This is a collection of stories about morons. What i mean by that, is that everyone is engagingly simple, "good country people," and their amusement and fear is what makes this story tick. They are all good farmers, moral people without having the dredge of scripted morality, and finally adept to the understandings of both the simplicity of their environment as well as each other's characters. Simplicity drives them, and degardes all progression, for the better. Hence, the maybe unfair moniker of "morons." The simplicity of such a place is made complex by the human interaction invading the utopian sort of feel of the Pastures. They act as children, never affected by the torrid greediness and moral destitution of desperate living. The crop always crops and the population never explodes, so the community stays simple and inclusive. So the conflicts they come across, though ordinary (sexual maturity, troubled economy, strangers coming into town, mysteriousness and haunted places); have the great effect of being outrageous, of being tantamount to the interest of the whole town--like the family that is first introduced to ice in One Hundred Years of Solitude, this community is continually amazed by what should easily be perceived as mundane. They are children, wonderful, vitally experiencing children:They didn't make conversation; rather they let a seedling of thought sprout by itself, and then watched with wonder while it sent out branching limbs. They were surprised at the strange fruit their conversations bore, for they didn't direct their thinking, nor trellis nor trim it the way so many people do.There on the the limb the three sat. Their clothes were rags and their hair was only hacked off to keep it out of their eyes. The men wore lnog, untrimmed beards. They watched the water-skaters on the surface of the pool below them, a pool which had been deepened by idling toes.They are devoted, but without ambition. It's almost mechanical, the need for land, the need for interaction. I like this collection because it exhibits as much gracious life and sensual composure above rational thinking as animals should have. They are basically farmers out to pasture, children out to pasture, and they love each other as animals do, as urgent fellows compelled to one another by the susception of selection--they are a part of this herd, the Pastures of Heaven:In his treatment of her, Shark was neither tender nor cruel. He governed her with the same gentle inflexibility he used on horses. Cruelty would have seemed to him as foolish as indulgence. He never talked to her as to human, never spoke of his hopes or thoughts or failures, of his paper wealth nor of the peach crop. Katherine would have been puzzled and worried if he had. Her life was sufficiently complicated without the added burden of another's thoughts and problems.I especially like the story about the man who moves to the Pastures from the city, who has a profound interest in old histories like Herodotus and Thucydides and adventure stories like Treasure Island and wiles away the time reading by the banks of a river. He marries a woman with children and she becomes pregnant, then sickness kills everyone but the new baby. They allow the land to go wild and end up near starvation, but live freely, telling stories and experiencing life as lazy librarians and subdued hunters and gatherers. Then the boy is forced to go to school, and his modesty breaks the children's fear when they make fun of him and he merely does not understand, but rather laughs along with them. Then he is sort of made into a hero because of his mystery. I'm going to spoil the story by saying that eventually the school board declares he can't go to school in such shabby clothes so they present him with new ones. The embarassment makes him realize he is "poor" and ashamed for himself for letting the boy down, they move away, back to the city, much to the chagrin of the schoolteacher and the children who enjoyed their exceptional way of life. the stories are tolled with such a rolled back, tilt of the head, lolling tongue, straight from a rocking chair; they are told with the panache of legend, history and forgotten relaxation. I like Steinbeck's books about conflict, but the ones simply about setting are absolutely attractive in their development. One or two of the stories don't really click and seem excessively dramatic. But those are the exceptions. In truth, he paints these people so well, so conductively; their images become memories. I am amazed by Steinbeck. He is such an artist.
In his early California novels, Steinbeck focused on the land he loved and the people who lived there. The Pastures of Heaven (which is based on a real valley and whose characters have roots in real people) is one of those novels and uses the same format he employed in Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row a collection of stories around an organizing theme. One of his earliest books, The Pastures of Heaven, focuses on the people who work the land and live in its town. The stories are fairly independent; there are recurring characters but each can stand alone. [return][return]Steinbeck has an eerie way of foreshadowing the emotional climate of his early books in his prologues. Some are gently humorous, some cast a shadow of foreboding; because Steinbeck s prose in these books in which the land is at the heart of everything is lyrical, it s sometimes difficult to understand why. In The Pastures of Heaven, the prologue recounts the discovery of the valley by a Spanish corporal leading a punitive expedition to recover a group of converted Indians who had the audacity to desert the mission to which they were bound. On his return, by accident this man who had whipped brown backs to tatters, he whose rapacious manhood was building a new race for California accidentally stumbles on this hitherto undiscovered (by whites) valley. Overcome by the beauty of the valley, he murmurs here are the green pastures of Heaven to which our Lord leadeth us . Intending always to go back when he retires, he dies instead of the pox (syphilis). And that story sets the tone for the rest.[return][return]Running through the book like a theme is the history of the Battle farm, named after its first settler. Although one of the best pieces of land in the valley, nothing good happens to George Battle and his son John is a crazy religious fanatic who dies appropriately by snake bite. Others buy it, and finally Burt Munroe is the last in a line of people who buys the old Battle Farm as a refuge, a retirement, from battle with the forces of the hostile business world. But the land has a force of its own; somehow Munroe is never quite able to come into harmony with it and really make the place his own. Burt is one of the recurring characters, and this disharmony with the farm runs through the stories. Other characters appear for their moment in the sun, but somehow or another, nothing ever quite works out for them. It s as if the valley rejects the evil of the Spanish corporal in the only way it can by rejecting the people who come to settle there. Not that there s any black cloud that hangs perceptibly over the valley and the town (with the exception of the Battle farm) it s just that somehow life in the valley never quite lives up to its promise.[return][return]The last chapter is an epilogue, in which a group of people in a tour bus look down over the beautiful valley from a view point. An old man, a successful businessman, a priest, the driver of the tour bus all are caught up in the apparent tranquility and prosperity of the valley, and each imagines in his own way what it would be like to retire from the hostile world to this refuge. It's a perfect, ironic close to the cycle of stories.
What do You think about The Pastures Of Heaven (2011)?
This 1932 story collection is the great overlooked Steinbeck title, the first book in which his inimitable narrative voice really came through for the first time. (His first novel, Cup of Gold, is recommended only for hardcore Steinbeck completists.) The thematically linked stories begin with Bert Munroe, a man haunted by bad luck, taking possession of an abandoned farm in a pristine California valley. Each succeeding story focuses on another resident whose fortunes are affected, in one way or another, by the arrival of the Munroe clan. As the incidents and characters accumulate, an idle joke at the start of the book becomes ever more ominous. A fine, underappreciated entry in the Steinbeck canon, and a great introduction for a newcomer to this author's work.
—Steven
مراعي الفردوسهي أول تجاربي مع جون شتاينبكهي أقرب للمتوالية القصصية منها إلى روايةهي مجموعة قصص لأبطال وشخوص يعيشون في مراعي الفردوس كلّ منهم له قصته الخاصة ، التي قد تتلاقى مع شخص آخر من ساكني الفردوسالقصص يغلب عليها الطابع ، الحزين المأساويغريب الأطوار أحياناً ، والمفزع أحياناً أخرىوهو ما لا يتناسب مع أحلامهم وأفكارهم تجاه هذا المكان ، الذي استمدوا تلك النظرة الحالمة له من اسمهليكتشفوا أنها هي نفسها الأرض ، لا تختلف في مسمياتهاولكن تبقى الأرض التي تحتفظ في داخلها بما حدث ومرّ عليها عبر الزمانوما قد تحمله من خير وزرع وجمال وما قد تحمله أيضاً في طياتها من لعنات ، ضاربة بأحلام هؤلاء المساكين الراغبين أن تمنحهم الهدوء والسلام والرزق عرض الحائط !!لديّ شعور قوي بوجود رمزية بها ، لم يصل إليها عقلي القاصر بعدرمزية تتعدى كونها رواية تحذر من الآمال الحالمة التي ستجدها في هجرة موطنك إلى أرض ماكانت رحلة ممتعة في الفردوس ، وتذكرة دخولي لعالم جون شتاينبكبأسلوب سلس ، وتنقل سريع وبسيط بين القصصبتفاصيل بسيطة وعميقة تجعلك تتخيل بطل قصة لا تتعدى صفحاتها العشرة وكأنه كان معك ، بطل رواية كاملةبانتظار رحلة أخرى معه على أرض أخرى :))تمّت
—Amira Mahmoud
الجميل ... صاحب الأسلوب السلس جون شتاينبك وكتاب آخر رائع وقراءةأخرى ممتعة من بعد أن تعرفت عليه من خلال روايته شتاء الأحزانقليلة هي الكتب التي تترك في النفس بصمة وقليلة هي الكتب التي ترفض أن تتركها من يدك وتنشغل عنها وهذا الكتاب منها بكل تأكيدأعترض على تسمية هذا الكتاب رواية كما اعترضت من قبل على تسميةصح النوم ليحيى حقي روايةففي العملين كان هناك المكان والزمان وقصصا قصيرة تخص هؤلاء المتواجدين في ذلك المكان والزمان، وعلى عكس صح النوم التي توحدت خيوطها في آخر الكتاب مما اعطاها حق التسمية فإن مراعي الفردوس قد افتقدت هذه الجزئية التي قد توحي بأنها روايةإن المكان هو مراعي الفردوس ... ذلك المكان الواعد المبشر بالخير ... والأشخاص هم الحالمين بحياة أفضل ... الباحثين عن الإستقرار ربما أو الإستشفاء أو الهدوء أو حتى ممارسة العمل الذي يؤتي ثماره ... الكثيرون قد تواجدوا في مراعي الفردوس بسبب أحلام جميلة راودتهموكما هو الحال في المجتمعات المنغلقة، تبدا القصص وربما الأساطير، بعضها عن البيوت ولعنات البيوت والبعض الآخر عن ساكنيها ... بينما المنظر من بعيد شديد الإبهار وشديد الجاذبية نكتشف بحق وبعد قليل أن البيوت أسرار، فالبيوت تخبئ الجدران قصصا كثيرة في جنباتها ...جميعها عبارة عن قصص تمس القلوب وتترك بصمتها... قصص لها مفعول المغناطيس يحيطك بهذا التيار الجاذب لك كقارئ ... القصص مكتوبة وكأنها فيلما سينمائيا تشاهده بعينك وتساير أبطاله كأنك تراهم ولعلك تكتشف أن الفردوس ليس فردوسا حقيقيا وأن هناك من يريد أن يغادره بقليل من الجهد وبمعرفة خلفية مؤلف الرواية والذي يعد من كتاب أمريكا المعارضين والذي تناول عدد من رواياته موضوع الكساد الكبير والصعود المفاجئ لطبقات معينة وانهيار أحلام البعض، قد تتوصل إلى أن مراعي الفردوس هي النموذج الأصغر لأمريكا أو أرض الأحلام التي قد تحيل أحلام البعض لكوابيس، وأن قاطنيها هم المهاجرين الذين توافدوا عليها بحثا عن الكثير فلم تجد هي إلا بالقليل وبشروط ... لعلك تعرف أن ليس كل ما يلمع ذهبالعل المفاجأة الكبرى في هذه النسخة كانت إسم المترجمة :) خديجة خطاب ... نعم، خديجة خطاب مذيعة القناة الثانية التي طالما كانت لي آراء سلبية فيها فيما يتعلق ببرامجها وبدورها في التليفزيون المصري بل وفي مظهرها أحيانا ... لقد أبهرتني بتمكنها، فالترجمة فن دقيق والترجمة قد تفسد أعظم الأعمال وأروعها ... شعرت بعد القراءة بأنني أدين لها باعتذار لن يصلها وتمنيت لو أنني أقرأ المزيد من الروايات بترجمته ولو أنا تكتب قصصا خاصة بها :)هل أحتاج إلى القول بأن هذا العمل هو من أعظم الترشيحات التي تلقيتها في حياتي؟؟ :)
—Yousra
