Publisher's Synopsis
Tortilla Flat
Tortilla Flat (1935) is an early John Steinbeck novel set in Monterey, California. The novel was the author's first clear critical and commercial success.
The book portrays a group of 'paisanos'-literally, countrymen-a small band of errant friends enjoying life and wine in the days after the end of World War I.
Tortilla Flat was made into a film in 1942. Steinbeck later returned to some of the panhandling locals of Monterey (though not the Mexican paisanos of the Flat) in his novel Cannery Row (1945).
Above the town of Monterey on the California coast lies the shabby district of Tortilla Flat, inhabited by a loose gang of jobless locals of Mexican-Indian-Spanish-Caucasian descent (who typically claim pure Spanish blood).
Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men is a novella written by John Steinbeck.Published in 1937, it narrates the experiences of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States.
Steinbeck based the novella on his own experiences working alongside migrant farm workers as a teenager in the 1910s (before the arrival of the Okies that he would describe in The Grapes of Wrath). The title is taken from Robert Burns' poem "To a Mouse", which reads: "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley". (The best laid schemes of mice and men / Often go awry.)
