The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck
My rating: 5/5 cats
steinbeck pulverizes me. i’m not the type to get choked up by calling-card commercials or whose heart swells with the violins at the end of a sappy movie, but steinbeck has a heart-seeking missile aimed directly at me, and he knows just how to find my emotional center. this has always been my favorite of steinbeck’s works, even though it is a shortish one in which very little actually happens. but steinbeck’s strength, for me, has always been his characters, and this is one prolonged character study of people in transition – hoping to move on, but unlikely to ever change their ways or make any staggering improvements in their lives. bring me your poor, your tired, your unlovable and i will make you love them; this is the foundation for any steinbeck novel. his instinct is to celebrate these characters, with their flawed dignity and big dreams. having read this myself in high school, living out my own small-town blues experience (although hopefully more lovable than some of these people), steinbeck was a discovery for me about the spirit of america. nobody does it better, or in a way that encapsulates more of the emotional landscape of this country than steinbeck does. how can someone feel trapped in a country this big, with all its possibilities? but that’s the tragic irony of desperate humanity; so much cake to eat, but you ain’t going nowhere.
