The Voice at 3 AM

First, I'd like to clarify my comment in the previous post, that much of today's work feels comparatively affected. "Affectation" is the wrong word. Whatever an old lover's motives for shouting an obscenity at the quietest man at a funeral, the act will always be different than if a parent, in despair, involuntarily swears while weeping. And, different still, if a toddler ejects her parent's favorite curse as the coffin closes.  It's a melodramatic metaphor. I admit, but the difference is essential. Whatever contemporary writers may try to accomplish, they are aware of the social issues at play. They are, to an extent commensurate with their skill, in control of the general effect their words will have. And, they are acting with purpose.

That Steinbeck's work is a product of another age wouldn't be noteworthy except that nothing in his style dates him. His word choice and sentence structure feel modern and comfortable. Granted, there is an occasional Biblical feel to passages, but it's done with such a deft hand, that it blends with the text when read casually and is clearly purposeful when the text is read critically. And yet, Joe Wayne is not a character that could be crafted today without his creation bearing a trace of authorial intent to provoke, comment, intrigue, or exploit. The sincerity of a character who reveres a tree that contains his father's spirit, who excitedly watches his farm animals mate, whom his sister-in-law worships as a god; the sincerity of such a character betrays the passage of time in a way Steinbeck's style does not.

I've focused on this easily assailable point because I find it oddly distracting. This work is complex and profoundly symbolic, but I keep coming back to this feeling that the text is different from others which I've read, different qualitatively. It's not a matter of skill. It's not a matter of perspective. This difference of time is the only explanation I've yet to come up with.