While I’ll admit that Steinbeck has a slight tendency to get a little too close to sentimentality and casts some of his characters into a little too kind of a light, his ability to understand how people interact with each other is unparalleled.
His observations of human nature are spot-on and he’s at his best when he leaves a character’s story open ended.
I can’t think of any writer more American.
I’m a little unsure how to approach the truthfulness in the story. Marquez has done an artists job of tying together the imagery of love on the bench, sex in an Italian sex film, and treason through the showing of Amadeus that I wonder where the art ends and reality begins. Does it matter?
And the story of the shave: rasurar vs afeitar. Close shave indeed. Language being playful and dangerous and obtuse. Orwellian