Friday, February 27, 2009

Steinbeck on his birthday(1902)

The dusk passed into dark and the desert stars came out in the soft sky, stars stabbing and sharp, with few points and rays to them, and the sky was velvet. And the heat changed. While the sun was up, it was a beating, flailing heat, but now the heat came from below, from the earth itself, and the heat was thick and muffling. The lights of the truck came on, and they illuminated a little blur of highway ahead, and a strip of desert on either side of the road. And sometimes eyes gleamed in the lights far ahead, but no animal showed in the lights.

~ John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, 1939

2 Comments:

Blogger Tess Kincaid said...

He could paint a word picture, couldn't he? I love his writing. And this is such a handsome photo of him, too. Happy Birthday, Mr. Steinbeck.

2/27/2009 8:48 PM  
Blogger marc aurel said...

Ah Steinbeck! Imagine an English schoolboy far away from California. He is one of the threads that pulled me across the Atlantic and on to the work that I'm paid for.

2/28/2009 1:40 PM  

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