When it comes to American literature, it seems Veeky Forums only cares about Moby-Dick, Faulkner, and postmodernism

What don't you turds like about The Grapes of Wrath?

see:

>Canary Row
kek.

Seriously though, Cannery Row is glorious. He breathes so much life into the cast and the valley. If you're a Steinbeck fan you'll cherish the experience and remember them for decades to come.

Even Steinbeck was ashamed of the plebs when he won a Nobel. The head of the committee resigned in disgust.

I could paraphrase and overgeneralize to make any novel look bad.

Is this true? I never heard this.

Feel free, but I feel like my rendition betters the original.

It gave me a lul. Steinbeck's extended nature descriptions are an acquired taste.

Eating phonebooks is similarly an acquired taste. Just trust me. Eat one page at a time till you've gotten through at least half of it. By then I guarantee you'll love it.

I want to talk about Orwell and Huxley.

I'm a Hemingway man.

poor Santiago ;_;

>>>/sffg/

Can we talk bout Hawthorne?

Can we talk about Thoreau and Emerson?

can we talk about franzen

Emerson is the first worthwhile writer mentioned in this thread since OP invoked Melvy and Fucknard

He pulled that out of his ass.

yo whats the deal with emersons zine "dial" read about it at the beginning of the portable thoreau?

I really liked Grapes of Wrath.

It really captured the stigmas surrounding organized labor, the workers can't organize because that's "Bolsheviky" while the growers can form a cartel and manipulate supply, wages, and prices. Even the people in town who didn't participate in agriculture volunteered their valuable time to shut down the farm labor union.

Thanks, Time Life: Classics.

I also like literature because it sheds like on the material conditions of the working class and their exploitation at the hands of Capitalism. Have you ever read "Boy Meets Tractor" China Leningrad? I think you'd really like it!

if i like twain and melville, what else might i like?

i find steinbeck to be too melodramatic and simple, though i've only read of mice and the pearl. hemingway i need to revisit; the old man and the sea was one of the first books i ever read. i've since read the sun also rises and a number of his short stories.

recs? i like humour and prose

Vonnegut

Ulysses is in my opinion one of the funniest novels in the language. And if you could handle Moby-Dick and find it humorous then you'd be fine with Ulysses.

Joseph Conrad is what your body needs.

Read, A Moveable Feast. The entire book is just a hilarious memoir of Hemingway fucking around in Paris. At one point Fitzgerald comes up to him crying because his wife told him his dick is small, so they visit the Louvre together to look at Greek statues.

Sounds comfy

Can we talk about Stein?

there's that newfag again

In terms of personal preference? I rate my favourite Hemingway book, For Whom the Bells Toll, over my favorite Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath. Overall I think I enjoy Steinbeck more, he's more consistent than Hemingway, I think Steinbeck's novellas/short stories dominate all of Hemingway's.

Hemingway is probably the better over all writer in terms of prose, but Steinbeck is better in evoking emotion through narrative, and writes characters more realistically than Hemingway. I adore them both and prefer their narrative driven books to any amount of modernist dribble, which I can't stand. I can hardly stand actually reading Faulkner though I can appreciate his style.

Well did you get it back, faggot?

I think it's hard to say who writes characters more accurately between the two because of the difference of time periods, and settings between the twos writing as well as the age we live in. Hell the son also rises is direct from one of Hemingway's actual trips that he was just gonna write about and then had so much material for it he made the novel. Same with almost all his books except The Old Man and the Sea.

"Postmodernism" covers 71 years of literature, 30% of the country's lifespan.

I've only read the Scarlet Letter but it was a very compelling experience desu, I understand why Americans study it in high school
I kinda wish the novel hadn't started in media res, but it probably would have hurt the structure of the novel seeing as everything is planned with impressive exactness by Hawthorne when it comes to manipulating his audience.

Haven't read anything else yet, would you recommend something else of his even though The Scarlet Letter is supposed to be his masterpiece?

I'm reading Walden atm and its dryness is really putting me off. I'm around the 20% mark, does it get more literary/poetic/insightful after the first chapter?

Is he good? I'm curious

I've only read some short stories from Hemingway and I thought they were so mundane & unimpressive I put off reading his real works.

The short stories I'v read include 'Fifty Grand' & something about tauromachie I believe, did he improve a lot after his early works?

How do you like that book it's 50 pages of information stretched into a full novel nothing happens for 60 pages. Plus it's a hate book for a group that doesn't even exist anymore.

>information
>nothing happens

The plot isn't everything. Is it?
There are heaps of books in which nothing much happens but are great nonetheless.

> a group that doesn't even exist anymore.

Well, literally, no that 'group doesn't exist anymore (do you mean 17th century Puritans? That's not really what the book is about, Hawthorne was actually aiming it at his Victorian contemporaries but that's not really the point).
But just because the target audience doesn't exist anymore doesn't mean we, modern readers cannot derive pleasure from reading such books.

I mean what's the point of reading Candide or Gulliver's Travels then? What are you on about?

I love a lot of dry books. That novel is just so ungodly boring. The characters aren't at all interesting. The story isn't all that good. It's just there to say "I hate puritans and here is why". if you like it that's cool man it's your opinion i just can't stand that book at all. Maybe it's because it was crammed down all American High schooler's throats. I don't know if i have ever hated a book more than The Scarlett Letter.

Blithedale Romance was pretty good desu and some of his short stories are too

The story isn't particularly interesting but I though the prose was top natch

Perhaps i need to take another look. I was a junior in high school when I read it and was fairly well read for my grade. I barely finished it but maybe i need to go give it a second reading. Maybe i won't wanna burn the book this time.

Hemingway: loved Old Man and the Sea, read a bunch of his short stories and found them pretty meh. Will probably pick up Sun Also Rises at some point but I'm in no particular rush
Steinbeck: Read Mice and Men and loved it, can't wait to read more of him

Sun also rises is amazing but prepare pretty much every character but bill is a dick.

I like Steinbeck
East of eden >> GoW > Of Mice and Men >>> [hispanic retelling of the knights of the round table]

For Hemingway, I really liked Sun Also Rises but A Farewell was forgettable aside of the army retreat (the gf felt like a cardboard cutout). I'm looking forward to For Whom t B T tho, it's supposed to be his best and the Spanish civil war is incredibly interesting.

I'll look into his short stories, thanks user

I can totally understand not liking this book in high school, also it being assigned reading probably didn't help.
I myself hated books such as Confessions by Augustine or Dom Juan by Molière just because I've studied them when I was too young to properly understand the themes and therefore enjoy them. I was probably dumb, too.
Personally, I studied it in uni and understanding the novel above surface level actually enhanced my experience of it.

>I hate puritans and here is why
That's not what the book is about. Hawthorne was actually attacking the 19th century American establishment, the Puritans are an audience within the book used as a vehicle to express Hawthorne's point. Some sort of mirror effect was supposed to make his contemporaries feel bad about themselves basically. There's a lot of interesting literary criticism about it.

Conrad, Faulkner, Caldwell

>steinbeck to be too melodramatic and simple, though i've only read of mice and the pearl
Try East of Eden or The Winter of Our Discontent

>East of eden >> GoW > Cannery Row > [hispanic retelling of the knights of the round table] >>> In Dubious Battle > To a God Unknown >>> Of Mice and Men

well they both owe twain.

Steinbeck has the American spirit in his writing, Hemingway the American minimalist prose.

And yet you fags hop on McCarthy's dick for even more boring descriptions

I'm not even a lefty but The Grapes of Wrath made me mad. Just because pf the hopelessness of the situation. I know if i ended up in a similar situation i would be fucked. Made my reconsider what it means to be free: It's a fantastic book

this is why it's so comfy
>there are plebs in this thread who don't enjoy an entire chapter about a turtle in Oklahoma slowly crossing a road

Twain is highly underrated on this board. He really is the father of American literature.

Have you read To A God Unknown? What do you think of it if so?

Grapes of Wrath has some of the purplest prose I've ever read

I felt similar reading Walden. In my opinion, that first chapter is especially dry, but the rest of the book doesn't get much better. I really enjoyed certain sections, like his discussion of solitude and his descriptions of the changing seasons, but overall it was a struggle to get through. It felt like a lot of extended metaphors leading to somewhat trite and juvenile ideas. Then again, maybe I'm just too much of a pleb to understand its greatness.

my man
I loved that fucking turtle chapter

why poor Santiago.
He survived and now lives to tell a great tale.
We can only dream of having such an epic journey and live to tell the tale.

Glad to see I'm not alone at least.

>mfw comfy gopher chapter in Cannery Row

I don't think so, the only short work that resounded with me at all is Old Man and the Sea. Otherwise I haven't read all of his stories, but of what I have read (Snows of Kilimanjaro, In Our Time, Men Without Women and Winner Takes Nothing) mundane and unimpressive are the words.

>tfw lived in Monterey and got smashed on canary row every weekend
Good times f a m

Accurately is probably a bad word, but I feel like Steinbeck's characters are all unique and have more depth to them. Perhaps because he draws less from real world experience and draws characters from imagined stereotypes, while Hemingway draws heavily from his own experience.

Hemingway's novels are very personal, very grounded in reality. Some times a story is better told with larger than life character that could not possibly exist in the real world, like the heroes from Grapes of Wrath. No one in the real world would speak in extended profound monologues, but it adds to the novels. Hemingway's minimalism means he gets less across through the characters themselves and instead gets his story across by what they do and where they are (Robert Jordan in for Whom the Bells Tolls is defined by being a man in a one off conflict and what he does their, while the Father in Steinbecks The Pearl, or the family in Grapes of Wrath, are defined by their upbringing and past.)

Ok then, thanks for sharing. I'll probably read The Old Man and the Sea at some point, just because it's not much of a commitment given how short it is

well of course he is Hemingway said himself that all American literature is based on Huck Finn. Plus Huck Finn is just amazing every time i see it get left off lists on here it makes me sad.