A Separate Peace

I don't know. It just didn't hold up well for me as an adult listen even though I had some of my students read it year after year. Sara may have hit the nail on the head when she said that it could have ended much, much earlier. In any case, the ties to World War II seem to come out much stronger in an extended listen than in a disjointed read. But at the same time, it seemed that Forrester almost absolved himself of personal responsibility for Phinney's broken leg by comparing this individual act with those acts that he and his classmates will be committing in the war. In many ways, Gene's inability to handle his guilt drives the book and makes for his basic dishonesty with himself. (That really came out in Old School as well. What is it about boarding schools that seems to bring out the worst in late adolescent boys? Finney is irrepressible, as always, but there is also a lack of honesty, and of depth, in his character that doesn't hold up as well as it did when I taught the book. I don't think that it is a book that I would try to teach anymore if I could help it.

Author: Knowles, John

Date Published: 1959

Length: 6hr 35min

Narrator: McClure, Spike

The Grapes of Wrath

First off, Grapes works so well as an audiobook. Steinbeck's language and his descriptive passages come alive. I think that this has to be the great American novel of the 20th century. Only Philip Roth comes close in my reading. Roth is probably better at dissecting the human condition, especially in the late 20th century, but his language is nowhere close to Steinbeck. The audio version brings out the narrative structure of the book more clearly for me than the printed version, especially the interposing structure of the Joad's personal tribulations vs the wider perspective of the problems as a whole.

The used car salesman is one of the great scenes of literature, and reminds a lot of Tom Waits' "Step Right Up." Or the pathos of the farmers having to sell off the equipment that they had worked so hard to accumulate for pennies on the dollar, especially the draft horses that were now victims of progress and of history. And it goes on and on, taking pains to show the Joads as but one instance of great social forces at work. It is also apparant tht the book belongs to Ma as the central character of the book.  That makes the pathos even greater since her goal is to keep the family together even as she watches it fall apart.

Grapes lacks the metaphysics--timshel--of East of Eden, but it does have Casey's being part of one big soul and Tom's "I'll be there" speech. People break down under the pressures of life and dislocations. Only Ma and Jim Casey come through it as stronger characters.

Author: Steinbeck, John

Date Published: 1929

Length: 21hr

Narrator: Baker, Dylan