Better Late Than Never, Unless You Have To Read My Drivel

Let me just say that I am thrilled to be out of the literary morass of the '70s, '80s and '90s. I was excited to be reading Steinbeck, excited to be reading The Winter of Our Discontent, a legitimate classic, and double-excited that my wife didn't force some Timothy Leary/Ken Kesey Generation of Love crap down my gullett. Hurray for dodging bullets!

Anyway, like Monique wrote over a month ago (sorry to our loyal throngs), TWOD was just an outstanding book, without a doubt the best we've read in our little challenge thus far. I had a little trouble getting into it at first, possibly because the bulk of my reading is done in 10-minute increments while sitting on the pot. But by the time I got 30 pages in, I was hooked. I found myself eating a lot more fiber. Get it? Yeah, you get it.

I have a bit of a fictional man-crush on the protagonist, Ethan Hawley, the latest patriarch of a crumbled New England aristocracy. He's fallen on hard times, having lost the last of the family fortune in a failed grocery business, where he now works for the new owner, an Italian gentleman who is constanly referred to by your choice of ethnic slurs. Ethan's lovely wife and children keep asking him when they're going to be rich again; the town whore has her sights set on him; and his best friend is about 250 pages away from drinking himself to death. Basically, things are at their worst, but Ethan is still able to conjur lots of biting sarcasm and pithy quips. My hero.

The book revolves around Ethan's attempt to regain his family's prominence, and the moral depths to which he is willing to sink to do so. Ethan is a veteran of World War II, and when his convoluted plan is about to take flight, he says that he hopes he can act now as he did in the war: quick, decisive, merciless. He says that having killed men in the war didn't mean that he was a killer, only that he had done what needed to be done. And unlike Monique, I found myself saying, "Rob the bank! Rob the bank!" Because I honestly believed he could do it.

As Ethan plots his success, others around him do the same. His teenage son, Allen, wins an essay contest that he hopes to parlay into television gameshow fame. His is the easy way, which, Allen says, is the only way to do it. Why waste time with hard work if you don't have to? Ethan's daughter, Ellen, has her own nefarious plans regarding Allen's success. Ultimately, Ethan realizes that the fast way is the wrong way. Fortuitously, he doesn't get that until after he's back on the road to prosperity. Or is he? Yeah, he is.

As in all of Steinbeck's writing, the characterization is phenomenal. There wasn't a single character who I could find fault with. Everybody was believable, well-written and well-developed. But that's why Steinbeck is Steinbeck, and I write a half-assed blog about books other people wrote.

Likewise, the plot is remarkable. Again, the buildup is a bit slow for my taste, but overall the storyline is taut and crescendos wonderfully to the climax and denoument without ever wandering or releasing tension. It's really more a storycable, a strong, sleek steel storycable.

Well, that's that. Soon I'll be coming out with a review of Kon-Tiki. Or not.