John Steinbeck: Depressing But Beautiful

Yesterday, one of those list your favorites and tag a bunch of people games went around my Facebook friends.  We all listed 10 favorite books and tagged each other.  There were lots of fun comments about different books, authors and genres, but one stuck with me.  One friend's sister commented that she didn't like John Steinbeck because his books seemed like one bad thing after another and always had sad endings.  She has a good point.  Even when good things happen to Steinbeck's characters, things still seem to turn out badly.  I don't mind that, because to me it's just a part of the story and Steinbeck's stories are always beautifully told and reflect the dreary time they were written in.  They are authentic, almost to a fault.  The conversation got me thinking about John Steinbeck though, and brought to mind one of my favorite quotes from him.  I'd love to know the context of this one, but I can't find anything about it.

Click the picture to visit John Steinbeck's Amazon author page.

Steinbeck's idea rabbits may have all had unhappy endings, but I'm so glad he not only had them but shared them.  His books are beautiful portraits of humanity.  I'm happy I get to read them.