Hey we already made it a full week into blogging every day in January!  Give yourself a hand for hanging in there this long.  I can’t promise what I’ll have left in the tank on day 22, but I feel good about everything so far.

It was only a matter of time before we got to the first book post, and I’m kicking off the literary year with John Steinbeck’s “The Red Pony.”

As you can see, this is one of Steinbeck’s super short books.  I did that on purpose because a book I preordered (Golden Son) came out this morning and I didn’t want to be tied down with something else and not get to it for a few weeks.

If you’ve read “Of Mice and Men” this has a similar structure in that Steinbeck paints a whole world full of characters who could carry a whole story, but instead at some point he basically walks away from the typewriter and leaves them be.

The version of many of my Steinbeck novels has an academic introduction discussing the text, which I often just skim to have an idea of how that one fits within his collection.  This one notes that the book is definitely not a children’s book, though it is about children.  I could not second that opinion any harder.  Animals die in all sorts of books, but the way they die in this one is quite far from rated G.

The story is about a boy named Jody who lives on a northern California farm and, as you might guess, at one point gets a pony with a red coat.  I won’t say more about this pony except do not get attached to this pony.  You will be mad at someone and I don’t want that to be me.

I mention in every Steinbeck post that what I like most about his writing is the way he describes things.  In only 95 pages I didn’t flag a lot, but late in the book this absolute gem appears while Jody walks down a road:

“Jody tried to leap into the middle of his shadow at every step.”

If that’s not evocative, I don’t know what is.  Also, I want to go outside and walk like that right now.

Steinbeck also gets credit for bringing up fond memories of the Washington Nationals even though no such thing would exist for decades after he wrote this.  Jody is asking his mom about what lies up in the nearby mountains.

“She looked at him and then back at the ferocious range, and she said, ‘Only the bear, I guess.'”
“What bear?”
“Why, the one that went over the mountain to see what he could see.”

What does that have to do with baseball?  Well, the Nats have a relief pitcher named Aaron Barrett, aka “The Bear.”  What music plays as he runs in from the bullpen?

One book down, 19 to go.