Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

I've been a big fan of Steinbeck's writing for a long time, since reading The Grapes of Wrath in high school. This was one of the few books of his that I hadn't read so I thought I'd check it out. According to Wikipedia, this book was Steinbeck's first critical and financial literary success.

Tortilla Flat tells the story of the "paisanos," a group of jobless by choice Spanish-Indian-Mexican-white friends who live in Monterrey, California. The book takes place as some of the main characters come home from World War I, so that puts the year at 1918. One of the main characters, Danny, has just learned that he has inherited two houses from his uncle in Tortilla Flat, a shabby neighborhood just outside of Monterrey. While many would think of the benefits that come with owning two houses, Danny considers it a "burden of ownership" but decides to live in one of the houses while he rents the other one to his friend Pilon for fifteen dollars a month. No rent ever gets paid, though, because that's the type of friendship and world view the paisanos have. Pilon invites some of his friends who are homeless to come live with him in his house, which eventually gets burned down by an unattended prayer candle. Everyone ends up moving in to Danny's house and Danny for the most part accepts them into his home willfully as long as they don't try to sleep in his bed, even the pirate with five dogs. Yes, I said pirate with five dogs.

Of course there's a lot more to the story than that, but I'm not going to give it away. It does have somewhat more humor than most of Steinbeck's other books as it was intended to cheer people up during the time of the Great Depression. The story does follow a certain pattern that many other Steinbeck novels follow, however, in a "series of unfortunate events" kind of way. Some literary critics have compared the paisanos to King Arthur's knights, which is very interesting and you can find a lot of information about that particular topic online already so I'm not going to recount it here. It would also give away too much of the story...

So, did I like the book? Yes. Is it Steinbeck's best book? No. I'll call this one a slightly lesser known classic with an overall grade of B. With its short length (about 175 pages) and to read some of the paisanos' reasoning with the others why they should buy wine instead of food or other necessary items this book is definitely worth a read.