I don’t have a particularly articulate critique of The Grapes of Wrath. I haven’t been so disappointed in a “classic” since Dracula (which, in fairness to Steinbeck, was much more difficult to get through). It’s painfully bound bound by Steinbeck’s political preoccupation; it’s difficult even to take the book seriously as a historical novel when every plot element and conversation bends toward the need for the proletariat to own the means of production.