Summer of Steinbeck, Or, Why I Miss My English Major

Summer 2011-12 is the Summer of Steinbeck. There, I’ve declared it. Five days and two books in, it’s proving to be a most enjoyable venture.

In my hazy undergraduate days, I was both an English and a Sociology major at the ANU. If we’re judging purely by pleasure, I think I enjoyed my English courses slightly more than my Sociology courses, although I think that had something to do with the exceptionally good company offered by my English classmates (hello Clementine Kemp and Kitty Gilfeather). As I’ve gone on to do Honors and a PhD in Sociology, I clearly enjoy the challenge that Sociology presents, but English was, and remains, my first academic love. Whilst Sociology and I are happily, contentedly, farting-in-front-of-each-other married, I can’t help but miss my first tortured love, and yearn for the simpler days of reading big books and thinking big thoughts.

(In my darker PhD moments, I wonder what my life would have been like if I’d broken the mould of bright, bookish, sensitive girl and studied something wild and crazy like dentistry. I could be brining oral hygiene to the masses right now. A tempting thought, as I’m oral hygiene’s biggest cheerleader …but I digress.)

The thing I specifically miss about my English major is the discipline of reading, not just for fun, but with purpose and with a desire to understand something beyond just the story. Although I am a voracious reader (it’s the best way to pass the extra hours that insomnia gives you), I have allowed myself to become soft and slack over the last few years, when I’ve been reading solely for fast pleasure and not the deep satisfaction of reading a text that demands more from you.

So it’s in this spirit of wanting a more deeply satisfying reading experience that I’ve set myself the challenge of reading or re-reading all of Steinbeck this summer. John Steinbeck is one of my favorite authors, and, fittingly, one of the first ‘serious’ writers I fell hard for. Steinbeck wrote a lot, which is partly why I’ve chosen him for this summer’s project – I needed a writer with a big enough titles list to keep me amused all summer long, and prevent my attention from straying to other, simpler, literary pleasures.

I began with The Grapes of Wrath, arguably Steinbeck’s most famous novel, and well worth a read. I won’t spoil for those of you who haven’t yet read it, but the ending makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Last night, I finished The Wayward Bus, which I hadn’t heard of until Veronica Silver suggested it and kindly loaned me her copy. I loved it, and was highly impressed by Steinbeck’s descriptions of clothing and make up in The Wayward Bus – I’d never had Johnny boy pegged as a writer of women and women’s secret mirror rituals. Today, on the bus to work, I began Travels With Charley, another loan from Veronica Silver, and am planning on tracking down In Dubois Battle later this week. Already, I’m taken back to those first heady days of my English major, deeply satisfied yet yearning for more.