Chapter 1 Monterey California
“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Chapter 2 Omar T Black, All American Mutt
“Names are a great mystery. I've never known whether the name is molded by the child or the child changed to fit the name. But you can be sure of this- whenever a human has a nickname it is a proof that the name given him was wrong.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Chapter 3 A new adventure
“...intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There's luck or fate or something else that takes over...” John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
Chapter 4 Family business
“All we got is the family unbroke.” John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Chapter 5 Visiting the old neighborhood
“For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have.” John Steinbeck, The Pearl
Chapter 6 Lunch with Roni
“... for how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Chapter 7 Second home
“Fella in business got to lie an' cheat, but he calls it somepin else. That's what's important. You go steal that tire an' you're a thief, but he tried to steal your four dollars for a busted tire. They call that sound business.” John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Chapter 8 The drawings
“For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man—when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. This you may say and know it and know it.” John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Chapter 9 Ma and the art world
“Trust in wrath is dependable; trust in feelings of love is often wayward; trust in family is a shiny pearl; the search for Eden can be the winter of our discontent.” A Deamer Steinbeckism
Chapter 10 Day adventure
“Her father was frightened by a strange bed or a foreign language or a political party he didn't belong to. Her father truly believed that the Democratic party was a subversive organization whose design would destroy the United States and put it in the hands of bearded communists.” John Steinbeck, The Wayward Bus
Chapter 11 Sissy/Valentines
“Two gallons is a great deal of wine, even for two paisanos. Spiritually the jugs maybe graduated thus: Just below the shoulder of the first bottle, serious and concentrated conversation. Two inches farther down, sweetly sad memory. Three inches more, thoughts of old and satisfactory loves. An inch, thoughts of bitter loves. Bottom of the first jug, general and undirected sadness. Shoulder of the second jug, black, unholy despondency. Two fingers down, a song of death or longing. A thumb, every other song each one knows. The graduations stop here, for the trail splits and there is no certainty. From this point anything can happen.” John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat
Chapter 12 Gwen and Gallery Moderne
“One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is the only evidence of his life. While there remains even a plaintive memory, a person cannot be cut off, dead. And he thought, “It’s a long slow process for a human to die. We kill a cow, and it is dead as soon as the meat is eaten, but a man’s life dies as a commotion in a still pool dies, in little waves, spreading and growing back toward stillness.” John Steinbeck, To a God Unknown
Chapter 13 Roni makes dinner
“Attitudes toward strangers crop up mysteriously. I was downwind from the camp and the odor of their soup drifted to me. Those people might have been murderers, sadists, brutes, ugly apish subhumans for all I knew, but I found myself thinking. “What Charming people, what flair, how beautiful they are. How I wish I knew them.” And all based on the delicious smell of soup.” John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Chapter 14 Brochettes and dignity
"You'll go in soon," his father went on, not hearing. "And I want to tell you so you won't be surprised. They'll first strip off your clothes, but they'll go deeper than that. They'll shuck off any little dignity you have--you'll lose what you think of as your decent right to live and be let alone to live. They'll make you live and eat and sleep and shit close to other men. And when they dress you up again you'll not be able to tell yourself from the others. You can't even wear a scrap or pin a note on your breast to say, 'This is me--separate from the rest.'" John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Chapter 15 Dali
“Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Chapter 16 Meeting Roni’s parents
“For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. The last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.” John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
Chapter 17 Wayward Bar
“She was the kind of girl everybody watched walk by. Why, she walked in a place and everybody turned and looked at her. You could see their heads turn, like watching a horse race. It was something about her, and it wasn’t make-up and it wasn’t the way she walked, although that was part of it too.” John Steinbeck The Wayward Bus
Chapter 18 Gallery Besh
“Every man suddenly became related to Kino's pearl, and Kino's pearl went into the dreams, the speculations, the schemes, the plans, the futures, the wishes, the needs, the lusts, the hungers, of everyone, and only one person stood in the way and that was Kino, so that he became curiously every man's enemy. The news stirred up something infinitely black and evil in the town; the black distillate was like the scorpion, or like hunger in the smell of food, or like loneliness when love is withheld. The poison sacs of the town began to manufacture venom, and the town swelled and puffed with the pressure of it.” John Steinbeck, The Pearl
Chapter 19 Bend it like Beckham
“I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.” John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley: In Search of America
Chapter 20 Chasing ghosts and phantoms
“Ghosts could walk freely tonight, without fear of the disbelief of men; for this night was haunted, and it would be an insensitive man who did not know it.” John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat
Chapter 21 The party of the century
“A little love is like a little wine. Too much of either will make a man sick.” ― John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat
Chapter 22 Big Sur
“The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.” John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Chapter 23 Expectations and freedom to love
“She didn’t think so much, “Would this man like such a garden?” But, “Would the garden like such a man?” For the garden was herself, and after all she had to marry some one she liked.” John Steinbeck, The Long Valley, The White Quail
Chapter 24 Belly dancing
“Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Chapter 25 Freud and making peace with Roni
“Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time.” John Steinbeck, Sweet Thursday
Chapter 26 Freud, Steinbeck, Mac and the boys
“If a man ordered a beer milkshake he'd better do it in a town where he wasn't known.” John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
Chapter 27 An appropriate ending
“It is astounding to find that the belly of every black and evil thing is as white as snow. And it is saddening to discover how the concealed parts of angels are leprous.” John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat
Chapter 28 Wine Club – Epilog
“Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.” John Steinbeck, The Acts of King Arthur & His Noble Knights
Monterey History/Steinbeck Authors:
(follow-up reading)
Michael Hemp
Neal Hotelling
Susan Shillinglaw
Thomas Steinbeck
STEINBECK PERMISSIONS:
From THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck, copyright 1939, renewed © 1967 by John Steinbeck. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
From TORTILLA FLAT by John Steinbeck, copyright 1935, renewed © 1963 by John Steinbeck. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
From THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT by John Steinbeck, copyright © 1961 by John Steinbeck; copyright renewed © 1989 by Elaine Steinbeck, Thom Steinbeck, and John Steinbeck IV. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
"The White Quail", copyright 1935, renewed © 1963 by John Steinbeck, from THE LONG VALLEY by John Steinbeck. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
From CANNERY ROW by John Steinbeck, copyright 1945 by John Steinbeck; copyright renewed © 1973 by Elaine Steinbeck, Thom Steinbeck, and John Steinbeck IV. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
From EAST OF EDEN by John Steinbeck, copyright 1952 by John Steinbeck; copyright renewed © 1980 by Elaine Steinbeck, Thom Steinbeck, and John Steinbeck IV. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
From THE PEARL by John Steinbeck, copyright 1945 by John Steinbeck; copyright renewed © 1973 by Elaine Steinbeck, Thom Steinbeck, and John Steinbeck IV. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
From TO A GOD UNKNOWN by John Steinbeck, copyright 1933, renewed © 1961 by John Steinbeck. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC .
From TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY: IN SEARCH OF AMERICA by John Steinbeck, copyright © 1961, 1962 by The Curtis Publishing Co.; copyright © 1962 by John Steinbeck; copyright renewed © 1989, 1990 by Elaine Steinbeck, Thom Steinbeck, and John Steinbeck IV. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
From THE WAYWARD BUS by John Steinbeck, copyright 1947 by John Steinbeck; copyright renewed © 1975 by Elaine Steinbeck, Thom Steinbeck, and John Steinbeck IV. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
From THE ACTS OF KING ARTHUR AND HIS NOBLE KNIGHTS by John Steinbeck, edited by Chase Horton, copyright © 1976 by Elaine Steinbeck. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.