General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsUnearthed 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
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 humanitys 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.
[...]
More at link.
ananda
(28,873 posts)!!!
malaise
(269,157 posts)for those of us who love his writings.
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,191 posts)...Catatouille?
Backseat Driver
(4,394 posts)Who knew Puss in Boots was a sous chef preparing "nightshade"
Chuckles:
Kurt V.
(5,624 posts)Roland99
(53,342 posts)Mais avec un chat.
panader0
(25,816 posts)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.
GusBob
(7,286 posts)Yeah not like GoW at all
My fave JS work is Tortilla Flats