Final thoughts on Tortilla Flat

I finished this a few days ago and have since done much Googling. The story is supposed to be a retelling (or re-imagining is perhaps a better term) of the Arthurian legend with Danny as Arthur of course and the houses-and later house-as the Round Table. Steinbeck was really into King Arthur since he was a child and had a book published posthumously about it. The book never seems to be mentioned when Steinbeck's canon comes up so I wonder if it's no good or not what he intended (it kills me to see great authors like Hemingway's remaining papers continually trolled for works that were never intended to see the light of day. He's had-what-3 novels published since he died and all of them were shit.)

Speaking of which, I wonder what the upcoming David Foster Wallace novel will be like.

Anyways, Tortilla Flat. Very Steinbeckian in its prose and themes. The writing just resonates with Steinbeck's love of humanity. It feels very close to Cannery Row but that is just a much better book. This one felt a little slight although I did find some of the stories funny: Sweets Ramirez and her motorless vacuum cleaner, Pilon leaving Big Joe Portagee pantsless on the beach, Jesus Maria buying a bra for his would-be girlfriend the cannery slut. Some of the other stories I found very sweet: the Pirate going to Church to see his candlestick and retelling the story for his dogs (I'm a sucker for dog stories) and the ending with Danny was sad, although how else could it end. Some other stories just went on too long (and some of the wine drinking got old) and I just didn't get into the Madonna-esque story of Teresina Cortez and her bajillion children. Interesting story about the bean harvests though and her vieja cursing the Virgin for greedily taking her candles and not helping was funny.

The Shakespearean language is curious. This book made me rethink how important what we bring to books is. I assumed it was because Steinbeck has mentioned at the beginning that paisanos spoke with an accent whether they were speaking Spanish or English and the "Where goest thou?" dialogue was a literary trope to make that evident. But some reviewers think the intention was to convey a sense of noblesse oblige on the protagonists. Likewise, I supposed I would have killed the mood at the final party where Danny runs into the woods chasing the otherworldly scream he heard only to plummet to his demise by saying, "That was an echo." 

I'd recommend new Steinbeck readers start elsewhere. He is eternally superior to Hemingway in my mind although the great literary minds think elsewise. But great literary minds also think Don DeLillo is a good writer.

Clifton Fadiman famously said that The Moon is Down "seduces us to rest on the oars of our own moral superiority." Then again, he speaks highly of Steinbeck in his book, The New Lifetime Reading Plan. Apparently, F. Scott Fitzgerald hated him too but Harold Bloom says that was because Steinbeck's writing made Fitzgerald's topics seem frivolous. I thought Harold Bloom had sniped about Steinbeck winning the Nobel Prize but I can't find that quote at the moment. Others questioned why he won for a series of novels he wrote in the 1930's (the Prize was awarded in 1962.) The New York Times, via Arthur Mizener, at any rate took issue with it.