Why Mice & Men was successful and Dubious Battle was not

 Finished John Steinbeck's short novel Of Mice and Men and again impressed by his economy and his attention to old-fashioned literary values of character and plot. Can see why and how this novel translated very well onto stage and screen and why it's been in the canon for so many years, and can also see why it's not often read in classes any longer - the racial issues that Steinbeck treats frankly and accurately - the ostracism of the black man who tends the horses and lives in isolation - would be painful and difficult topics in high-school classes, as would the open sexuality of the novel - the ranchers talking a lot about "cat houses," the lascivious flirtations of Curley's wife. yet for college classes? The characterization may be a little too simplistic and the melodramatic ending a little too evident and heavy-handed. As noted yesterday, the politics of M&M differ greatly from other early Steinbeck works: Though we deeply sympathize with the ranch-hands working hard for a miserly boss and unlikely to ever get together the "stakes" they all dream of accumulating and using to buy a spread and "live off the fatta the land," there's little sense of their exploitation or of their displacement by capitalist society, bankers, absentee owners, conglomerates, hired thugs, and so forth. They're just solitary tough guys who've had bad breaks in life. This may be part of the reason for the enduring popularity of M&M: It really doesn't challenge readers to think about society, to seek change, to do anything - very different from the monumental Grapes of Wrath, which I know changed the thinking of some right-wing readers who'd thought poverty was because of the flaws and shortcoming of the impoverished rather than the design of the system. Contrast M&M with Steinbeck's previous novel, In Dubious Battle, which, despite the great title (drawn from Milton) was far less successful. There are a lot of reasons for that, but one is that IDB is a near-documentary account of labor organizers, the risk and sacrifice they take, the dangers they face - a far less appealing topic to mainstream America, obviously. (Admittedly, from what I've read of it, it's a sprawling and ill-designed novel, whereas M&M is beautifully crafted and concise.)