Dogs’ Life

the amorality of Tortilla Flat and Canary Row. Here he escapes the sentimentality that mars The Pearl, for his raffish characters keep him raffishly outrageous. And when he applies this roguery to French politics and mores in an extended burlesque, the reader gets some of the finest writing of a very good second-rater.

But this effort, while returning Steinbeck to his proper milieu, suffers from being too long and too precious. It is pretentious, besides. Steinbeck still seems under the miasma of East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath, oppressed by the feeling that he ought to Say Something Significant. So that while his commentaries on French political topsy-turvies, the Sagan Saga and existentialism can be uproariously funny, he stops too often to say, “Now don’t forget the serious criticism which my little jokes conceal.” And on almost every occasion, his “serious” connotations are banal.

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the amorality of Tortilla Flat and Canary Row. Here he escapes the sentimentality that mars The Pearl, for his raffish characters keep him raffishly outrageous. And when he applies this roguery to French politics and mores in an extended burlesque, the reader gets some of the finest writing of a very good second-rater.

But this effort, while returning Steinbeck to his proper milieu, suffers from being too long and too precious. It is pretentious, besides. Steinbeck still seems under the miasma of East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath, oppressed by the feeling that he ought to Say Something Significant. So that while his commentaries on French political topsy-turvies, the Sagan Saga and existentialism can be uproariously funny, he stops too often to say, “Now don’t forget the serious criticism which my little jokes conceal.” And on almost every occasion, his “serious” connotations are banal.