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A review by anca_m
The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck
3.0
The Pastures of Heaven is a collection of twelve stories all set in a valley the book is named after; or Las Pasturas del Cielo. You could say they form a novel - now I tend to think so, but I remember how keen I felt the switch of subject when I was younger. Every story appeared to me unfairly separated by another. But Steinbeck called them a novel, saying that reading the book as a collection of stories would sabotage our reading. So I think I was right the first time round when I expected something else.
For sure, what is memorable about them is not the depictions of the valley itself 'nor the atmosphere, as surprising as it may sound, but the people. Each of the characters is peculiar and disturbed more or less visible or dangerous to the society. There are characters that reappear in stories they are not the central figure of. It's easy to make an image of them beforehand: as socially-normal people, living on the land of heaven. Because if we are sure of something, that is the fact that valley was serene, the place we want to live our elders life in or even as youngsters, abandoning the rat races of city-life and retreat: knit by the fire in the winter and have a little garden to look after in the spring. And maybe that's why the characters lack that rural normality we picture: they are placed in a natural estate, left with their big plans they've made for life, their (dis)illusions that blow up in their face and (almost pathologic) obsessions that grow and come out easily - when they could've never been revealed. Considering the bucolic, agrarian dreams they've made, doesn't the name become a tad ironic?
And the concentration of all these expectations & hopes is Bert Munroe, the hero of story no. 2. Steinbeck declared he came up with his arrival in the valley for a better cohesion of the stories. And so it is: Bert Munroe settles after a series of misfortunes that would make anyone think he's a Schleprock in a formerly thought haunted & ill-lucked house and proudly declares to the locals he's chased away the curse following him. Like a premonition, Pat Humbert suggests the two cursed merged and then spread small copies of them all around the valley. And with that we get the "red wire" going through the novel. Bert is the outsider, he goes there with his hopes and curses and from his arrival, the locals' lives are persistently eroded by their owns.
Although I made it sound like that, the stories aren't that sad and gloomy or depressing: you don't get much time to hope for happy-endings, it's clear there won't be any here, but the sad endings aren't awe-inspiring either: and there' also Steinbeck-irony at people and human behavior.
For sure, what is memorable about them is not the depictions of the valley itself 'nor the atmosphere, as surprising as it may sound, but the people. Each of the characters is peculiar and disturbed more or less visible or dangerous to the society. There are characters that reappear in stories they are not the central figure of. It's easy to make an image of them beforehand: as socially-normal people, living on the land of heaven. Because if we are sure of something, that is the fact that valley was serene, the place we want to live our elders life in or even as youngsters, abandoning the rat races of city-life and retreat: knit by the fire in the winter and have a little garden to look after in the spring. And maybe that's why the characters lack that rural normality we picture: they are placed in a natural estate, left with their big plans they've made for life, their (dis)illusions that blow up in their face and (almost pathologic) obsessions that grow and come out easily - when they could've never been revealed. Considering the bucolic, agrarian dreams they've made, doesn't the name become a tad ironic?
And the concentration of all these expectations & hopes is Bert Munroe, the hero of story no. 2. Steinbeck declared he came up with his arrival in the valley for a better cohesion of the stories. And so it is: Bert Munroe settles after a series of misfortunes that would make anyone think he's a Schleprock in a formerly thought haunted & ill-lucked house and proudly declares to the locals he's chased away the curse following him. Like a premonition, Pat Humbert suggests the two cursed merged and then spread small copies of them all around the valley. And with that we get the "red wire" going through the novel. Bert is the outsider, he goes there with his hopes and curses and from his arrival, the locals' lives are persistently eroded by their owns.
Although I made it sound like that, the stories aren't that sad and gloomy or depressing: you don't get much time to hope for happy-endings, it's clear there won't be any here, but the sad endings aren't awe-inspiring either: and there' also Steinbeck-irony at people and human behavior.