The Wayward Bus (Penguin Classics)
by John Steinbeck
Really Great Book!
Today, nearly for ty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John
Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures.
Over the next year, his many works, beginning with the six shown here,
will be published as black-spine Penguin Classics for the first time and will
feature eye-catching, newly commissioned art. Of this initial group of six
titles, The Wayward Bus is in a new edition. An imaginative and
unsentimental chronicle of a bus traveling California’s back roads. This
allegorical novel of pilgrimage includes a new introduction by Gary
Scharnhorst. Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works
to a new generation of readers—and to the many who revisit them again
and again.
Features:
* ISBN13: 9780142437872
* Condition: NEW
* Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
* Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
What seems to be the most accurate written statement Ive come across
about The Wayward Bus is the sort of secondary synopsis on the back of
my aged paperback copy - THE WAYWARD BUS is Steinbeck writing with
honesty and passion of the raw, primal urges of men and women.
Yes, its a character study. Yes, it examines aspects of society, values,
dilemmas, etc. in post-WWII era America that still apply today. Yes, the
people in the story are mismatched (as in, not likely to have much to do
with one another, or at least so intimately as their numerous adventures
lead them to be?). But what makes this book so refreshing and continues
Steinbecks tradition of not rehashing the same style, content, or desires
repeatedly in his work (despite having such a distinctive voice) is that its
essentially about one thing: SEX. And not just people thinking about sex
and their behaviour within potentially or actively sexual relationships, but a
poignant examination of sexuality as somehow being simultaneously
drawn from and responsible for every aspect of our feeling, being, and
actions, whether we are aware of it or (usually) not. And instead of
dropping a little hint of these ideas now and then, its clearly the premise of
the whole story and dealt with not just directly but nearly exclusively.
Whether in Steinbecks trademark character development in his description
of the biggest and smallest details of these characters lives previous to
their day-long encounter, our glimpses into their conscious thoughts and
daydreams, or in the revelations Steinbeck must give us secondhand due
to his characters inability to offer us the information themselves (such as
his description of Mrs. Pritchards sexual arousal upon eavesdropping in on
a story of a young girls manipulation of a man she ended up leaving in
order to gain a full-length mink coat, then counter-balanced with Mrs.
Pritchards own horror at the vulgarity of the story as told in an imagined
letter to a friend)), there is little if anything happening in this book without
direct allusions to the characters sexuality as indeed a primal force, as in,
number one!
The result is a daring and touching portrait of how sexuality is more than
what goes on between the sheets, doing good and honest tribute to just
how clearly its plays the tune that we all dance to.
BUT he does it so well that people barely seem to notice it, even when a
man virtually rapes his own wife in a cave, causing her to tear her
fingernails down her own face until they draw blood. This is some pretty
nutty stuff, but by the time we get there weve been so immersed in such
savage underlaying sexual tension that when it comes to the surface, were
still later calling it another wonderful character study!
Which just goes to show we must be just as repressed and thoughtless as
he thought we were. It should be telling that the only people who have real
sex in this book are the most consistently aware of how badly and
wonderfully they want genuine sexual release and the accompanying love,
if only temporarily, with the people around them: this is more than reality,
its advice! A little book about a little day that proves what a big man t his
genius really was.
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