Celebrating its 75th anniversary, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men
remains one of America's most widely read and beloved novels. Here is
Steinbeck's dramatic adaptation of his novel-as-play, which received the
New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play in 1937-1938 and has
featured a number of actors who have played the iconic roles of George
and Lennie on stage and film, including James Earl Jones, John Malkovich
and Gary Sinise.From the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Grapes of
Wrath and East of Eden, this classic story of an unlikely pair, two
migrant workers in California during the Great Depression who grasp for
their American Dream, profoundly touches readers and audiences alike.
George and his simple-minded friend Lenny dream, as drifters will, of a
place to call their own--a couple of acres and a few pigs, chickens, and
rabbits back in Hill Country where land is cheap. But after they come to
work on a ranch in the fertile Salinas Valley of California, their
hopes, like "the best laid schemes o'mice an' men," begin to go awry.
Of Mice and Men also represents an experiment in form, as Steinbeck
described his work, "a kind of playable novel, written in novel form but
so scened and set that it can be played as it stands." A rarity in
American letters, it achieved remarkable success as a novel, a Broadway
play, and three acclaimed films.
