103. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

Sadly, I never got to read this one in school because I was put in a higher set (through complete fortune and kindness) and studied Lord of the Flies by Golding instead (don’t worry that one I have reread recently and is on the way). I have been meaning to get some Steinbeck for a while but the opportunity just hasn’t arrived or it hadn’t until I decided to cross Of Mice and Men off of the ‘I want to read this’ list. There are so many things that I want to read that I often forget I want to read them, until the impulse returns and I am faced with the undeniable truth that now is the time. Usually I am stood in book shops and a title grabs me.

If you haven’t read it, Of Mice and Men is a story of two outsiders trying to make the best of it and it’s a relatively simple story. But their are tensions and boredom and people swinging dicks around to make life more difficult. And there is just one very innocent, sweet guy, who doesn’t know his own strength, and his name is Lennie Small.

Lennie, for me, is one of the most endearing things about this novel. It’s like he is the gentle giant that has been dropped in from space and doesn’t belong there. He confuses easily, he doesn’t grasp how easily he can hurt people, and mostly he just wants the story of where him and his best pal, George Milton tells him they will be. The story goes they get their own land and farm away from everyone else and live for themselves with no interference and no boss.

Lennie is the sort of character that can be really frustrating to read because he simply does not understand, and the characters around him sometimes make no allowances for that. It is one rule and one way and there is no air around him to be, well him. Society makes no allowances, and to paraphrase a conversation I had recently: if society broke down the day after he got to the ranch and ceased to be, Lennie would be fine in the wild making his own way as his disability isn’t a physical one. Society is his disability.

When he is quiet in his blunderingly clueless way he fades into the background and works harder then any other because of his enormous strength. But it is difficult for him to keep his head down because he is completely childlike and trusting and vulnerable and when he comes across small fury things he just wants to love them.

George is trying his best to look after him and keep a promise. George seems to play mediator for most of the novel, I get the sense that given the right opportunity if George’s sense of loyalty was lessened he would have ditched Lennie a long time ago. But instead George is a bit of a father figure and doing his best with a big guy who grasps the world like a child does. George is trying to do the right thing and to protect Lennie as best he can from the world.

The two of them drop lucky on a ranch that hasn’t heard of them. They’ve been on the road, run out of town because of rape accusations. (Lennie touched a woman’s dress and wouldn’t let go because it was soft and he loves soft things and as she was hysterical the town put the rest together without any other questions.) They get themselves settled into their beds and the next day fall straight into the middle of the ranch drama.

Of course we find other characters that share the dream George and Lennie have, and the ranch and it’s inhabitants become a sort of microcosm for American Underclass at the time.

In this despondent novel there is very little joy. Curley – the son of the farm owner – is having trouble with his unhappy wife who seems to be giving the eye to every man she comes across. He calls her a tart and seems possessive and jealous and is overcompensating for something.

Old Candy’s dog is taken out back and shot, because it is infirm and ill and at the end of it’s life. This is done in posturing and dick-swinging sort of contest, and the power play leads Old Candy very unhappy he hadn’t done the deed himself. And in itself it’s very sad.

Crooks, the stable buck and cripple, agrees to go in thirds with Lennie and George for a piece of land. He is at first distrusting but then seems to recognise something in Lennie that is within himself. Alienation and disconnectedness are big themes in the novel and I’d like to think that Crooks, recognises that in Lennie.

Of course these are tiny parts of the story that just amount to the vivid detail that Steinbeck builds the novel with. Unpretentious, naked, truthful writing that seems to follow the characters rather then push them towards the frying pan. This is a novel of destitute people lacking agency and it shook me awake at every turn with reality.

But this novel also had me convinced that maybe it would be a happy ending. Ha. Ha ha ha. (Laughing bitterly while crying) *Spoiler alert*

Lennie pets Curley’s wife’s (no she doesn’t have a name that I can remember other then tart?) hair and of course, she panics. In the struggle he kills her by accident and then runs away from a lynching mob. Perhaps luckily, or perhaps cruelly, George is the one that finds him and while lulling Lennie into a sense of false security (because he trusts him, HE TRUSTS HIM) he shoots Lennie in the back of the head. There is a part of me still mourning for Lennie because this novel executes (poor choice of words on my part) something very real and very stark and very unpredictable. And like Lennie, I was lulled into the false sense of security of hope that they would get out of this drifting life and buy their land and have a porch.

And Lennie would get his rabbits.

George doesn’t shoot Lennie out of rage or out of the hysteria of the mob. He shoots him to save him from being lynched. He shoots him to spare him (and probably them as he wouldn’t go down easily). It is the right thing, but it is the difficult terrible thing.

I regret that I didn’t read it when I was in school because this book makes a big impression and there is a lot to take away from it. I may never get over Lennie and George, and the gilded knot that lumps in my stomach whenever I think about them. But I will read this again at some point. Steinbeck demonstrates that a book doesn’t have to be loud or big or artful postures and a flourishing peacock to deliver some very real messages and morals. And as a result I don’t think I’m done with this one yet, I need to read it again. There is just so much more I could say.

87. Mary

Here we are again with the Penguin Great Loves series and me trying to read something other than science fiction or fantasy. After reading a couple of these now and being a little surprised at how much I enjoyed them I am coming round to the idea that perhaps I like romantic fiction more than I think I do. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me as I am rather sentimental despite appearances or to paraphrase my best friends I’m crunchy on the outside but gooey in the middle.

I’ve wanted to read Nabokov for a long time and I’m really pleased with myself for starting to make good on that. I’m not sure if it’s the translation or if this is just a really compelling story but I enjoyed it a lot and before we get into this I’m already recommending you read this.

Mary – Vladimir Nabokov

It is the story of a man in a boarding house in Berlin with an eclectic group of Russian expats for inhabitants who have a list of problems and trivialities but aren’t boring. (Of course there is frictions between countries overshadowing all of this) Lev Glebovich Ganin’s problems seem simple, he is bored with his current lover and trying to separate himself from her. As if this isn’t enough he is also adored by his neighbour Klara ‘the girl next door’ – literally the next room. Lev Ganin is neither very good to either of these women or returns their affections, but soon falls into a pit of nostalgia and despair of his own making.

His neighbour, Alfyorov, is waiting for his wife to arrive. Mary. Mary, Mary, Mary. The name evokes a strong emotional response in Lev Ganin who fantasies this Mary is the same Mary he was besotted with as a young man and he convinces himself that she is coming to run away with him. It is a small claustrophobic setting that seems to amplify Ganin’s daydreaming and complete absorption into his fantasy and memory of Mary. But the flush and heartthrob of first love seems to be absence, it seems more to be that sense of wanting to return to lost memories that motivates Gatsby (wanting to relive the past). The memories he looks back on are fond and bittersweet and make his life somehow more, while he seems stuck in a monotony.

His daydreaming eventually leads to strong feelings of jealousy that begin to plague Lev Ganin so he plans to steal her away from Alfyorov, partly believing that the Mary coming is his Mary. Partly hoping it is. I enjoyed the quietness of these feelings that simmer beneath the drunken dinner parties and general details of every day life in the house. This is not a reliving of first love that drives men to kill out of delirium (and an inability to process emotions correctly), but more so I think the memory of that first love gives insatiable curiosity. It is an immediacy of feeling that seems to fill an unsatisfied life, the slight obsession, and the sort of hopeful belief in the impossible.

This is a slim book at just over a hundred pages and is Nabokov’s first novel. But it doesn’t show, I found it difficult to put down and actually a little too short as it left me wanting more. I would imagine that if you had read Nabokov’s later works you may be underwhelmed as I hear his work gets better. But to be clear, Mary isn’t a juvenile account of being stuck in intimate embrace with memories, it seems somehow more than that and the writing is slick and at times beautiful.

Mary is one of those gateway drug novels. It gives you just enough without fully scratching that itch and now I may just have to try to read everything by Nabokov I can get my hands on. If you haven’t read Nabokov, go out and find Mary (yes that was also a pun). If you think everything you’ve heard of Nabokov isn’t crap but might be hype, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Or at least I know I am.