Last week was at my college alma mater, and I was surprised at the memories that came back to me. The campus was permeated with fear and self criticism, bad memories of asking for a loan, opening a bank account with a $50 paycheck, or thinking about how to spend the last $4.
What I forgot was the wild ambitions, of foundj a club, gettingperfectgrades, the compulsive gap to live in a fantasy world since incremental progress was itself depressing. Of mice and men nails this reality of being poor. Thinly sirprisj g part is how hard it is to see the reality when you are in it.
Reading Of Mice and Men after East of Eden is a bit of a letdown. Characters have room for exactly two notes, which get played and the they retire. Every gun is a checkovs gun and knowing that steinbeck will pull the trigger removes suspense.
Steinbeck lays out the dynamite, lites the fuse, and then the reader is only left to ponder what damage will be wrought.
Last week, returning to my alma mater revived an old memory: poverty is not just low income but a cognitive environment. it’s an environment I thankfully escaped, so now the memories feel alien. Fear crowds out realism; ambition turns fantastical because incremental progress is still too depressing. Steinbeck captures this with brutal accuracy. Of Mice and Men understands what it’s like to be poor: the way scarcity distorts time horizons, inflates dreams, and makes reality hardest to see precisely when you’re living inside it.
Read after East of Eden, the novel feels narrower and more mechanical. Characters operate on two notes, played loudly and then exhausted. Every object is a Chekhovian instrument; every setup signals its own detonation. Steinbeck doesn’t build suspense so much as inevitability. He lays the dynamite, lights the fuse, and steps back. What remains for the reader is not surprise, but damage assessment. That, too, is honest economics.