of stein and beck

I had some lingering dislike of Steinbeck in general (and Of Mice and Men in
particular) in the back of my mind, but couldn’t quite remember why… Well, now I
can: it’s the !@#$% ambivalence.

On the one hand, I love how he wrote. It’s not prolific or anything (not even faux-prolific,
in my opinion): the writing’s simple, the subject matter’s simple and everything just
flows together. The whole book took me a few hours to finish and, save for the
fact that I hated it, I enjoyed it very much.

On the other hand, I never understand why, given the breadth of things they could
write about, so many writers focus on the negative. I mean, I get why: I just
don’t understand it.

I guess the short of it is that I loved Lennie and Lennie got his brains blown out
by his best friend. It’s not that I expected them to actually get their little farm
together, or run into the sunset or something, but considering how lovingly Steinbeck
crafted his characters, how he treated them simply hurt.

…

Which I guess was sorta the point…