The Grapes of Wrath

From the diary: “May 12, 1982

“I’m reading The Grapes of Wrath for which I have to not only finish (I’m 1/5 thru) by tomorrow, but I have to write a summary of it, and do the 1st draft of my Steinbeck term paper.”

I was not a fast reader. I’m still not a fast reader. I’ve discovered I can skim academic prose when I have to. And, yes, you do seem to get more out of dry jargon-thick academic prose when you’re skimming than when you’re reading word by word. I like the sound of the storyteller in my head so reading is a sort of listening for me. When school deadlines loom the storyteller voice can’t chatter away fast enough. Steinbeck wrote lots of way shorter books than The Grapes of Wrath. I wonder if I could have gotten away with Of Mice and Men or Cannery Row? I nicknamed the book, The Rapes of Grath. I remember the book fondly, if not the term paper.