The Long Valley
Written by John Steinbeck
Narrated by Holter Graham
4/5
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About this audiobook
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck (Salinas, 1902 - Nueva York, 1968). Narrador y dramaturgo estadounidense. Estudió en la Universidad de Stanford, pero desde muy joven tuvo que trabajar duramente como albañil, jornalero rural, agrimensor o empleado de tienda. En la década de 1930 describió la pobreza que acompañó a la Depresión económica y tuvo su primer reconocimiento crítico con la novela Tortilla Flat, en 1935. Sus novelas se sitúan dentro de la corriente naturalista o del realismo social americano. Su estilo, heredero del naturalismo y próximo al periodismo, se sustenta sin embargo en una gran carga de emotividad en los argumentos y en el simbolismo presente en las situaciones y personajes que crea, como ocurre en sus obras mayores: De ratones y hombres (1937), Las uvas de la ira (1939) y Al este del Edén (1952). Obtuvo el premio Nobel en 1962.
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Reviews for The Long Valley
206 ratings10 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm not a big fan of short stories, but the stories in this collection are as well crafted as Steinbeck's longer fiction. The characters, settings and plots are authentic (with the exception of a strange story about a pig, which I just didn't get). The stories deal with (among other things) the aftermath of a lynching, suppressed dreams, a husband in a literal and figurative harness, a misguided and doomed view of manhood, a brutal crime of passion and a young boy just getting to know some of the harsher sides of life. I particularly liked The White Quail, The Chrysanthemums, The Murder and The Red Pony. I listened to the audio book, with excellent narration by Holter Graham, and also read the interesting annotations in the Penguin paperback version of the collection.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I read the Red Pony years back, but forgot how brutal it was. At least I had a warning due to the brutality of the stories preceding it. Steinbeck is a legend and there's good reason for it. His pacing and phrasing and themes might not work in the hands of a lesser writer, but that's not the case here. Each story in this collection is dark, but each is beautiful in its own brutal way.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Indeholder "Krysantemum", "Den hvide vagtel", "Flugt", "Slangen", "Morgenmåltid", "Overfaldet", "Selen", "Vigilanten", "Johnny Bear", "Mordet", "Den hellige jomfru Katrine", "Den røde pony", " 1. Gaven", " 2. De store bjerge", " 3. Løftet", "Folkets leder"."Krysantemum" handler om ???"Den hvide vagtel" handler om ???"Flugt" handler om ???"Slangen" handler om ???"Morgenmåltid" handler om ???"Overfaldet" handler om ???"Selen" handler om ???"Vigilanten" handler om ???"Johnny Bear" handler om ???"Mordet" handler om ???"Den hellige jomfru Katrine" handler om ???"Den røde pony" handler om ???" 1. Gaven" handler om ???" 2. De store bjerge" handler om ???" 3. Løftet" handler om ???"Folkets leder" handler om ??????
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I've read about half of this collection before in various places. And I would agree that the best stories in The Long Valley are those which have been heavily anthologized. But reading them again in the context of the whole collection was surprisingly enjoyable. Here you get a wide range of Steinbeck's tone with a single theme throughout: violence.As with all collections, some stories were weaker than others. In particular, I wasn't a fan of “The Murder,” a story which seemingly justifies the abuse of a wife. Having never seen Steinbeck as a raging misogynist, I chalk this story up to an objective portrayal of the culture at the time. Other stories in this collection may imply I'm wrong, however. We'll leave it at that.Certainly, Steinbeck was primarily a novelist. He wasn't a masterful short story writer, but that doesn't mean he couldn't write a short story. Obviously, he could. I enjoyed this collection despite its limitations. Steinbeck fans should definitely get around to reading this one. Others may just wish to stick with the more heavily anthologized stories (e.g. “The Chrysanthemums,” “Flight”).
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Absolutely marvelous collection of short stories! Themes are not always easy to pinpoint, but the details and the story dynamics show the hand of a true master. He wrote this before he wrote the ‘Grapes of Wrath’, and you can even find one scene from that novel as a short story in this collection! In any case, I liked it a lot better than his ‘East of Eden’ and ‘The winter of our discontent’. Grapes of Wrath, of course, remains his masterpiece, due to the potent theme that shows what penury can do to human dignity. He showed this for the migrant workers, but we can see that everywhere today, among the bankers, the consultants, even the players of the publishing sector.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I tried a couple of stories from this anthology, but Steinbeck and I have grown apart so much over the years, that I just didn't want to read any more of them.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A beautiful, descriptive book of another time. Five star audio book for me. Great reader too.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5John Steinbeck is known primarily for his great novels, but I contend that his short stories, collected here and I also include Pastures of Heaven, are some of the best in literature. He understands human nature better than any writer, I think.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Steinbeck's works include several collections of short stories, some connected by a discernible narrative thread, others more traditional in organization. The Pastures of Heaven depends on a particular locale with some stories using recurring characters, others not. Tortilla Flat is really a collection of more coherent short stories using a recurring cast of characters in a particular locale rather than the usual "plot." The Long Valley is even more loosely organized than The Pastures of Heaven. The commonality is the location--the Salinas Valley of California. In the thirteen stories that make up this work, only the final two have the same characters, The Red Pony and Leader of the People. The Long Valley is a disturbing work, because in it, Steinbeck, who clearly loved the land, just as clearly reveals that while he does not sit in judgement, he is at best neutral towards his characters; there is nothing like the affection he has for Danny and his friends and the ne'er-do-wells like Mac and the boys of Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, respectively. Almost without exception the people who live in the Long Valley are driven by loneliness, despair, fear, shame, or a grim sense of duty that seems to render any kind of happiness impossible. In his most famous story, The Red Pony, he extends that viewpoint towards children. Jody has the spirit of any small boy, but his parents, particularly his father, place severe restraints on the natural exuberance of childhood. We all know that children can be cruel, but Steinbeck turns that remorseless eye of his on the way that cruelty can be expressed in actions towards animals that are either tolerated or actually encouraged as a way of dealing with farm problems. In today's world, it's not pretty.Concerned all his life with social justice issues, especially that of agricultural labor, The Raid is a continuation of the sort of story about Communist labor organizers that he pursued at much greater length in the novel In Dubious Battle and later in The Grapes of Wrath. However, as In Dubious Battle, the characters in The Raid are wooden--stereotypes that never really come to life, living a life of hard-to-believe idealism when faced with acknowledged insurmountable obstacles. They simply are not real.I have a real quibble with the organization of the book. Whoever determined the order of the stories made the final impact anticlimactic, ending with Leader of the People instead of The Red Pony. The innocent Jody of the first story is not the emotionally battered, distrusting Jody of the end of The Red Pony. The entire work would have been greatly improved by reversing the order of the two stories.This was not an easy read. It is one of Steinbeck's darker works, revealing underneath gorgeous descriptive prose of his beloved Salinas Valley a view of the people in it that is not the easy affection of the Monterey stories, but a very somber look at the dark underside of Paradise.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A collection of short stories about the denizens of Salinas Valley in the early part of the 20th Century. Contains the usual crisp and clean writing of Steinbeck.