I like to read.

(And I wish I had more time for it.  One day, right?)

Left to myself I would read primarily fiction – my favorites are Lee Smith and Sharyn McCrumb, Ron Rash and Appalachian authors in general.

But as a former English major in college and current English teacher I feel an obligation to keep up my reading of classic literature.

Actually, it’s less an obligation and more a simple desire to keep my mind working in some other direction than diapers and Cheerios and the easiest way to clean my filthy oven.

So, I like to play this game.

I require myself to read one work of classic lit. to every two modern fiction pieces I read.

Recently I picked up John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony.

I chose it for three reasons.

1.  It was written by Steinbeck and I couldn’t believe I had made it through college and six years of teaching high school English without ever cracking open any of his fiction works besides Of Mice and Men – and maybe I read Grapes of Wrath but I really cannot remember.

2.  I really enjoyed his true-life road trip escapades in his non-fiction Travels With Charley.

3.  It was on my shelf already.

Well.

If this was Steinbeck’s only work of fiction, I feel pretty confident he would not hold a secure place in school textbooks today.

I don’t know to whom this book would appeal – because it is bizarre.  It drags on and it’s only one hundred pages.  There is no sense of redemption in any of the characters and no traits worth imitating or even the converse – worth really learning from.

Seriously, the most interesting part of this novel was the uber-odd statement by Billy Buck, a ranch hand, about being half-horse.  “My ma died when I was born, and being my old man was a government packer in the mountains, and no cows around most of the time, why he just gave me mostly mare’s milk.”

What?

I know I was raised on a dairy farm and not a horse farm, but how do you exactly acquire milk from a horse?

I laughed at that exchange, but not because it was supposed to be funny.

And the red pony?

I don’t want to ruin it for you if you are holding your own copy in your hands right at this very instance, but uh, the red pony is out of the novel before the forty-page mark.

Frankly, I am not sure why this little novel was even published.

I assume it is because when Steinbeck wrote it he was already so well-established that his publisher just said, “Sure, John.  Whatever you want.  A novel called The Red Pony that is not at all about a red pony?  Sounds fine.”

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