OF MICE AND MEN
★★★★★ (3 out of 5)
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing Of Mice and Men.
Literally the only thing I remember about John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is the scene where Lenny inadvertently takes the life of a mouse. Or maybe it was a kitten or bunny. I guess I don’t even remember that so well.
Anyway, it’s one of the best manslaughter scenes I’ve ever read. What I like most is the abject tragedy of it all because Lenny loved whatever it was that he killed so much that he hugged it to death. It was like Lenny couldn’t contain his love. He had so much love that something had to die. I once dated a woman of similar circumstance. We broke up when she was convicted.
I recently mentioned the vast supply of love that Newt Gingrich has – the love that makes him have to marry so many women. My love is not as vast as his, though it has always been very strong. I like to imagine that my love could resurrect my wife but so far I guess my love isn’t strong enough. Lenny’s love wasn’t strong enough either because I think he ended up getting sentenced to the electric chair or something. Maybe he was just run out of town. I don’t know. I read that book a long time ago.
In the movie version of the book, Lenny or the other guy was played by John Malkovich.
The point that book was making was that love can really ruin things so maybe we should all try not loving anything and then we’ll never get hurt. It seems like a pretty safe course of action to me. If I had read Of Mice and Men before I married my wife I could have tried not loving her. I don’t know, though, she was really hard not to love.
Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing pizza.
