John Steinbeck

 

John Steinbeck

I've read a number of books by John Steinbeck but it's this quote from Cannery Row that always stuck with me. Doc says to Mack and the Boys, 

 "It has always seemed strange to me...the things we admire in men, kindliness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self- interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the qualities of the first, they love the produce of the second." 

 In his play Macbeth, Shakespeare has the three witches saying something very similar to Doc in Cannery Row. That "fair is foul and foul is fair." In short, what seems good can often be bad and vice versa. It's the basis of classical economic theory that underpins so-called capitalist free markets. It has been said that Doc is based loosely on Steinbeck's friend, Ed Ricketts. I always get the impression that Steinbeck rather admires the ne'er-do-well panhandlers and bums and their non-materialistic, laid-back attitude towards life, whether it's Mack and the Boys in Cannery Row, or the Mexican paisano's of Tortilla Flat. Many of his stories, like Grapes of Wrath, deal with the daily grit and grime of human existence.