Executive Summary: This short story follows two men, George and Lennie, through a few days of their lives as ranch workers in California. Lennie is a large man with the “mind of a child” and George is a small, cunning guy in Lennie’s company.
Star Rating: 3 (maybe 3.5) stars. I appreciate Steinbeck’s prose. Truly. But this story. Yeepers.
Content Warning: PG-13. Copious uses of the N-word in character dialogue. Frequent references to brothels. Animal abuse. Human abuse. Steinbeck really packs it all into 108 pages.
Review: I read this in a single sitting on a plane to Denver. My travel companion, upon learning that I spent the nearly two hour flight reading this book, exclaimed, “WHY?!”
It’s a good question. On this end of the read, I can firmly say that I have missed the hype. This is a sad little story about sad little men.
I mean, someone explain. How did this win the Nobel Prize?
I’m being mostly facetious.
Steinbeck’s works obsess over ambition, aspiration, and legacy. Central questions are: “what am I doing with my life?”; “what will I leave behind when I’m gone?”; “do I matter?”. (Please ignore the . . . creative . . . punctuation. How did I manage to get on law review?!)
This story moves through an examination of these questions with (pardon the egregious pun) breakneck speed. The mundanity of everyday toil becomes something alchemical under the pen of Steinbeck. Not a single sentence is wasted.
This lean narrative, trimmed of all fat, accomplishes a great feat. I cared for the characters throughout - with only a few words expressed for characterization.
The story, however, is very tragic. Often, its author relies on this tragedy to illuminate the beauty in the human condition. However, the work is only 108 pages!
In my opinion, that is too few pages to cram in so much sadness.
Worth the read if you haven’t read it. Read it in one sitting, and then go outside and touch some grass.