I finished Grapes of Wrath this morning, reading in a frenzy until 4am. I must have drank that whole book up in only 4 or 5 days, all 500 or so pages of it.

Steinbeck’s other great work, East of Eden, had a considerably impact on me when I read it years ago, so it was a mistake letting the Grapes of Wrath languish on my bookshelf. The first time I read East of Eden I remember distinctly thinking this Steinbeck fella must have had a remarkable understanding of the human psyche, because almost every other page or so involved a character doing or thinking something that was so perfectly and purely idiosyncratically human yet hardly ever discussed much in most other great works. There was no less of this here. Minor things like the way a pair of kids play, great enemies and foes all in the same relationship, or the way a younger man, hardly 16, may be taunted for his burgeoning love of women. All of Steinbeck’s writing seemed to me just a tiny window into the smaller lives of all of us; not the bigger lives that seemed to change the course of history, or fell upon the silver screens, or sprung out of great epics, but the smaller lives, lived in all the small conversations we had between ourselves talking about this and that, and just this and that.

And in Ma Joad I saw my own mother, awful strength, and tirelessly brave, and tirelessly loving. And in Tom, and Uncle John, and Pa and little Ruthie and Winfield I saw little bits of myself here and there. And that’s the greatness of Steinbeck’s word, every character has some moment or other which seems to earnestly reflect who we are or have been at one point or other.

All throughout the book I had the picture of the Migrant Mother in my mind, and Florence Thompson’s voice years later talking about how she did what she had, to survive. I’d like to think Steinbeck might have seen that very picture and had it guide him in some minor way to find the characters of Ma Joad and little Ruthie and Winfield.

Much has already been said about its clear eyed portrayal of human perseverance. But beyond this, and even beyond its powerful characterisations, not enough has been said about how it is simply just good reading. I have read no other book of fiction in recent times that I have so quickly and wholly consumed with no begrudging required of me.