Of Mice and Men: The Ghost of Lennie

I read about John Steinbeck and his Grapes of Wrath in the Sunday Magazine of The Hindu and in my next visit to library, I browsed through his books. Grapes of Wrath seemed to be a thick book which would have taken ages for me to read. I found a slim volume in between the books, titled Of Mice and Men. I read the novella the same day I borrowed it. Dark and haunting, I didn’t feel that I have read a great work (In fact, I was not knowing that it was a critically acclaimed and popular book). But the lines in the story kept coming back to me. “Will there be rabbits, George?” - The lines in the book were so lyrical that I thought - If I were to write a song with a book as its theme, this would be it. (At that time, Mark Knopfler had just released his ‘Sailing to Philadelphia’ album inspired by the book Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon). I started singing the lines which haunted me from the book – “Will you let me tend the rabbits, George?” - to the tune of Dire Straits’ Romeo and Juliet. (May be due to the ‘Sailing to..’ connection or the Shakespearean connection… or may be I felt that Knopfler’s rendition of the song -which was never written- would be perfect to match the mood of Of mice and men. )

IMDB tells me that there are a couple of movie versions of the book. A 1992 make directed by Gary Sinise, features Sinise as George and John Malkovich as Lennie. I am looking forward to watching it!