When you read Town of Tortilla Flat, you have to assume that, like the Danny of this story, if you inherit two houses, you will let one burn; With the other one, you leave it open to your friends and brothers to live with you - because they've shared wine with you, stolen chicken and bread with you, flirted with girls, slept in pine forests, picked things up on the beach, got into fights, and gone to jail. Of course, their dogs will come in too – all five… Every day, in that fraternal house, you and your brethren will wake up at noon, when the sun is up, high and shine through the pine leaves into the house; then while the wheel of the world continues to roll over the small California coast town, you and your brethren continue your erotic adventures, continue your good deeds for the needy. A bit of a fight here and there, sometimes saving up to buy a golden candlestick to give to St. Francis, but most importantly, find a way to be able to go to old Torrelli's and buy a gallon of wine and get drunk.
It is a life that rejects almost all the rules of the modern world; even its amenities. But if you're a "true paisano" like Danny or his friends, you'll never doubt how wonderful that life is.
John Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat is the vivid story of American "Chi Pheo" in an American "Vu Dai village". A story that will make readers laugh many times because of the "Chi Pheo" humor and intelligence of American paisanos, and at the same time feel sorry for them. The Town of Tortilla Flat marks Steinbeck's great sympathy and understanding with farmers (and people in general), as well as his premonitions about their fate in the great movements of the society and in the world - a great, mysterious whole called "human life". This is a poignant book under its deceptive simplicity – a book that is in many ways more endearing than Steinbeck's massive, classics like The Grapes of Wrath, East of the Garden of Earth. Dang.
Teachers and students are welcome to read together.