John Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent was June’s selection for The Mules, my all-male book club. I’ve always had the impression that Steinbeck is solidly ensconced in the pantheon of American novelists and that he represents the era when the best writers were defining what an American novel could or should be.

As pointed out by GG, one of our younger members, the title of the book comes from the first two lines of Shakespeare’s Richard III, a soliloquy by the Duke of Gloucester (the future King Richard III):

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York

(If you’re interested, you can read the entire soliloquy in the P.S., below.)

When I read Richard III in college, and then in graduate school, I was always slightly troubled by this soliloquy. I thought it was beautiful and thus worthy of my attention. So, I parsed and pondered the lines a dozen times, and was able to appreciate the cleverness of Gloucester’s words.

I eventually arrived at a Cliff Notes-level understanding of their purpose: to very succinctly introduce three of the principal characters and Gloucester’s hamartia (his tragic, fatal flaw). But I always felt that there was something more. Reading The Winter of Our Discontent filled in the blanks for me.