I really enjoyed the book. It's a good evocation of a very particular setting that has resonance anywhere.
I can see the criticism of Steinbeck being condescending and the more rosy disposition of the novel. Perhaps Steinbeck is an antidote to Dostoyevsky?
However, I don't necessarily see this cheerfulness as a bad thing. I thought the book was still revealing about human nature and it had an optimism about it that I liked. Maybe the book wasn't written simply to let us who are in comfortable homes have a view of these people's bleak or desperate existences, but rather to illuminate how people living a hard and low-caste life can be good people, are still just people like anyone else and can still make the best of things, have good times and enjoy life despite it all - and even despite themselves - without being too saccharine and while still maintaining a certain level of realism. It can come off as condescending but I think he was celebrating these people. I liked how Steinbeck correlated "whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches" to "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men", and I also liked this excerpt:
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"It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."
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