Grapes of Wrath is the greatest book I’ve ever read that I didn’t enjoy (Spoilers)

After recently re-reading East of Eden, which I have enjoyed every time I've read it, I thought to explore more of Steinbeck's oeuvre and decided to try Grapes of Wrath. I'm glad I read it because I found it very interesting from a critical perspective but despite how impressive I found the craftsmanship behind the book's construction I doubt I'll ever read it again because I found two-thirds of the book to be quite a slog.

Steinbeck is a supreme talent and the book's prose is beautiful. The cast of characters is varied and they all have a purpose in the world that he's trying to create. Some of the chapters that are basically vignettes outside of the Joads do a wonderful job of both describing the moment the novel inhabits and underlining the themes we encounter throughout the Joads' journey. Steinbeck is sometimes a little direct with his messaging – Mrs. Sandry(misandry)'s miserableness comes to mind – but usually strikes the right balance in getting his point across without feeling polemical. Having just read East of Eden I thought the contrast between Ma Joad and that book's female characters was especially striking. Ma is not just a strong female character she is the driving force behind the Joads – though I do think Steinbeck made a curious choice in often showing her strength by having her issue threats of violence which to me seemed to be a strength exposed primarily through masculinization. To be fair, he does take pains to show that she is also wise and not just physically tough.

In many ways I think Grapes of Wrath is greater than East of Eden or at least more skillfully rendered. The deftness with which Steinbeck communicates the core themes of this novel is extraordinarily impressive. Casy's humanist preaching is sharply contrasted with the behavior of other religious authorities and adherents throughout the book including maybe most notably the aforementioned Mrs. Sandry. Tom's crimes of passion and self-defense underscore his sense of justice which stands in stark relief to the venerated crimes of the book's unseen capital class. The third act's proof of the power of collective action, undergirded and built up by the law's fear of even the specter of it throughout the book, was for me far and away the highlight of the novel. The nuts-and-bolts craftsmanship of how Steinbeck put this together really blew me away. I really enjoyed digging into what I thought he was trying to express through this book.

I just wish I enjoyed the book itself more. While the skill it took to compose it from a literary perspective was awe-inspiring and helped me to power through the novel in a bit under a week there were large swathes of the book that I found deeply unentertaining. I get that Steinbeck uses the long road trip to build a creeping sense of unease in the family as they near California and it echoes many, many, many, many other epic journeys throughout literary history but fuck it was quite a while spent on the trip – so long that I wonder if John himself got tired of it. It seems almost two-thirds of the trip is getting the Joads from their farm to the edge of Oklahoma and the rest of the trip was mercifully compressed. The colloquial nature of the dialogue was a real drag when the Joads finally did make it to California – Steinbeck likely intended the ubiquitous "Is there any work here?" "Is there any work there?" conversations to be something of a chorus and meant for it to be repetitive but it was more than I could bear by the end of the novel. I did like the book's third act, but it took a long time to get there. And I hated the ending – it's powerful that Ma and Rose's immediate instinct, when they were more down and out than they had been at any point in the novel, was to give of themselves and to literally give the last of what they had to basically a total stranger but the novel's final point was pretty arresting to me. It almost felt like Steinbeck chose an arbitrary plot point to insert the ending which makes sense from a messaging perspective but was deeply unsatisfying to me. I wouldn't say the book was bad and I'm glad I read it and I would eagerly recommend it to any writers but it's hands down the greatest book that I wouldn't recommend to people that mostly read for pleasure.