PurpleCrap: No Peak, No Plot, No Meaning

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One foine Friday, June 2,]-[ of clan Mauvecloud wrote:

Of Resentful Nuts and Angry Raisins
Some mutilated proverb which I don't recall ever having read in the original form (help is always appreciated):
When hens crow
When those without balls bleat

Probably refers to times of chaos and change. Ostensibly, first line refers to the intervention of royal consorts in matters of governing. Second line refers to the Fall Guys of ancient Chinese history: the eunuchs. When one is ignorant and naive, this apparently misogynist saying seems to be blaming females and castrati for the collapse of the current regime. However, when one grows older and even more ignorant, one understands the other layer of the proverb, and knows that it never has anything to do with eunuchs: In times of chaos and change, the true bosses have to step out from behind the throne.

This is the secondary thread running along the main theme of despair in Mr. Stainback's ~~Slick Oranges~~ Angry Grapes, which I stole from the library on account of its (physical) proximity to MT's Life on the Mississippi and the phrase "greatest American novel" on the cover. (Eeeee! The greatest American novel is ~~Huck Finn~~ I'll Take Manhattan!)

An illiterate ex-engineer takes a look at The Grapes of Wrath
Tom Joad, paroled from the petty crime of sticking a hoe into the head of a would-be sodomizer (who, in turn, had a knife stuck in Tom's belly), enjoyed a brief homecoming to his very interesting family before they all legged it to the West for the Eternal Sunshine of Oranges(-Picking).

Tom Joad was an alien transvestite who played mind-tricks on humans. Here is an excellent example of Tom's extra-terrestrial ability, found in the second chapter.

There was this driver of a truck with the sign "No Riders". Tom said to him: "A guy can be a good guy, even if some rich bastard makes him carry a sign."

Consider the hapless driver: It's a win-lose situation for sure (Tom winning, driver losing). If he refused to let Tom hitchhike, not only was he not a good guy, he was also being made to carry a sign by some rich bastard. Oh! Those reds! No wonder McCarthy was so damned sk'yared of 'em.

And so, despite the first chapter, (6.5 pages chockfull of corn and cotton and rolling dusts and intermittent weather - imagine what this does to a city person, born and bred), I was hooked.

The family itself was very eye-catching. First of all you have the firstborn, Noah, the potential Lovecraft in him destined to be forever unrealized, for he left the camp for a life of fishing along the Colorado just before the camp crossed the state line. (Lovecraft consuming fish == cannibalism)

Then you have the lovable old lecher Grandpa, who couldn't tell the button-holes of his fly from those of his shirt. The family, being neglectful as usual, forgot the fact that there was no way Grandpa could survive long after being uprooted from the rich Oklahoman soil and staying uprooted, despite the spiked coffee. When Grandpa's leafless branches and twigs gave their final shudder, what did Pa and the rest did but planted him back into the soil, with a note in a jar describing his species and botanical name. Why, they should have done it earlier!

Grandma was the dead martyr, Ma the living martyr; both suffered, one the dying, the other the living on, so that the family could cross the last hurdle to California without distractions.

Pa was the former head of the family. That is, Ma let him reign until the day he proposed to temporary break the camp into two groups. Then Ma, cranky at the thought of being separated from her favorite dropping (Tom) and reinforced by the jack handle, rebelled and effectively took over.

Self-pitying, self-hating, and arrogantly full of remorse and guilt, Uncle John is my favorite of the lot ('coz he's just like me =P). For a man who lost merely a wife and an unborn child to the commonplace scourge of appendicitis, he sure angsted a lot. He got the best lines thrown at him: "Aw! We can't be having any of your sinning right now, John!" or "Oh noes! We've got no time to listen to you building yoursel' up with sins, John!" or some such fulsome admonitions.

The erstwhile preacher, Casy, at first a lost lamb veering towards theism or pantheism or some other such –ism. Later, just moments before his end, reemerged as a defiant goat lost to the pagan doctrines of unionism. Casy was killed by one of those pick handle-waving deputies. Tom fought back, made his second kill and became a fugitive even from the migrants.

The only normal one was Al, the regular tomcatting wanna-be mechanic who left a possibly pregnant young human everywhere the family ever stopped to camp along the 2000-mile route to California.

Then there were the two youngest ones, 12-year old Ruth and 10-year old Winfield. While the bullying might just be what it seems to be on the surface (just that – old good-natured bullying), I need to meditate further on the final bullying scene, in which Ruth stuck a red petal on her brother's face. Hmm. Red. Scary Communist hag assaulting the defenseless, trusting white person.

Finally, our expecting flower of uncertain identity, Rose of Sharon. Did Steinbeck have her along the ride all this while just for that final scene? Probably in the dark ages of pre-WWII America, breastfeeding was equivalent to flashing. Judging by the relatively recent national hang-up on one of the breasts belonging one faux-black woman, my very humble opinion as an outsider is that the nation still has a long way to go before it gets its first teething problems. However, the dead baby ("Never was alive!" - an eerie reminder of Darksword and Joram, if you will mix your real and surreal) is good enough a piece of imagery to stand by itself without the aid of fanservice. The baby never was. The jobs never were, nor were Ma's white house, Connie's shop, and the untarnished oranges.

The vernacular is also an added bonus (- something one rarely gets in the surreal?). Being a non-native speaker of the language, I can't tell the difference between the several dialects used in Huck Finn and the Oklahoman dialect in this novel. The only noticeable common feature is the missing r's and f's.

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I beg to insert / between the equal signs in the previous post. How insolent of me =P (Also, according to propaganda, Sallisaw =/= Dust Bowl.) There is a wide chasm between propaganda and allegory. Sometimes the latter may condescend to act as the former, but overall, propaganda to allegory is like your daily rag to Nature (the journal). Orwell possibly once cared enough for Marxism/Communism, whatever that is, to repackage the Stalin/Trotsky rivalry in Napoleon/Snowball. And mayhaps Steinbeck did care about the proletariat enough to play with factual accuracy. On the other paw, if one sits all night watchmanning in the High Sierras, one tends to mix up one's geography, not to say Union Priorities as well. Heck, what am I doing reading those and writing this. I belong, uh, somewhere there with the middle management. Oh yes, I bleat: Know yourself, know your enemies. Baa.

In the other (good) news, Jiip is Goujun! Backstabbing and backstabbed Dragons galore! There is an oft-encountered Cantonese saying regarding Goujun's situation in the fic. I don't remember the exact romanizations but literally it translates to something like "being put on stage" (i.e., being made to face the rap when it is not exactly one's fault).

As for Gokusen and other sex objects in manga, oh well, I outdid myself this time - that'll have to wait until the next spam. Have a swell weekend!

// mauve signed off @ 8:01 PM

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