we build strong foundations - not of brick and mortar, but of friendships that will lead us through the hard times.  

"By calling me poor, you slugger,

Psho!  Psho!

I'm sure I don't feel so -

So I should think

From this hurricane of ink."  -MC

The Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts, has estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.

I took the original formatting style and made it a bit more complicated.  Spicing up these sorts of projects is the only path to redemption.  Strike-through entries have been read; bolded entries have been thoroughly enjoyed; under-lined have been partially read; and italicized may be read soon.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Several comments:

* Why is Hamlet on the list when the Complete Works of Shakespeare is on the list as well?

* Who is this Bill character that wrote Notes from a Small Island?

* Why is the Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe on the list when the Chronicles of Narnia is on the list too?

* Why isn't Madame Bovary higher?!

* I hope that no one thinks this list is comprehensive.  The whole thing, in my opinion, is a concentric flaw.  Props to furthering inner-Anglo canon isolation.  Cheers to such cowardly fragmentation.  The next "survey" should include Middle Eastern and Eastern books, a better selection of American Literature, and definitely some more of the translated work (a la Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Nikolai Gogol--you know, all those stapling giants . . .?) that has defined so much history, culture, and humanity (or lack thereof).

* The number of completed entries equals twenty-eight.  Should I be proud or ashamed that this number is so low?