Of Mice and Men
Tonight we are watching John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men that was made in 1992 with Gary Sinise and John Malkovich. Steinbeck wrote this novella (only 107 pages) in 1937 while he was gathering and creating his stories of the Great Depression and the travails of the Dust Bowl and all the soulful stories of real people caught in the backwash of a world gone sideways. Steinbeck was from Salinas, California, just east of Monterrey Bay and he was near where all the folks from the Dust Bowl gravitated towards thanks to the verdant San Joaquin Valley nearby and the need there for farm workers. Steinbeck seems to have used this novella as a warm up for his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath. I know The Grapes of Wrath quite well because a few years ago it was the Cornell book selection for all Freshmen and the rest of the Cornell community. It was selected while I was a Clinical Professor at Cornell, so, like all faculty members, I was asked to hold a freshman seminar on the book for incoming students to give them a perspective on it from the point of view of my discipline in finance. This was a wonderful program done by Cornell, where freshmen were exposed to differing views and discipline thoughts all centered around the same literary work. The Grapes of Wrath was only one of a dozen or so books (Guns,Germs and Steel, Frankenstein, When the Emperor Was Divine, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Lincoln at Gettysburg, The Great Gatsby, The Pickup, Things Fall Apart, The Life Before Us, Homer & Langley, The Trial, Antigone) that the program reviewed over its life. Like all good things, this program eventually came to an end as I assume the school grew weary of its rigors or perhaps because incoming students weren’t as enthralled with it as some of us were. Sigh.
Watching Malkovich and Sinise portray the humble itinerant farm workers that wandered the rails and the back alleys of ninety years ago moves my liberal and well-meaning heart. It is the story of the human condition, as they call it. Steinbeck does a wonderful job of showing us how every person has pain and suffers in some way from their lot in life. George is burdened with caring for Lennie and all that entails. Lennie is burdened with a simple mind and a strong body, a combination that gives rise to the tragedy at the core of the novella. Candy is handicapped and old and represents the worries that plague us all as we become less and less productive. He is furthermore symbolized by his old mutt, that gets shot for simply being “of no use to himself.” Even Curley, who is small and feisty and cannot find the kindness to not be a little bully is in pain, as is his wife, who is the “Stella” or “Blanche” of the film. Everyone has a story and no one is without pain except perhaps Slim, the work foreman. Slim is almost a surreal ideal of what humans were meant to be like, happy and carefree, but are so often not about.
I have always liked Steinbeck and his writing and I especially like Sinise’s version (he starred and produced it) of Of Mice and Men. He is the Lieutenant Dan we all have in us, even if we grumble a bit about it as we go. There isn’t a speech in this novella like Tom Joad’s famous speech in The Grapes of Wrath, where he says: “I’ll be all around in the dark – I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there.” Instead, there is George, standing over the dead body of his simple-minded friend, who wants to do good, but can’t always contain himself, as is the human condition, and does bad, but with no ill-intent.
Today I became Lennie. I had spent my morning going to FedEx to return four DirectTV boxes after paying $256/month for way too long when Hulu Live at $75/month would give me all I need (including this movie). Then I spent an hour at the Verizon store on hold with the “Loyalty Team” trying and ultimately succeeding at terminating two unknown wireless lines that have cost me $151/month for God knows how long. I was feeling oppressed and like Tom Joad. My hands were balled in fists of rage, as Meatloaf might say, thinking that every commercial enterprise was out to get me and drain me of my hard-won money. I was feeling righteously indignant and yet still victorious. I had beaten back the two lumbering telecomm giants, AT&T and Verizon, who, in their death throes have taken to milking every last drop out of whatever cows they still control. I knew that if I didn’t do these cancellations right, they would report to their bad cop, Experian, that I deserved a credit rating beatin’, and I was determined to avoid that at whatever cost. The cost was my time and, in theory, retirement has afforded me sufficient quantities to finally beat them at their own game. But it is my human condition that bile rises in my throat just as it did with Tom Joad at his moment of truth. No one had better fuck with me this fine morning. And that’s when I turned into Lennie.
My morning wasted away, I stopped at Taco Bell. I did not want beans with ketchup, like Lennie. I just wanted an order of soft taco supremes without tomatoes. The drive-up window guy had to say it three times before he got it right and when I got the bag and started to drive off I felt in the bag and, sure enough, felt the hard taco shells of corn tortillas rather than flour tortillas. I could feel the bile rising in my throat. I swerved into the Taco Bell parking lot and stomped into the store across the row of low bushes and headed for the counter. I am generally quite respectful of the working man and women in my life, but on this morning I was certainly indignant at the horror of being given hard corn shells versus soft flour tortillas. Steinbeck wrote of Tortilla Flats, but that was not on my mind at the moment, getting my order right so I could get back into the convenience of my Tesla was. I held out my bag to the pleasant manager and told her that this was not what I ordered. She immediately huddled with the food preparer, who undoubtedly earned minimum wage and was not so good at reading English. Seeing this confab over the receipt, I simply said, “Can we please not debate this and just give me my soft tacos without tomatoes?” I did not yell but I’m sure there was a decided edge to my voice.
It was then that a man who was siting with his female friend/partner in the distant corner and who looked like a mix of itinerant Tom Joad, George and Lennie all rolled into one unshaven and rumpled body, stood up and from across the room said, “Hey! Stop being rude to the workers. They’re just doing their job, you asshole!” So much goes through a liberal ex-Wall Street person’s brain when such a thing happen. The range of possible reactions is limitless and luckily, since the Taco Bell manager was diligently doing her job of fixing my order, I had a moment to pause and consider before responding. The man was already on his feet and leaning toward me though still a good twenty feet away as I stared at him. The Lennie in me said, “Is this your business?”, to which he relied, “I’m making it my business.” Classic feisty retort. I took a breath and put Lennie away. I did not grab his fist and crush it as Lennie did to Curley. I simply turned and waited for my soft tacos. Without any push-back from the manager, I was able to get control of myself and the inner beast that wanted to counterattack. There was no point in explaining about AT&T and Verizon for I knew that they fall into the category of “if that’s the worst part of your day….” So, I turned and calmly walked out under the stink-eyes of the man and his partner, who would likely go back to planning their afternoon at MacDonald’s and didn’t glance or gesture in their direction. I was too busy swallowing my own self-inflicted bitter pill. Thus was I, at once, of both mice and men.