The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is two books printed alternately. One follows the Joad family from a foreclosed Oklahoma farm to the California valleys. The other has no characters in it at all and describes what is happening to several hundred thousand people at once. Steinbeck interleaves them, chapter by chapter, for thirty chapters. Readers who skip the second book, and many do, are reading something considerably smaller than what he wrote. Spoilers throughout, including the final page. The Two Books Inside The Grapes of Wrath The alternation in The Grapes of Wrath is almost mechanical, though not quite. Sixteen of the thirty chapters have no named characters in them at all; the remaining fourteen follow the Joads. The pattern runs odd and even for most of the book and doubles up twice, at chapters 11 and 12 and again at 14 and 15, both times to cover the move onto the highway. A chapter follows the Joads; the next pulls back to a used-car lot where nobody is named, or a diner on the …

Of Mice and Men (1937) is short enough to read in a sitting and tight enough to be mistaken for simple. It is neither. Steinbeck wrote it as what he called a play-novelette, a book constructed so that a company could stage it directly from the published text without an adaptation, and within months Broadway did exactly that. Everything readers find moving about it is a consequence of that constraint. Spoilers follow, including the last page. The Form of Of Mice and Men Explains Almost Everything Of Mice and Men runs to six chapters, with no breaks inside them, each a single continuous scene in a single location. The riverbank, the bunkhouse, the bunkhouse again, Crooks’s room, the barn, the riverbank. Nobody has an interior monologue. There is no access to anyone’s thoughts at any point, which for a 1930s American novel is a severe restriction. Everything you learn, you learn from what people say and do in front of other people. When Steinbeck wants you to know that George is exhausted by responsibility, he …