Writing

[Sarah Wilkinson]

[LewEllyn Hallett]

Steinbeck is a favorite of mine, going back to high school when I devoured all his books one after another. He had incredible insight into the struggles and heart of the common man, and expressed it so powerfully as you've illustrated here. As Steinbeck says, the movements of his time in labor and government were "results not causes." But the "great owners" didn't recognize this. The cause was man's inherent need to work and create and be fed. It's good to remember the origins of the unions and strikes and other methods that working people used to gain justice and relief in oppressive times. There was a cause for the regulation of big business. We're in oppressive times now, and as this excerpt expresses, man cannot bear for long to be hungry--for food and security, but also for significant work and opportunity to grow. Big "owners," or what we know now as the corporate realm and private sector, have been as much a source of oppression as big government. Both need limitations. Steinbeck is giving us this country's history. Whether we agree with his perspective or not, it's a valuable one to expose ourselves to in these times. See what we can learn from great fiction? Thanks, Sarah, I'll pick up my Steinbeck again...

[Sarah Wilkinson]

Gosh!  I really appreciate all these comments - glad to know that people are interested and have something to say/write in response.

 

Currently I'm reading "Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck, whom I consider an outstanding writer because of his perceptive description of the condition of humanity with all its foibles, insecurities, resilience and compassion.  Also, I like the way he wrote without adherence to "prescriptions".  His prose is poetic, vivid and gives freedom to thought - his own and those of the reader.  I think this passage is timeless.

 

(Context is people of Oklahoma and surrounding states being evicted from the land and then migrating to California):

 

"The western land, nervous under the beginning change.  The Western States, nervous as horses before a thunderstorm.  The great owners, nervous, sensing a change, knowing nothing of the nature of the change.  The great owners, striking at the immediate thing, the widening government, the growing labour unity; striking at new taxes, at plans; not knowing these things are results, not causes.  Results, not causes; results, not causes.  The causes lie deep and simply - the causes are a hunger in a stomach, multiplied a million times; a hunger in a single soul, hunger for joy and some security, multiplied a million times; muscles and mind aching to grow, to work, to create, multiplied a million times.  The last clear definite function of man - muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need - this is man.  To build a wall, to build a house, a dam, and in the wall and house and dam to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back something of the wall, the house, the dam; to take hard muscles from the lifting, to take the clear lines and form from conceiving.  For man, unlike anything 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.  This you may know when prisoners are stuck like pigs, when the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust.  You may know it in this way.  If the step were not being taken, if the stumbling-forward ache were not alive, the bombs would not fall, the throats would not be cut.  Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live - for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died.  And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live - for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken.  And this you can know - fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe."

 

- Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath.  Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1939, pp. 137-138.

[LewEllyn Hallett]

Wonderful insights, Sarah, thanks. As a reader, I tend toward novels for reasons she expressed -- I experience people, places, cultures, conditions unknown to me. And it's not a cerebral learnning; it's the heart, bone, blood, and guts of the matter, an emotional learning and connection. As a writer, I long ago rejected the exhortation to write what you know. How limiting is that? (I don't know a whole lot.) Young writers especially have no interest in writing what they know. And they have a jump on us old hacks in that they have not dampened down their imaginations, so they should be encouraged to let them flow. I like this statement: "Communities of the like-minded is one of the greatests dangers of today's globalized world." It engenders stereotypes and lack of understanding--let's allow ourselves to get a glimpse of the "other" and understand. I like that fiction is one way to do this.

[Peter Cawdron]

"Knowledge that does not take us beyond ourselves is worse than ignorance, it makes us elitist and distant..." and I'd add "unwittingly hypocritical."

That is a fascinating insight.

[Peter Cawdron]

That's a powerful message... Essentially, her concept of circles highlights (in a soft manner) the danger of group-think, something that has been rife over the years...

[Tom Kelso]

David: You will be! Likewise, all of us.

All: Writing about what you don’t know, or haven’t experienced, reminds me of a series of books, written in German, about an American frontiersman called Venitu. These novels are as popular in Germany as Zane Gray, and Louis Lamar in this country. But, I eventually learned that the author of the Venitu books never set foot in the western hemisphere. Everything he wrote about Indians and the American culture, even the code of the west, was all 2nd hand or imaginary. Yet, several of his books have been made into movies. FYI.

[David Bailey]

I really enjoyed that. Makes one think.
In my next life lol, I want to be smart, venerable, and kind to all mankind.

[frank manasseri]

I'm passing this along to my writing intructors.

It also confirms my idea of my Islam story mixing facts with fiction.

What intrigues me about writing is we can write anywhere, about anyone and write about anything.

True freedom of exoression without boundaries!

[Sarah Wilkinson]

If you like reading or writing or want to extend your thinking and life, then settle down and listen to this inspiring talk. It's a beauty!