The Storytellers One by Roger Mansfield (Schofield & Sims Ltd, Huddersfield 1971)

 

Maybe he wasn’t joking, Ernie thought. Bob was clever with hands and brain, the stop-gap of the shop with micrometer and centre-lathe, a toolmaker who could turn off a candlestick or fag-lighter as soon as look at you. ‘Do you mean it about a .303?’

Bob pulled into a lay-by and got out. ‘Keep clear of the headlights,’ he said, ‘but catch this.’ Ernie caught it, pushed forward the safety catch, the magazine resting in the net of his fingers. ‘God Almighty! Anything up the spout?’

‘I’ve a clip in my pocket. Strictly for rabbits’—Bob smiled, taking it back.

‘A waste,’ Ernie said. ‘The twelve-bore would do. Mixer-matosis has killed ’em all off, anyway.’

They drove on. ‘Had it since I left the army,’ Bob told him. ‘The stores was in a chronic state in Germany at the end of the war. Found myself with two, so kept one. I have a pot-shot with it now and again. I enjoy hunting—for a bit of recreation.’

Ernie laughed, wildly and uncontrolled, jerking excited shouts into the air as if trying to throw something out of his mouth, holding his stomach to stop himself doubling up, wearing down the shock of what a free-lance .303 meant. He put his arm around Bob’s shoulder by way of congratulation: ‘You’d better not let many people know about it, or the coppers’ll get on to you.'

‘Don’t worry. If ever they search, it’s a souvenir. I’d get rid of the bolt, and turn another off on the lathe when I needed it.’ ‘Marvellous,’ Ernie said. ‘A .303! Just the thing to have in case of a revolution. I hope I can get my hands on one when the trouble starts.’

Bob was sardonic: ‘You and your revolution! There wain’t be one in our lifetimes, I can tell you that.’ Ernie had talked revolution to him for months, had argued with fiery puritanical force, guiding Bob’s opinion from voting Labour to a head-nodding acceptance of rough and ready Communism. ‘I can’t see why you think there’ll be a revolution though.’

‘I’ve told you though,' Ernie said loudly. 'There’s got to be something. I feel it. We work in a factory, don’t we? Well, we’re the backbone of the country, but you see, Bob, there’s too many people on our backs. And it’s about time they was slung off. The last strike we had a bloke in a pub said to me: ‘Why are you fellows allus on strike?’ And I said to him: ‘What sort o’ work do you do ?’ And he said: ‘I’m a travelling salesman.’ So I said, ready to smash 'im: 'Well, the reason I come out on strike is because 1 want to get bastards like yo’ off my back.’ That shut ’im up. He just crawled back into his sherry.’

(From 'The Other John Peel' by Alan Sillitoe.)

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (Penguin Books 1945)

 

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,” and he would have meant the same thing.

The Man Who Came Uptown by George P. Pelecanos (Mulholland Books 2018)

 

“Lennie was a re-tard,” said the man with the heavy-lidded eyes. “George couldn’t carry him no more.”

“Nah,” said Antonius. “George did that thing for Lennie because Lennie was his boy. ’Cause Curley was gonna string Lennie up and lynch his ass. Or, if Lennie did go to prison for killin that trick, he wouldn’t make it in San Quentin or wherever they’d put him out there in California, back in the old days.”

“Lennie couldn’t jail,” said Larry.

“Exactly,” said Antonius.

“You’re saying,” said Anna, “that George killed Lennie out of friendship.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what this book is about,” said Michael. “Friendship and brotherhood. Companionship. The author means to say that people together are better than they are alone.”

“Does anyone say that outright in the novel?” said Anna.

“Sure.” Michael opened his book to where he had dog-eared a page. “I marked a spot. It’s in that chapter when Crooks is talking to Lennie in Crooks’s room. Can I read it?”

“Go ahead.”

“Michael squinted as he read. “‘“A guy needs somebody—to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you. I tell ya,” he cried, “I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick.”’”

“For a friend, though,” said Antonius, “Lennie be buggin the shit out of George.”

“‘Tell me about the rabbits, George,’” said Donnell, in his idea of Lennie’s voice.

“‘Which way did they go, George, which way did they go?’” said the heavy-lidded one, and then, when no one laughed, embarrassed, he said, “Ain’t none a’ y’all seen that old cartoon?”

“They gonna get a farm,” said Antonius, picking up on the vibe. “‘An’ live off the fatta the lan’!’”

Now many of the inmates laughed.

“All right.” Anna picked up an article that she had printed out down in the workroom. ”

“Let me read something to you that John Steinbeck wrote himself. It might have been from his acceptance speech when he won the Pulitzer Prize, or it might be from his journals. I don’t remember which. I got it off of Wikipedia, to be honest with you. But for me it sort of speaks to this book and his worldview in general.”

“Read it,” said Michael, leaning forward.

“Okay,” said Anna, and she began. “‘In every bit of honest writing in the world there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.’”

“What if someone step to you and try to take you for bad?” said Donnell. “What you supposed to do then? Understand their ass?”

“Turn the other cheek,” said Larry. “It’s right there in the Bible.”

“An eye for an eye is in there too,” said Donnell.

“The man is saying, try to do what’s right,” said Michael. “Reach out to other people. Try.”

The conversation drifted to money and fame, as it tended to do.

“Was Steinbeck rich?” said Antonius.

“I’m sure he was,” said Anna. “His books were huge bestsellers. Many of them were made into movies and plays.”

“I bet he got mad respect too,” said Donnell.

“Not from everyone,” said Anna. “Many academics don’t really care for his work. They think it’s too simplistic and obvious.”

“You mean people could relate to it too easy.”

“Well, yes. He was what’s called a populist author. He wrote books that could be read and appreciated by the people he was writing about.”

“This book was deep,” said the soft-spoken man.

“Seriously, that was, like, the best chapter-book you ever gave us,” said Donnell.

“Thank you, Miss Anna.”

“You’re very welcome,” she said.

The Next 30 Day Song Challenge - day 01

I meant to do another one of these months ago but . . . but . . . you know the score. Let's not embarrass each other about this recurring matter.

Thirty days in June and a threadbare post count for 2012 gives me a cheap excuse to litter the page with embedded videos for the next thirty days. My one reader in Kerala with dial-up will be so so pleased.


day 01 - Your favourite cover version
It could be any number of Dick Gaughan's versions of Leon Rosselson songs and, up until a minute ago, it was going to be this wonderful version of a Chic classic but I suddenly remembered that I've had Kris Drever's version of Boo Hewerdine's 'Harvest Gypsies' on repeat for months now, and what better excuse to belatedly mention the song on the blog:



A great voice, a touching d-i-y video, and some backstory to the term 'Harvest Gypsies' and the John Steinbeck connection.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (Penguin 1937)

"You're nuts." Crooks was scornful. "I seen hundreds of men come by on the road an' on the ranches, with their bindles on their back an' that same damn thing in their heads. Hundreds of them. They come, an' they quit an' go on; an' every damn one of 'em's got a little piece of land in his head. An' never a God damn one of 'em ever gets it. Just like heaven. Ever'body wants a little piece of lan'. I read plenty of books out there. Nobody ever gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It's just in their head. They're all the time talkin' about it, but it's jus' in their head."

Lifeboat (1944)