This Was No Meerkat Romance

Romance is never an easy thing, but it certainly becomes complicated when the participants all work in a zoo. I love this article because of the zany and hilarious opening sentence. How often do you get to use "meerkat?

Watching Seinfeld in Cuba

Last week I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they show Seinfeld reruns on television at 10:00pm every evening. The episode I watched was the infamous/classic ¨Soup Nazi¨ saga. What was interesting about this was that the word ¨Nazi¨ was bleeped everytime one of the Seinfeld characters mentioned it. In the Spanish subtitiles they used the word ¨engruñon¨ instead of ¨Nazi.¨ Very interesting. I wonder why they did that?

Why Steinbeck Still Matters

 

The first book I read by John Steinbeck was Once There Was a War, which featured the author’s war time writing as he followed American troops during World War II. For me it remains one of the best pieces of war time writing that is free of any political bias but portrays the realities and human stories (some of them with humor) that surrounded American soldiers. 

I decided to read Grapes of Wrath and I have been blown away by the power of the writing. He captures the spirit of desolation, isolation, frustration and avarice that really brings home the experience of so many Americans in the 1930 moving from Oklahoma and Kansas to California.

A lot of what Steinbeck wrote about remains very relevant today. Take for example this text from The Grapes of Wrath, “It ain’t that big. The whole United States ain’t that big. It ain’t that big. It ain’t big enough. There ain’t room enough for you an’ me, for your kind an’ my kind, for rich and poor together all in one country, for thieves and honest men. For hunger and fat Whyn’t you go back where you come from?” In the text the character is speaking to Americans from Oklahoma and Kansas migrating to California. We see that issues of class pervade the sentiment. There is no indication of race in the disquisition, but that does not mean it wasn’t there. Fast forward to 2015 and this same character would direct the same message to a different audience: to immigrants and to the lower class. Steinbeck mocks the lack of education of those who abused the migrants in the 1930 by imbuing their language with vocabulary that speaks to their incivility. Little did he know that he was ridiculing those who many years later would become more prominent in American public life: the Tea Party. Economies change, technologies change, even societal experiences change, Steinbeck seems to say, but stupidity never changes.  What would Steinbeck say if he were alive today? What would he make of Wall Street financiers and the Occupy movement? Or the Black Lives Matter movement?

There are moments in The Grapes of Wrath where Steinbeck is optimistic about mankind’s future. He writes, “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.” But then, he writes a more harrowing view of humanity: “Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. This you may say and know it. This you may know when the bombs plummet out of the black planes on the market place, when prisoners are stuck like pigs, when the rushed bodies drain filthily in the dust.” Ultimately, I think Steinbeck believed in humanity as long as it did not give up on concepts and belief. He writes in The Grapes of Wrath, “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.”

Much of what Steinbeck wrote about is relevant today. The audience may have changed, but the message is still the same. If only we would be smart enough to listen.