April 21, 2009

Book 16: Tortilla Flat

Tortilla Flat
John Steinbeck

This is, strangely, only my second book by Steinbeck and my first since high school. Tortilla Flat has quite a few peculiar qualities that may be hallmarks of the author or that may be related to its subject matter; nonetheless it is an incredibly sharply drawn portrait of a specific time, place, and person. This is a story about a character, Danny, and the people that revolve around them in their respective orbits, but Danny does not always feature prominently in the book and for much of it wanders around in its background as other characters come to the forefront, only to fade themselves into the carefully constructed scenery. The book is almost a collection of short stories and almost a novel; it isn't quite as loose as most collections but the plot isn't deliberately constructed throughout. There are events that link the disparate stories together, but overall the book reads like a series of distinct adventures stemming from a common event (Danny inheriting his grandfather's house) and ending with another distinct event, tied neatly into the first one and bringing the whole story to a neat, though uncomfortable, conclusion. Nonetheless, there is a consistent logic in Tortilla Flat and its stories fit together nicely to create a portrait of friendship in a hastily forged society that shuns the usual rules and regulations.

The story works primarily because its characters, who band together under the promise of shared shelter and friendship, are so vivid. They are at once likable and annoying, much like actual people. Though their main motive is often to acquire more wine, more often than not by illegal and occasionally unethical means, there is a certain charm to their logic and the creativity of their plots. The group is bound by a loose and often shifting moral code, but they are always strictly bound to one another. Throughout their adventures, their bond only grows and they form a special kind of community that Steinbeck is able to show with remarkable clarity, though the prose gets awfully sentimental at times. The story is compared in the preface to the stories of Arthur and his knights, but even this does not explain the bizarre lapses into usage of "thee", "thou", and equally archaic "-st" verb endings. Steinbeck may be attempting to use this language to draw a comparison, but it is jarring and seems only out of place when used by poor, nearly homeless men on the outskirts of Monterey California just after World War I. The sentences, which are short and direct, help evoke this time and place but again, the dialogue and narration occasionally get too unbelievably weighty, particularly evident in the hyperbole that corrodes the emotion of the book's climax. The plot, though it forms a neat circle by book's end, is also disjointed in parts and many stories seem unnecessary or extraneous; the sum of the parts is whole but some of the parts may be unnecessary. Overall, Steinbeck is able to inject a feeling of listlessness despite his earnest narration and Tortilla Flat emerges as a moving and complete, though not entirely coherent, depiction of a unique way of life and living.

Grade: B+

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