If you haven' t read The Grapes of Wrath recently, stop what you're doing and dig up a copy right now.

For one thing, it's much funnier than it was in tenth grade English; it's also pretty dirty. I don't know how that escaped me.

And, on the off moments when the preacher isn't lusting after farmers' daughters, it manages to offer a pretty radical critique of our very own Ownership Society.

Steinbeck writes,

"And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away.

And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need.

And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.

The great owners ignored the three cries of history ... and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression.

The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmurings of revolt so that it might be stamped out.

The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on."

Ai yi yi. Gas, spies, revolt... Reading Steinbeck this week feels not so much like a history lesson as an analysis of the current news and possibly a foreshadowing of what more is to come.

What to take from this great American novel? One is simply the feeling of dread; my brother holds a personal grudge against Steinbeck because he says that no one who writes so vividly should be allowed to tell such bleak stories.

Another is a feeling of hope. Steinbeck makes a pretty clear case for collective action, making an unapologetic case for unions and the power of the multitude.

(But, if you find youself on the side of the "haves," be warned: "the quality of owning freezes you forever into 'I,' and cuts you off forever from the 'we.'")

Another is a feeling of resignation. When the balance of power is out of whack -- as I believe it is today, both internationally and nationally -- history shows that time always pushes things back toward the center, and we who have enjoyed being on the winning end of things can expect to be rocked pretty hard.

And finally is a feeling of eager anticipation. Things change. This fight that the Bush administration seems to be waging -- quite literally -- to preserve "the American way of life" is not only so full of hubris as to make me actually believe in the Rapture myself because that kind of arrogance is just begging for a big ball of fire, but also futile.

I'm not saying things are necessarily going to get better -- it didn't for the poor Joads, hauling their entire lives from the dust-dried Oklahoma to the perverted look-but-don't-touch Eden of California. Just that they will be different, and rather than fight it, like the foolish owners in Steinbeck's morality tale, we might as well lean into it and adapt with some kind of integrity.