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mitty
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 1:35 am Reply with quote
Joined: 02 Aug 2004 Posts: 1359 Location: Way Down Yonder.......
Yambu

I've got the Penguin Books soft cover also, but it also says Steinbeck Centennial Edition. Just bought it whenever we talked about it a month or so ago. Same?
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yambu
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 2:24 am Reply with quote
Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area
Yep, that's the ame one I got.

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yambu
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 2:50 am Reply with quote
Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area
Melody wrote:
.....I think also the reason Samuel took so much land is because he could. He homesteaded what Steinbeck called "barren hills" and "marginal land," and with the birth of each child -- he and Liza had nine kids -- he added another quarter section, which if my math is correct is 160 acres per....What I'm unclear on is if the state or federal government allowed this practice of adding land for each kid, and did Samuel have to pay for it, and did it only apply to crappy and/or uninhabited land?
Congress's Homestead Act of 1862 provided for the transfer of 160 acres of unoccupied public land to each homesteader on payment of a nominal fee after five years of residence. It sounds from the story that Hamilton could have added another 160 acres for each child born, though I don't know if the Act provided for that.

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ehle64
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 3:29 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 7149 Location: NYC; US&A
Woohoo, I have that same edition, and am unfortunately only on page 76 or so (in the middle of Chapter 8 ). However, on page 54, the beggining of Chapter 7, 2nd paragraph is my favorite one so far:

John Steinbeck wrote:
Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy–that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.


Emphasis mine. I love that sentence. I also love the sentence in my tag, it's said by Charles in a letter to Adam. I think I know what it means, but have never heard the expression used. Anyone?

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marantzo
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 10:09 am Reply with quote
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It's a well known expression in my experience ehle. Though I don't think I've heard it in quite a while. I've got a feeling that it is a rural expression.

Did you say you were on page 80? So am I. We are literally on the same page in this East of Eden thing. I also have that edition. It's so nice to be among fellow Centennial Edition people.

Mine's from the library so I won't be in this exclusive club for long.
marantzo
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 10:12 am Reply with quote
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Oops, I see you are on page 76 slowpoke. On re-checking, I'm actually on page 78. What's keeping you?
Melody
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 11:16 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 2242 Location: TX
I have the Centennial Edition softcover, too. Great minds and all that.

Yambu, thanks for the info on the 1862 Homestead Act. Can you imagine heading out west in your covered wagon with the intention of finding land to call your own, with so much land to choose from? It boggles my mind -- even more so to think my relatives figured Oklahoma was as good a place as any to settle down. (Which is why Grapes of Wrath has such a pull for me.)

Reminds me of a James McMurtry song, "Levelland," about the most godawful piece of Texas you're ever likely to see:

Flatter than a tabletop
Makes you wonder why they stopped here
Wagon must have lost a wheel or
They lacked ambition, one

On the great migration west
Separated from the rest
Though they might have tried their best
They never caught the sun

So they sunk some roots down in the dirt
To keep from blowin' off the earth
Built a town around here
And when the dust had all but cleared
They called it Levelland, the pride of man
In Levelland

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ehle64
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 11:17 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 7149 Location: NYC; US&A
I finished Part 1 this morning, ya better catch up!

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yambu
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 11:22 am Reply with quote
Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area
ehle64 wrote:
....I also love the sentence in my tag, it's said by Charles in a letter to Adam. I think I know what it means, but have never heard the expression used. Anyone?
My unabridged says a colloquial meaning for truck is barter, or dealing for a product in exchange for a service rendered. So "I don't take any truck with that" simply means I don't deal with that. Anyway, when I was in the Air Force I heard it a lot.

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ehle64
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 11:29 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 7149 Location: NYC; US&A
Thanks. That's where I was leaning to, just had never heard it before and wanted to be sure.

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Melody
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 12:30 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 2242 Location: TX
Ehle, I used to hear family old-timers say stuff like "I don't take any truck with that" and never thought to ask exactly what they meant. I always assumed it translated roughly into "that's a buncha bullshit."

Since I didn't recall that passage you quoted, I had to go look it up to see that Steinbeck was referring to the passage of time during Adam's Army stint. I like how you plucked out that paragraph and posted it -- out of context, it showcases Steinbeck's beautifully odd prose.


Quote:
A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy -- that's the time that seems long in the memory.

"Crevassed with joy" is a rather harsh way of describing a happy moment, as though joy is something that happens suddenly, unexpectedly, rarely.

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mitty
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 1:25 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 02 Aug 2004 Posts: 1359 Location: Way Down Yonder.......
Melody wrote:


Quote:
A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy -- that's the time that seems long in the memory.

"Crevassed with joy" is a rather harsh way of describing a happy moment, as though joy is something that happens suddenly, unexpectedly, rarely.


More so however, to me, it signifies a very deep joy.

Crevasse: 1. A fissure or deep cleft in the ice of a glacier.

Perhaps a deeply joyous event sandwiched into a cold and tragic life.

I don't recall the placement of that quote either, can you get a page #?
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yambu
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 1:49 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area
p.54. I like your take on crevassed.

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ehle64
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 1:51 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 7149 Location: NYC; US&A
I think I gave the page number, the Chapter number and, oh yeah, the paragraph number. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough! Laughing

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mitty
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 1:57 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 02 Aug 2004 Posts: 1359 Location: Way Down Yonder.......
Ehle

Embarassed Maybe if you'd put it in inch high letters, in black! Exclamation Laughing
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