On Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men
I read Steinbeck's
Of Mice and Men. I've never before been able to get through anything by Steinbeck, but that trend has been emphatically ended by this book. It is simply exceptional.
I have trouble defining that exceptionality, however. Three factors come to mind, but they can hardly account for the force of this book. I'm going to list them anyway.
First, I was drawn into an emotional attachment to several of the story's characters. As a result, I was deeply invested in, and greatly moved by, the horrifying (but necessary?) end of the tale. Knowing what
had to happen at the story's end, and feeling heavily the tragedy of that situation, I even went so far as to shed a tear or two.
Second, the story is incredibly well-crafted. It is tight: one killing echoes--and is perhaps necessitated by the logic of--another; accidental victims grow in size and complexity from mouse to puppy to woman, and the trend is obvious and terrible; the entire book is put together in order to make the last few scenes predictable--and therein lies their power, because you know they have to happen and the anticipation aches.
The third exceptional feature of Steinbeck's story is the complex relationship it has to Burns's "To A Mouse," which I went back and read for the first time in years after reading Steinbeck's story.
Of Mice and Men is something of a variation on a theme set by Burns, and it is highly successful as such. Like the poem, it illustrates for us that "the best-laid plans of mice and men / gang aft a-gley." But Steinbeck does more than that: he trumps Burns when it comes to showing that dreadful human condition by which we cannot help think about what has happened, and what will happen in the future. To be sure, Burns stresses the same point; he finds a mouse more "blest" than he himself is, because the mouse lives in the present while he is left to "guess and fear" what is to come. But
Of Mice and Men realizes the idea that Burns merely states: Steinbeck's characters live for their future hopes, and when George kills Lennie, it is all the worse because it is a premeditated, well-considered act which he hates--but which he knows he must (and will) do. More than that, though, Steinbeck drew
me into this illustration:
I knew what was going to happen at the end of the story, yet I dreaded finding the place in the book where it actually did happen. I was awaiting Lennie's death (and the death of Curley's wife, for that matter) with a kind of dread, and a kind of hope that somehow the story would be just as good with a different ending.
(It wouldn't have been, of course.)
But, Mousie, thou art no thy laneIn proving foresight may be vain:The best laid schemes o' mice an' menGang aft a-gley,An lea'e us nought but grief an' painFor promised joy.Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!The present only toucheth thee:But, och! I backward cast my eeOn prospects drear!An' forward, tho' I canna see,I guess an' fear!
Ray Craib, The English Patient, maps, Herodotus, & history
At the moment I'm reading a paper-in-progress by
Ray Craib, a friend and professor of mine at Cornell. The paper is about nature, space, and national identity in Mexico. Ray has a particular knack for the geographical, having introduced me to, among other things, Thongchai Winichakul's excellent
Siam Mapped, historical exercises in the mapping of Connecticut (if memory serves), and some of the numerous possibilities of spatial representation and the historical significance of landscape.
Ray's paper makes me think about traversed paths and the problems of rediscovery. As Ray rightly points out, Cortes doesn't seem to have noticed the Mexican landscape much (at least, not if his journals are anything to go by). But later travelers evoking Cortes--like Calderon de la Barca--are hyperaware of their surroundings, and the fact that these are
the surroundings through which the "first" discoverer passed. Perhaps they know they are in the presence of greatness--whether that be a reference to Cortes (a dubious reference, I admit, but here we are concerned with the perceptions of the travelers themselves), or to their awesome destination. The journey is not about discovery of a new thing, which could be anywhere, but of an established greatness, which is along
this path. And so the journey becomes not just a means of finding a thing--Mexico City, Borobodur, the Notre Dame,
anything--but is itself a thing to be noticed and appreciated.
I am reminded of
The English Patient (the book--I've not yet seen the movie), in which Herodotus figures prominently. Ondaatje's book is very much about space and place: the English patient knows the Middle Eastern desert intimately, and is constantly evoking a hill here, an oasis there, or an ill-omened cave in his ravings. He does not get lost in this place that looks the same in every direction. He knows the space, and its variations, and he marks it. He comes to view the landscape itself as a natural unit, too, and says that it can't be properly divided between nations which exist outside of it. For the English patient, the space is significant; indeed, the desert may be the one thing that holds importance for him.
But
The English Patient is not merely about space. Among other things, it is also a book about words, about story and history. The patient brings with him Herodotus, always; but it is an amended Herodotus, a corrected text. The patient writes over its words and pastes in new ones. The English patient
knows Herodotus, and likely learned the desert first through Herodotus's eyes--but he sees it differently now, and he amends the story. Having read Herodotus, he can hardly have experienced the desert
like Herodotus did.
Perhaps this is the same idea. Following the footsteps of Cortes, or even going on a
Da Vinci Code tour of Europe (people are so weird), gives significance to places we may never have noticed before. Their representation--on maps, in books, in art--tells us what to expect, and makes them weighty in their own right. I'd argue that this makes our everyday experiences richer, and that it invests them with greater meaning, greater significance--but I don't want to be dependent upon Herodotus to show me that a place is awe-inspiring. The man believed in giant gold-digging ants, for goodness's sake.
