The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck
The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
A bad Steinbeck. I guess it had to happen. This doesn’t read like a story from the author of In Dubious Battle or The Grapes of Wrath. One-dimensional characters in an piece of blatant propaganda. Written to motivate the resistance movements in Europe during World War II, it doesn’t work on any other level. What’s sad is that in its effort to fight the propaganda and mindlessness of the enemy, it resorts to using the very same tactics.
Reviewers of this story seem to have read a different book than I did. Maybe it was the book they wanted Steinbeck to write. Maybe it was the one Steinbeck himself wanted to write, if he had the time. These reviews talk of the depth of the characters, the strength of the forming resistance, the futility and stupidity of the invaders, etc. But while we might know these ideas from real-life experience, especially one who was reading this book when it was published in 1942, the book itself doesn’t create that world. It’s full of indexicals but nothing generative.