Episode 41: Of Mice and Men

It’s everyone’s favorite book from freshman English, John Steinbeck’s novella-play Of Mice and Men, which is about two migrant ranch workers in the 1930s and the incidents that befall them during one of their awful temp jobs. We do find the one moment of hilarity in this book, which concerns a very special asshole called Curley who keeps one of his hands in a big glove full of Vaseline to “keep it soft for his wife,” so there’s a little levity. We get into religion, class, loneliness, and the problems of fractured affects and bonds in the 1930s US. We discuss the many dead animals in this book, ranging in size from mice to dogs, and work through our collective annoyance with holding novelists to standards of political perfection (look, sometimes you stay friends with Elia Kazan). We recommend Barbara Foley’s Radical Representations: Politics and Form in U.S. Proletarian Fiction, 1929–1941. While they aren’t on Of Mice and Men, we also recommend Steinbeck’s journal Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath, in which he writes, “I'm not a writer; I've been fooling everybody, including myself,” which is… relatable. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @betterreadpod, and email us nice things at [email protected]. Find Tristan on Twitter @tjschweiger, Katie @katiekrywo, and Megan @tuslersaurus.

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