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sl8

(13,749 posts)
Wed Jul 31, 2019, 08:08 AM Jul 2019

Unearthed Steinbeck Short Story Isn't at All Like 'Grapes of Wrath'

From https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/books/new-steinbeck-story-amiable-fleas.html

Unearthed Steinbeck Short Story Isn’t at All Like ‘Grapes of Wrath’


John Steinbeck and his wife, Elaine, in 1954, the year he wrote a series of pieces that ran in Le Figaro, a French newspaper.
Credit Bettmann/Getty Images


By Jacey Fortin
July 31, 2019

John Steinbeck is best known for his weighty, quintessentially American classics like “The Grapes of Wrath” and “East of Eden.”

But one of his short stories, now published in English for the first time, is not about social injustice, arduous journeys or humanity’s capacity for cruelty. Rather, it is a funny tale about a Parisian chef whose cooking companion is a cat.

During a mid-20th-century stint in Paris, a city he loved, Steinbeck wrote a series of 17 short pieces, mostly nonfiction, for the newspaper Le Figaro. He composed them in English and they were translated into French. One of those submissions, a fictional piece called “The Amiable Fleas,” can be found in the new issue of The Strand Magazine, a literary quarterly based in Birmingham, Mich.

The magazine has previously unearthed pieces by Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Chandler. In 2014 it featured another short story by Steinbeck, the Nobel Prize-winning author. That one had been composed for a patriotic radio show during World War II, and Orson Welles read it aloud in a 1943 broadcast.

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Unearthed Steinbeck Short Story Isn't at All Like 'Grapes of Wrath' (Original Post) sl8 Jul 2019 OP
My favorite author .. I want to read these stories. ananda Jul 2019 #1
Get thee to the greatest page malaise Jul 2019 #2
So, it was called.... Tommy_Carcetti Jul 2019 #3
Yup, I thought the same - Backseat Driver Jul 2019 #8
welp, i can't say I've read all of steinbeck anymore. ha! Kurt V. Jul 2019 #4
Hmmm. Ratatouille? Roland99 Jul 2019 #5
Not all of his stuff was like The Grapes of Wrath: panader0 Jul 2019 #6
Neat. I just got done reading T w C GusBob Jul 2019 #7

panader0

(25,816 posts)
6. Not all of his stuff was like The Grapes of Wrath:
Wed Jul 31, 2019, 10:01 AM
Jul 2019

I too am a huge Steinbeck fan. My mom met him. Although she flirted briefly
with William Saroyan. I have a few first editions of his with hand-written
dedications to my mom in the front. "To my dear Miss Kingston"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travels_with_Charley

A lot of great writers from the West Coast back when.
Steinbeck and Saroyan for sure, but I have to include Kerouac (and other Bay area beats) and John Fante and Bukowski. And Dashiell Hammett. Going back you could add Bret Harte and Twain.

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