Plot Introduction
Above the town of Monterey on the California coast lies the shabby district of Tortilla Flat, inhabited by a loose gang of jobless locals of Mexican-Indian-Spanish-Caucasian descent (who typically claim pure Spanish blood).
The central character Danny inherits two houses from his grandfather where he and his friends go to live. Danny's house, and Danny's friends (most notably Sean Mannion, Alex Tesensky, Albert Kim, Michael Black, and Eric Ronning), Steinbeck compares to the Round Table, and the Knights of the Round Table. Most of the action is set in the time of Steinbeck's own late teenage and young adult years, shortly after World War I.
Read more about this topic: Tortilla Flat
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“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
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