[Turritopsis dohrnii] “is unique,” [says marine biologist Maria Pia Miglietta,] “because when faced with unfavourable conditions – and I mean high temperature, physical cutting, starvation, chemicals in the water, you name it – when you try to kill the jellyfish, it doesn’t die.”
Most normal jellyfish start off life as larvae. They metamorphose into polyps (tiny, stationary soft bodies) that bud off swimming medusas, which grow up to become adult jellies. Eventually, after reproducing, most will stop swimming, crumble a little and then die.
But the immortal jellyfish escapes that fate. It reverts to a juvenile form, and starts its life cycle again.
The process is called “cellular transdifferentiation,” Miglietta says. The jellyfish looks like it’s dying and sinks to the bottom. Then – like a butterfly returning to a caterpillar – it shrinks into a ball, and within 24 to 48 hours, buds off a new polyp with the same identical genome, she says. …
In the lab, where Miglietta studies them, these jellies can theoretically live for ever. However, for some in the wild, getting eaten may eventually end that dream run.
Perhaps at the moment of each man’s death, God removes his corpse and replaces it with a simulacrum which is what is burned or rots. Or perhaps God is not quite so wholesale as this: perhaps He removes for “safekeeping” only the “core” person – the brain and central nervous system – or even some special part of it.
(Of course, Ehrhardt already is good enough for most uses. Perhaps Equity is superfluous.)
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Equity is this month’s featured font because private equity is in the soccer news. Infantino is trying to make room for investors – Trump associates! – to buy a substantial share in FIFA’s tournaments.
Some FIFA member nations expect to benefit from the deal. Others – those that have no trouble paying for their soccer operations – staunchly oppose ceding business control to outsiders.
The European nations have resolved, unanimously, to boycott all FIFA competitions unless Infantino’s proposal is withdrawn or voted down.
I hope they get their way – without the boycott. I am not taken with Europe’s “principles.” Europe has a long history of thinking itself too good to play with anybody else.
Tim Vickery, in this video, explains:
Vickery’s diagnosis and proposal are very nearly my own, and so I’ll leave the matter there. But this is not to treat it lightly. The World Cup’s continuance is in danger.
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
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P.S. Tens of thousands of Moroccans illegally crossed into the tiny Spanish semi-exclave of Ceuta yesterday. Spain and Morocco, along with four other countries, are slated to host the 2030 World Cup together.
Seldom viewed outside of Australia, The Castle (1997) is revered in that country. Wikipedia tells us that this movie
can be seen as a social study [of] the lives and aspirations of the inhabitants of suburban Australia. The central character, Darryl Kerrigan, ties into the stereotypical depiction of an “Aussie battler,” a man who will protect and serve his family through bold and sometimes ruthless assertion.
I’ve not observed Australians in their natural habitat. Doubtless, there’s much about this movie that I don’t understand.
Even so, I love The Castle.
One begins by snickering at the protagonists – Greater Melburnians pursuing the Australian Dream in their dismal, airport-adjacent cul-de-sac. But in the end, one is touched by these people. One wishes they were one’s neighbors.
(It’s gratifying when one well-heeled outsider – a broadminded constitutional lawyer, played by the grave but twinkling Charles “Bud” Tingwell – is admitted into their circle.)
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Darryl Kerrigan (Michael Caton), patriarch and hero, is lovable because there is so much that he loves: his family, his dogs, his tchotchkes, his boat, his garden, his pre-fab country house on a nondescript lake, and of course his family’s suburban home (his “castle”). Not to mention his neighbors and his lawyers. Having thrown in his lot with X, Darryl loves X proudly and unconditionally. We hear him declare, in a wedding speech, his family’s love for the new son-in-law; and what goes for that adoptee goes for every animal, vegetable, and mineral that Darryl claims as his own (or as his own’s own). It doesn’t matter that Darryl’s wife and children are pitifully ordinary, or that one son – in what I believe to be a reference to Australia’s colonial origin – is in prison. Darryl treats each family member with something approaching veneration. And each of them responds in kind.
Darryl is not a rich man. He earns his living towing cars (i.e., clearing away others’ property). His boat, house, house-extensions, holiday house, and dogs – purebred racing Greyhounds – have been accumulated opportunistically. The Kerrigans scour the trade papers for bargains. Once acquired, each purchase is accorded quasi-heraldic status. Non-purchases too: witness how the household acquires its front gates.
The Kerrigans are consummate appropriators. It is a sly irony. The movie recounts their struggle against appropriation by outsiders.
One day, the Kerrigans receive notice that their house is to be compulsorily acquired by the airport, so that the runway might be extended. The Kerrigans and their neighbors oppose this order in the courts. But their lawyer is out of his depth, and the airport is backed by powerful business interests.
“I’m starting to understand how the Aborigines feel,” mutters Darryl.
(It’s a sign of comedic deftness that this low-key political statement produces one of the movie’s biggest laughs.)
It isn’t hard to guess that the Kerrigans’ misfortunes will be reversed. In time, the lawsuit is heard by Australia’s highest court. The judgment favors the Kerrigans, and the “castle”-dwellers end up better off than before. The legal aspect of the story is, I suspect, sheer fantasy. The movie’s really interesting questions aren’t about law; they’re about value. There are questions about ownership and appropriation, and there are aesthetic questions. Can a life of utter tastelessness be good? How important is the aesthetic component, comparatively speaking?
Proverbs 15:17 says: “Better a vegetable dinner with love than a stall-fattened ox with hate.” The movie illustrates this principle.
For it leaves us in no doubt that the Kerrigans’ aesthetic capacity is very, very poor. Indeed, it’s their utter non-descrimination, their determination to embrace absolutely every piece of kitsch, that enables them to love each other as they do. This is made clear from the beginning, in brilliant faux-naïf voiceover, by Darryl’s youngest son, Dale (Stephen Curry):
I believe the movie is responding to a particular book – a classic Australian work of architectural and social criticism – The Australian Ugliness (1960), by Robin Boyd. (See the book’s Wikipedia article, and its Text Classics webpage.) Images of jet planes, electrical wires, and large TV antennae feature prominently in both works. It can’t just be a coincidence.
Some day, I’ll read the book, and then I’ll understand The Castle better. As funny, touching, and socially observant as it is, it’s an “ideas” movie, really.
Our ten-year anniversary festivities continue. On the day itself – Thursday – we took Daniel and Abel to the beach; Samuel was in school, but Karin’s mom joined us. Then, today, Karin & I left all three children with Karin’s dad and traveled to Niles. We watched The Sheep Detectives and ate cheap hot dogs at the cinema, strolled through the park, bought books and fancy candy, and dined on pizza. It was very “us.”
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Penguin typeset a 1988 edition of The Virginian (1902) in De Vinne, a font from the late nineteenth century …
… only to re-set and reissue the book in Stempel Garamond, a little later. I guess the initial nod to quaintness was regretted.
My 2025–2026 reading cycle has ended. On the last day, I finished reading six books. I came up three books short. (The final tally was fifty-seven.)
I thank Karin for her tolerance.
I caught Samuel trying to put one of my books on its shelf. He couldn’t slide it into the space; he was jamming it in. I stopped him before he could wrinkle the cover.
He’d brought the book downstairs from his play-room.
“Why did you take my book upstairs?” I asked.
He said: “I just wanted to copy out some of the text.”
I didn’t object to that answer. Indeed, I was rather pleased.
We have a new cat in our house: a young “queen” that Karin rescued from a gang of “toms.” We’re keeping her in our bathroom. The plan is to get her spayed ASAP; we’ll then consider whether to give her up or keep her. She’s starved but friendly, a year or so old. She may be the offspring of the winsome, irresponsible cat that lives across the street.
The “toms” have been prowling outside our house all day. I just saw them have their way with another “queen.” One can’t save them all.
Jasper and Ziva are none too pleased, perhaps because a new cat is in the house, perhaps because Karin medicated all three cats against fleas.
We attended a funeral for J., Karin’s kindly old colleague.
“J. and I used to talk hockey,” said the priest. “Sometimes joyfully, sometimes with a little griping.”
That was about it for reminiscing about J. (Reminiscing is done at the wake, apparently.) The priest and mourners then prayed the Glorious Mysteries, in which are included:
one Apostle’s Creed
six Our Fathers
six Glory Bes
five Oh My Jesuses
fifty-three Hail Marys
other formulae
My heart sank around the thirtieth Hail Mary. Was the priest shooting for one hundred? Mercifully, no.
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I finished reading the Adrian Mole series. It gave me much pleasure.
I’ve begun reading The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side. It features Miss Jane Marple and is set in the classic murder-village of St. Mary Mead. When I finish, I’ll’ve read all sixty-six of Dame Agatha’s crime novels.
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Daniel, somehow, is learning to speak in French.
Bonjour, Daddy, he grins. Ça va.
Not bad for not having been taught. And his accent is spot-on.
Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals (for the group)
Stefan Zweig, novellas: Burning Secret, A Chess Story, Fear, Confusion, and Journey into the Past (they’re great)
Grant’s 1965 book, summarized here, deserves some comment. What is Canadianness? North American Britishness, is the core of Grant’s answer. That is, Britishness nurtured as a tradition of political distinctiveness from the USA, featuring, e.g., a more serious commitment to federalism, as involving better treatment of and greater autonomy for minorities. Alas, when Britain itself was pulled into the U.S.’s military-economic orbit, Canada was pulled in, too. Canadian businessmen sold out first. Politicians followed. Nuclear weapons were brought to Canadian soil. Canada effectively gave up its nationhood and became a satellite.
(Lately, of course, the pendulum has swung the other way.)
Here is a Canadian’s capsule summary, written two decades ago (scroll down the list to book no. 41):
Well, Canada is still here, but what, pray, is it? Grant wrote this brilliant, deep essay on the question in the early 1960s, in the aftermath of Diefenbaker’s political downfall. He wrote of a small “c” conservative society, respectful of tradition, that was disappearing under the pressure of continentalism. Forty years have passed, but Lament still speaks to us directly of important issues. It is a must-read for anyone interested in what might define a nation called Canada – especially given that the formula of “medicare with peacekeeping” is more glib than inspiring, and factually shaky as well.
Who in the U.S. knows about Prime Minister Diefenbaker? I’d guess less than one tenth of one percent (Canadian expats excepted). So, next month, I’ll read Desmond Morton’s Short History of Canada, which purports to make “acute observations on the Diefenbaker era.”
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Another item of Canadiana: The Peanut Butter Solution (1985). It has music by teenaged Céline Dion. We watched this bizarre movie as a family. I won’t say I didn’t like it – I did! – but it fed my suspicion that our admirable northern neighbors are, in fact, deranged.
Once I finish this, I’ll have read every novel by Christie that features Hercule Poirot.
It’s a long book with a large cast and much stage-setting. After almost two hundred pages, no one has been murdered.
But it’s an interesting book. I like it when Christie goes biblical. Overt sermonizing in literature is unfashionable, but Christie can’t help herself. It’s refreshing.
“You are of the Church of England, I presume?”
“Yes.” Linnet looked slightly bewildered.
“Then you have heard portions of the Bible read aloud in
church. You have heard of King David and of the rich man
who had many flocks and herds and the poor man who had
one ewe lamb – and of how the rich man took the poor man’s
one ewe lamb. That was something that happened,
Madame.”
Linnet sat up. Her eyes flashed angrily.
“I see perfectly what you are driving at, Monsieur Poirot!
You think, to put it vulgarly, that I stole my friend’s young
man. Looking at the matter sentimentally – which is, I
suppose, the way people of your generation cannot help
looking at things – that is possibly true. But the real hard
truth is different. I don’t deny that Jackie was passionately in
love with Simon, but I don’t think you take into account that
he may not have been equally devoted to her. … What is he to do? Be heroically noble and marry a
woman he does not care for – and thereby probably ruin
three lives – for it is doubtful whether he could make Jackie
happy under those circumstances? If he were actually
married to her when he met me I agree that it might be his
duty to stick to her – though I’m not really sure of that. If one
person is unhappy the other suffers too. But an engagement
is not really binding. If a mistake has been made, then surely
it is better to face the fact before it is too late. I admit that it
was very hard on Jackie, and I’m very sorry about it – but
there it is. It was inevitable.”
“I wonder.”
She stared at him.
“What do you mean?”
“It is very sensible, very logical – all that you say! But it
does not explain one thing.”
“What is that?”
“Your own attitude, Madame. … To
you this persecution [by Jackie] is intolerable – and why? It can be for
one reason only – that you feel a sense of guilt.”
Linnet sprang to her feet.
“How dare you? Really, Monsieur Poirot, this is going too
far.”
“But I do dare, Madame! I am going to speak to you quite
frankly. I suggest to you that, although you may have
endeavoured to gloss over the fact to yourself, you did
deliberately set about taking your husband from your friend. … You are beautiful, Madame; you
are rich; you are clever; intelligent – and you have charm.
You could have exercised that charm or you could have
restrained it. You had everything, Madame, that life can
offer. Your friend’s life was bound up in one person. You knew
that, but, though you hesitated, you did not hold your hand.
You stretched it out and, like the rich man in the Bible, you
took the poor man’s one ewe lamb.” …
“She threatened to – well – kill us both. Jackie can be
rather – Latin sometimes.”
“I see.” Poirot’s tone was grave.
Linnet turned to him appealingly.
“You will act for me?”
“No, Madame.” His tone was firm. “I will not accept a
commission from you. I will do what I can in the interests of
humanity. That, yes. There is here a situation that is full of
difficulty and danger. I will do what I can to clear it up – but I
am not very sanguine as to my chance of success.”
Linnet Doyle said slowly: “But you will not act for me?”
My favorite Baskerville specimens from the previous century are in Charles Williams’s novels (e.g., War in Heaven [1930]).
This, too, is representative:
Rose Macaulay The Towers of Trebizond (1956)
From the 2003 NYRB Classics introduction by Jan Morris:
There was a time when the opening line of this book entered the common parlance of educated English and American people. Nearly everyone I knew could quote it, and “‘Take my camel, dear,’ said my Aunt Dot” became a commonplace of badinage or social pleasantry. The line still gets into dictionaries of quotations, but it is years since I have heard it used in conversation.
It’s too bad that we’ve moved from the gracious “Take my camel, dear” to the boorish “Hold my beer.”
(František Štorm’s Baskerville 10 is the font’s closest digital approximation.)
My UK wall map – a Christmas gift from my father-in-law – has been framed at last in a heavy, wooden contraption from Goodwill. Karin, the handy one, did the framing. My idea is to hang the map next to the TV so that we can check it when we watch homicidal/agricultural/veterinary programs, e.g. our latest, The Highland Vet.
Current reading: François Mauriac, Genetrix; Sue Townsend, Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years (the last book in the series). And lots of other books.
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I should describe the wedding we attended on Sunday. Samuel bore the rings with aplomb. The much younger flower girl lagged behind, so Samuel retraced his steps, grabbed some petals, and strewed them for her. All else went according to the script: the brief vowing ceremony; the post-vowing, pre-dining interlude for photos; the popcorn and donut tables; the soda and liquor booths; the dinner rolls, sweet corn, and mashed potatoes; the couple’s dance, the bride’s dance with her father, and the groom’s with his mother; and the Cha-Cha Slide. There was no removal of the garter with teeth – none we stayed for, anyway. When we left, I was dead-tired. I’d held squirmy Abel for several hours. It was as wearying as if I’d spent the day moving house.
Samuel and Daniel loved the Cha-Cha Slide; their grandpa danced it with them. That ex-DJ was in his element. I’ve not met a more ardent ritual-relisher.
Here is my list of Irish people to read in 2026–2027. (And afterward.)
Who’m I overlooking?
John Banville, a.k.a. Benjamin Black
Samuel Beckett
Elizabeth Bowen
Anna Burns
Joyce Cary
Erskine Childers (Mayfair-born)
Roddy Doyle
Maria Edgeworth
J. G. Farrell
Tara French
Seamus Heaney
James Joyce
Claire Keegan
C. S. Lewis
Brian Moore
Iris Murdoch
Edna O’Brien
Flann O’Brien
Sally Rooney
George Bernard Shaw
Jonathan Swift
J. M. Synge
William Trevor
Oscar Wilde
Cecil Woodham-Smith (Welsh-born, Irish-sired)
William Butler Yeats
I’ve read, or at least tried to read, all of these people but Bowen, Cary, Heaney, Edna O’Brien, Synge, and Trevor. I wouldn’t mind trying out everybody on the list.
I’m leaving Franks McCourt and O’Connor off the list. For now.
My mother-in-law also has scheduled various Irish books to read this year. Nothing on her list is on mine.
The idea for this project came from viewing Atom Egoyan’s excellent, unsettling Felicia’s Journey (1999) and reflecting that the source novel’s author, William Trevor, has been pretty well off my radar.
I.e., puking. Only Abel has been spared. We’ve brought the TV upstairs so as to get to the toilet promptly. Karin gallantly has been letting the children use the toilet first. She makes due in the hallway with her bucket.
Daniel, poor boy, is on his second cycle with this bug, having been symptomless one glorious week.
I’m well enough right now. I dread the second cycle.
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I’m teaching Samuel how footnotes work, using Barbara Holland’s Hail to the Chiefs. He’ll grow up thinking that studying history is fun.
Other reading:
François Mauriac, A Kiss for the Leper (a mini-book)
Voltaire, Candide (a re-read; a mini-book)
N. T. Wright, God’s Big Picture Bible Storybook
books, as yet unfinished, mentioned in previous entries
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R.I.P. Chuck Norris, aged eighty-six. And Robert Mueller.
Iran’s team has withdrawn from the World Cup. The newspapers are taking it in stride.
Surely, I’m not the only dismayed soccer follower in the West?
Update (March 13): The team has not withdrawn (or been ousted).
I’ll let you know when I know what I’m talking about.
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The war’s death toll has risen. And it’s beyond doubt that the U.S. killed those schoolchildren.
Update: I really hope the news about something so important is beyond doubt.
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I’ve also updated my unchangeable and definite reading list of the next two months. I’ll try to finish not five, not ten, but twenty-four more books before the late-April conclusion of my 2025–2026 cycle. And so it’s particularly cruel of the Web bots to pepper me with ads for the new John Galsworthy PBS show. I just can’t fit all nine of those novels into the schedule. If only Abel didn’t cling to me all day long.
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Little suspecting the incalculable consequences that the evening was to have for him, [Paul Pennyfeather] bicycled happily back from a meeting of the League of Nations Union. There had been a most interesting paper about plebiscites in Poland. He thought of smoking a pipe and reading another chapter of the Forsyte Saga before going to bed. He knocked at the gate, was admitted, put away his bicycle, and diffidently, as always, made his way across the quad towards his rooms. What a lot of people there seemed to be about! Paul had no particular objection to drunkenness – he had read a rather daring paper to the Thomas More Society on the subject – but he was consumedly shy of drunkards.
I think Paul Pennyfeather’s life sounds lovely (except for that ominous bit about “incalculable consequences”).
The good news is, the Forsyte show looks missable.
Loud t-storm; air so warm, we have windows open. Earlier, when Samuel’s school bus arrived, he paced the aisle, unwilling to disembark in what was then a light rain. I had to climb aboard to coax him out. And earlier still, I’d gone with Karin, Abel, and Daniel to meet the boys’ new doctor (the previous one, a Seventh-day Adventist, has moved to Guam for a three-year religious sojourn). Upon our return to Toad Hall, the alarm was blaring. It took us an age to turn it off. Daniel ran down the block, did a round of hopscotch, and ran back.
I’m tempted to try reading Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, but the schedule is just too packed.
“He – for there could be no doubt about his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it – was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters.”
(The opening lines.)
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I’m reading Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, set just before Britain’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. Adrian is a die-hard Blair supporter. He believes there will be no war because that’s what Blair tells Britain. Adrian’s 17-year-old son Glenn has joined up and trains in Aldershot, running in full battle-dress on builder’s sand. Adrian has just used a Barclaycard blank check (29% interest) to obtain down payment funds (I forget how many thousands of pounds) for his trendy canalside loft, which he is furnishing on store credit (almost £10,000 at 20% interest). Moreover, his parents have sold their house to a developer and bought a pig-sty to convert, by “DIY” methods, into their new dwelling (“The Piggeries”). Meanwhile they live in a tent.
It’s a cheap trick, relaying what’s in other people’s books, but this stuff is too good to keep quiet about.
Again, I wish FIFA would choose a host that did care.
Iran’s withdrawal is likely. Maybe we’ll know more after the U.S. completes the expected four-to-five weeks of bombardment. Because then the war’ll be done-and-dusted, won’t it? Because, as Trump himself professes, Iran already “is a very badly defeated country.”
If Iran does play in the World Cup, this eye-popping scenario will be possible:
Iran is currently scheduled to play New Zealand in Los Angeles on June 15, Belgium in Los Angeles on June 21 and Egypt in Seattle on June 26. If both the U.S. and Iran finish second in their respective groups, the two countries could face off in a July 3 elimination match in Dallas.
The two countries played what were, in effect, elimination matches (in the group stage) in 1998 and 2022. Iran won the first meeting; the U.S. won the second one.
Perhaps my favorite Garamond. The happy average of Garamonds “Monotype” and “ITC”: not too twiggy, not too fat. Spiky serifs; short descenders.
Sample 1: Mary Westmacott, i.e. Agatha Christie, Absent in the Spring (in an omnibus):
Sample 2: Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickle and Dimed:
If that doesn’t excite you, I don’t know what would.
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Happy Paw Patrol-themed birthday, yesterday, to Daniel. We invited his cousins to help him to empty his piñata.
It has become customary among our families to offer a piñata whenever a child turns a year older. Our boys had accumulated enough candy to fill a kitchen cabinet. So, we recycled as much of it as we could into yesterday’s piñata.
We told the other parents to put their children’s gleanings into the next piñata, then into the next one, and so on.
What with news of the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, it’s useful to have an updated Royal Family tree with birth years, titles, and succession indicators:
For some readers this will be old hat. Not for me, alas. I’ve seen just one episode of The Crown.
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Current reading (books):
W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South (for the group)
Agatha Christie, Evil Under the Sun
Agatha Christie (writing as Mary Westmacott), Absent in the Spring
E. W. Hornung, The Amateur Cracksman
C. S. Lewis, Perelandra
François Mauriac, The Holy Terror (a mini-book – for making up lost ground)
John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat (ditto)
Aristotle, Poetics (ditto)
John Perry, A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality (ditto)
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (ditto; a re-read)
books, as yet unfinished, mentioned in previous entries
I was going to say it’s pretty cupcake, but surveying the list, I see the authors include two Nobel winners (Mauriac and Steinbeck), two Great Books of the Western World contributors (Aristotle and Machiavelli), and two theological giants (Christie and Lewis). So, not too shabby after all. Mr. Quiring would approve. Maybe not of Christie. I shake my head whenever well-read people don’t bother with Christie, especially if they do read Chesterton and Sayers. (See the latter’s gem “Aristotle on Detective Fiction,” which I found in Anthony Kenny’s Oxford World’s Classics edition of the Poetics.)
The Facebook bots kindly shared a mini-bio, in Spanish, of Timothy Dexter (1747–1806), history’s hombre más suertudo (luckiest man). It was intriguing enough that I went on to read Dexter’s Wikipedia bio. Then I read that bio aloud to Karin.
Certain commonalities with our President suggested themselves. Dexter, however, made money instead of losing it. And he didn’t start out with money from his father; he extracted it from his rich wife, whom he abused.
In business, he seems to have been lucky and devilishly intuitive, e.g. he turned a profit literally “shipping coal to Newcastle” (the proverbial expression for exporting to a saturated market).
I don’t intend to read any full-length biographies of Timothy Dexter. But I went looking anyway. The major ones are from the 1800s. The last notable book, the most recent edition of which is 65 years old, is by John P. Marquand – like Dexter, of Newburyport, Mass. – the author of the “Mr. Moto” fictions and of the Pulitzer-winning, satirical Late George Apley. I wonder how serious his treatment of Dexter is.
So, Belichick, who won eight Super Bowls (six as a head coach) and got to three others, wasn’t voted into the Hall of Fame.
“What does a guy have to do?” he asked, reasonably.
Brady: “Welcome to the world of voting.”
Amen to that. I mean, if Belichick – as qualified a candidate as there is – can’t get elected by so-called experts, what chance does electoral democracy have?
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I finished Steinbeck’s East of Eden for the group. Taken page by page, it’s quite a good read. Taken all together, it has problems, not least that it’s a replotting and therefore a rebuke of the Cain and Abel story. My objection isn’t so much, How dare Steinbeck?; it’s that the Cain and Abel story really can’t be improved or even riffed on. Change it in any way, and its power is diminished.
