24
Apr
2009
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
Fact: I do not like John Steinbeck. Fact: When in tenth grade American Literature we ran out of time at the end of the year to read The Grapes of Wrath, I was happy. Fact: I still have never read The Grapes of Wrath despite the facts that it is my mother’s favorite book, and I generally like books about every day, working-class people. Fact: I had to read The Pearl in eighth grade, and Of Mice and Men in ninth grade and those are the only two Steinbeck books I’ve read, judging his whole oeuvre from said books I read a dozen years ago. Fact: John Steinbeck is one of America’s most cherished and prolific authors.
That said, I will now give my review of this book.
It’s boring.
As it is a novella, however, it is an incredibly short, and can probably be read in one sitting.
IF, that is, you can get through the tediousness of the second paragraph of the first page (first paragraph is O.K.):
“Kino’s eyes opened, and he looked first at the lightening square which was the door and then he looked at the hanging box where Coytito slept. And last he turned his head to Juana, his wife, who lay beside him on the mat, her blue head shawl over her nose and over her breasts and around the small of her back. Juana’s eyes were open too. Kino could never remember seeing them closed when he awakened. Her dark eyes made little reflected stars. She was looking at him as she was always looking at him when he awakened.”
I will not be bullied by English teacher’s exuberance for this writer. I will pick apart this paragraph. Because, it is not description. It is torture. Why use some commas accurately, but leave out others? This book was written in 1945, so there is no excuse that there was not an established code of punctuation in written English.
First, the punctuation. I’m not sure if that was Steinbeck’s choice or his editor’s. Is it supposed to help the flow? Well, it doesn’t.
It repeats itself (she’s always awake first. We get it). I will not repeat myself by stating the obvious.
The descriptions themselves are convoluted. Juana’s scarf thingy is around her breasts and back, and over her nose. I cannot picture this. Is it also over her shoulders? Is she wrapped up in it up to her nose?
The story itself is not a bad one. A poor pearl diver, from a long line of poor pearl divers, searches for a pearl in the waters off of Mexico to pay for medical treatment for his son. Overtones of the fate of indigenous people, and critiques of the ruling class, run throughout the book. Good things, that usually make for good literature.
Too bad it wasn’t written by someone else.
If you like this book, you might like:
(my reviews in blue)
Hawaii by James Michener
The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Pagan Spain by Richard Wright
The Pearl Diver by Julia Johnson
The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquival
John Steinbeck, Writer: A Biography by Jackson J Benson
Other works by John Steinbeck:
The Winter of Our Discontent
Tortilla Flat
The Pastures of Heaven
In Dubious Battle
The Red Pony
Cannery Row
Of Mice and Men
The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath
The Moon Is Down
The Short Reign of Pippin IV
Once There Was a War
The Grapes of Wrath
Sweet Thursday
America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction
A Russian Journal
The Long Valley
East of Eden
Travels with Charley in Search of America
The Forgotten Village: Life in a Mexican Village
The Wayward Bus
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
Zapata
Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team
To a God Unknown
Cup of Gold
The Log from the Sea of Cortez
Burning Bright : A Play in Story form
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