Written at a time of profound anxiety caused by the illness of his mother, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck draws on his memories of childhood in these stories about a boy who embodies both the rebellious spirit and the contradictory desire for acceptance of early adolescence. Unlike most coming-of-age stories, the cycle does not end with a hero “matured” by circumstances. As John Seelye writes in his introduction, reversing common interpretations, The Red Pony is imbued with a sense of loss. Jody’s encounters with birth and death express a common theme in Steinbeck’s fiction: They are parts of the ongoing process of life, “resolving” nothing. The Red Pony was central not only to Steinbeck’s emergence as a major American novelist but to the shaping of a distinctly mid twentieth-century genre, opening up a new range of possibilities about the fictional presence of a child’s world.
The Red Pony – John Steinbeck 1945
$60.00
- Author:
John Steinbeck
- Publisher:
The Viking Press, New York, 1945
- Binding:
Hardcover
- Condition:
Fine
- Size:
8vo
- Attributes:
First Edition, Illustrated
First illustrated edition. With illustrations by Wesley Dennis. Fine in Good+ Slipcase with marginal tears.