Was planning a family holiday to the bay area in Summer next year - a chance for Laura to visit with her older sister at the Stanford campus, and perhaps sneak into a lecture or two.
As we talked about how the trip could be structured, Monterey came up as one of the likely places we'd visit. We'd been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium on a trip to California many years back, and this was a wonderful place I'd be happy to spend another full day at. The Aquarium is situated at one of Cannery Row, a street immortalised by Steinbeck in his book of the same name, and the follow-up novel "Sweet Thursday".
Tortilla Flat was the first Steinbeck novel I'd ever read (borrowed the book from the CJC library back in '78, 10 years after Steinbeck passed away), and this book had me sold on the author for his laid back style, odd but richly rendered characters and deceptively simple but effective descriptions of the sets (the scene backdrops, the surroundings of the action). Set in Monterey, as were Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday, these stories made me want to visit that section of the CA west coast, see the marine life that provided Doc with his living, sit in the dunes where the troubled minds would visit for comfort and perhaps a bit of wisdom......
At PageOne (in Vivo City) about a month back, I came across a beautifully packaged set of Steinbeck's manuals. Lovely cover art and design - that captured the spirit of men of old I associate with California - men like John Muir, Steinbeck himself, Francis of Assisi - people who travelled, observed, had ideas bigger than their bodies could contain.
Much to my delight, I came across a Steinbeck piece in the "Blowin' in the wind" blog, and it's linked here for your reading pleasure.
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1 comment:
Thank you very much. I really enjoyed your post.
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