No job, no prospects, no home, no savings… we're talking about Danny's friends in Tortilla Flat, but we could just as well be talking about the Millennials, who are moving back in with their parents, searching for work, and trying to figure out what to do with their lives while everyone else kind of sits back and watches them flounder. What is Tortilla Flat About and Why Should I Care?

So sit back, grab some tortilla chips, and read on. You don't have to be from Monterey, though, to get down with Steinbeck he wrote stories that could appeal to everybody. Steinbeck did such a bang-up job bringing this area of California to life that people now call it 'Steinbeck Country.' Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, just a few miles away from Monterey, and this area would be the backdrop for many of his other works, like East of Eden, Cannery Row, The Pastures of Heaven, The Red Pony, and To a God Unknown. It's also been criticized for its portrayal of a certain race of people called paisanos, who can sometimes come across in the novel as cartoonish and not always true-to-life. The book was popular because of its vivid-but kind of kooky-characters, and because it portrayed the wandering groups of people looking for work that started to form as the United States sank deeper and deeper into the Great Depression. It was made into a film just a few years later, in 1942, with superstars Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr. Danny, their leader, is the guy who forms the center of the group from the time that he comes home from the war to the time of his death. Tortilla Flat follows the adventures of a group of loveable but good-for-nothing friends as they roam around Monterey, California, avoiding work and looking for wine. (Pulitzer Prize, Nobel Prize… ever heard of him?) It saw the light of day in 1935, and it's still one of the beloved author's most beloved books. Nope, it's not Taco Bell's latest attempt to create a diet-friendly dish Tortilla Flat is the first commercially and critically successful novel that John Steinbeck wrote.

Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck