Customer Reviews

Cup of Gold

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Cup of Gold is important in that it was Steinbeck's first novel. If you look closely you can see the kind of *heart* that would characterize Steinbeck's humanity in later works. His sensitivity, if you will. But that kind of sensitivity is at its best when balanced with Steinbeck's wit and satirical edge. Here, though, in Cup of Gold was a young Steinbeck without the momentum -- nor the boldness -- to balance a sense of humanity with cutting satire, and the novel ultimately sounds too sentimental and limp. In my opinion, Steinbeck really came into his own with Tortilla Flat (1935). Pastures of Gold (1932) and To a God Unknown (1933) were both closer to Cup of Gold in their romantic tendancies. But Tortilla Flat is the first novel where Steinbeck really enjoyed writing a novel, and the result was a comedy. Cup of Gold provides a window into a young writer's mind (Steinbeck published it at 27) -- a writer trying to find his calling -- and ultimately, a writer who would go on the write better novels with maturity and the development of his craft.

Like most first time authors, Steinbeck looked for inspiration in his imagination. Fascinated with the swashbuckling pirates, he tests the literary waters with his first work. While it is lengthy and overly flowering in parts, it is a wonderful starting point to tracing his lengthy career. Strangely enough, in his later years, he once again turned to childhood inspiration when he penned his "King Arthur" stories. A study of the two also provides an intriguing subject.

Steinbeck did not wish to be referred to as an "author." He has shown from this work through to the last (Winter of Our Discontent) what it takes to answer the demand of a talented and dedicated"writer." Here, an exciting tale carries the reader off on high sea adventures. One is catapulted into circumstances of an historical era which take on the aura of reality. Giving , in the bargin, a new value system for the" trade" of piracy. Read this and then read on through this author's multi-faceted offerings!

This was John Steinbeck's first novel and it explores the idea of the great man who is unconvinced of his own greatness. The story is about pirate Henry Morgan who, through perseverance, pluck, intelligence, and bravery becomes the most feared pirate in the Caribbean, eventually capturing "The Cup of Gold" - Panama. He hopes, along with this prize, to gain the love of the beautiful La Santa Roja. But she spurns him and out of bitterness Morgan ransoms her to her husband for 20,000 pieces of eight. Now he begins to doubt himself and his accomplishments and goes into a funk that even being knighted and being made the governor of Jamaica can't cure. He dies a mysterious death in his sleep.

Shakespeare wrote, "Many men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love," but Morgan never got the message. He loses La Santa Roja and he's a goner. Unfortunately, Steinbeck hadn't developed the means yet to really capture what was going on with his characters. His writing seems unnatural and affected by the 17th century setting than anything real. The historical novel was not his forte, and he never attempted another one. This initial effort was not a good indication of what talented work lay ahead.

Sing, goddess, of the passion and plight of the First Novel! Where a budding writer tests his wings, catches a breeze, and discovers the joy of flight-sailing on the current of the imagination to undiscovered lands, a private Elysium of vine and fertile soil. Unfortunately, the first book is often like a first child: hope and wonder rest side by side with flaw and inexperience; very rarely does one get it right the first time out.

Stienbeck was no exception in this, `Cup of Gold,' the first of many for this Nobel-Prize laureate, this undisputable master of the craft. The writing itself is for the most part superb, though a bit didactic and superfluous in passages, but certainly better than any number of the current Bestsellers of this modern era. The main problem, in my opinion, lies in the structure of the novel. Stienbeck devotes the first third of `Cup of Gold' to Henry Morgan's upbringing, from desolate Wales to luxuriant slavery in Barbados, then glosses over probably the most interesting portion of Morgan's life, his initiation and rise to power as a pirate, King o' the Seas, bloodythirsty God of swashbucklers and scurvy-hounds...the reader goes from a mere boy to a world-weary husk of dissipated passions within three pages. Thus, the supposed anguish and character-transformation that Stienbeck *tells* us occurs during the sack of Panama come off stilted and wan, for the reader has not been given the opportunity to sympathize with Morgan-he's just a stranger given to philosophic fits and embodied with archetypical male angst. If Stienbeck had devoted, say, a hundred pages to Morgan's development from boy to captain, the themes would be substantiated and the assault on Panama would gain tragic import for not only its citizens, but for the dominator as well.

Alas, `Cup of Gold' never recovers from this fragmentation of plot and character, and though it is an interesting read and overall written well, in the end one mourns for possibilities undeveloped. Certainly useful for a student of writing, though. Three stars.

A book like this is not written these days. I enjoyed how the writer describes people in relations to weather and the landscape. It was a very unusual way to describe the people in the story and what feelings they had. Of cause the book is fictional but the writer do a very good job with an exceptional writing style. This book kept me up at night because i had to finish it. I would have given it five stars if it had been longer. If you like tales of Pirates and salty sea dogs then buy this book. A great book to have and like a few other books i have read i would describe this book as difficult to put down before you have finished reading the whole book.

If you are a Steinbeck fan then you will appreciate the "adjective enriched" style of John Steinbeck. My only complaint is the book is too short!

"Cup of Gold" is Steinbeck's first published novel. Although it is not as well-written as his more famous novels--"East of Eden" or "The Grapes of Wrath"--it is still an entertaining tale with some interesting life lessons woven into the narrative.

A number of reviewers have given this novel single stars, and I am truly at a loss as to the reason. "Cup Of Gold" is not vintage Steinbeck. The characters are more flat and less motivated than in his classic novels, and there always seems to be an underlying question of "where is this book taking us, and why should we care?"

However, bearing all that in mind, "COG" is a fairly well-written novel about two things: how greatness arises from childish ambition, and how even the most lauded of conquerers are laden with insecurities and doubts. Despite some of the callowness of the characters (mainly Morgan), I found myself enjoying this novel, and seeing a lot of depth within...but a detached depth. In fact, I likened it to Kubrick's fine film "Barry Lyndon" which is more focused on observing a character's traits than drawing any conclusions about him. Steinbeck never tries to beat you over the head with the fact that Morgan is / was a deceitful, ambitious and insecure zealot who cares far more about his reputation and how he is perceived than any of his actual accomplishments. Instead, the reader is left to absorb all this and shake one's head with a grim smile at the commonality of truth regarding people such as Morgan.

I contend that this book is well-written, despite some obvious foibles of a first-time novelist. Certain words were used too frequently ("cried" as a synonym of "said" was annoyingly common) and it lacks the gentle flow that many of Steinbeck's novels offer, but there is certainly a depth here that forms the basis of many of his later themes. So before you judge this book by other reviews here, consider the power of a few early sentences in this novel: "Why do men like me want sons?...it must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these new men, who are their blood, will do the things they were not strong enough nor wise enough nor brave enough to do. It is rather like another chance with life; like a new bag of coins at a table of luck after your fortune is gone."

The blurb on the cover says this was Steinbeck's one and only effort at an historical novel so I picked it up at once, being, myself, a lover of the historical tale. And frankly I like swashbucklers, to boot, so that promised an added kick.

Well, it read smoothly enough and yet it was a rather odd offering, all in all, since it proved to be a somewhat lyrical rendering of the life of the infamous pirate Henry Morgan, making him out to be an idealistic dreamer-knight, driven to do cruel and heartless things only because of his hard-to-outgrow boyishness, a condition which, in the end, entraps him in a never-never fantasy land of his own making. Certainly pirates weren't like this, all poets and romantics, not really, and it is very unlikely that Morgan, the rapacious scoundrel we know from history was.

And yet, there is something endearing and entrancing in this magical interior fantasy of a boy who sets out to find adventure and grows into the rapscallion Morgan, scourge of the seas, of the Spaniards and, in the end, of his fellow buccaneers. This tale tracks Morgan from his run-away Welsh boyhood to inadvertent slavery in the Carribbean to young manhood in the English colony of Jamaica, and on to his long dreamed of career of piracy and beyond. Growing into a fearless and clever strategist of the seas, Morgan hurts those he passes by on his life's journey, from parents to father figure in old Jamaica, to the women he abandons, all because of his own self-absorption and personal dreams. But the lure of the rich Spanish colony in Panama, known as the Cup of Gold, and of a reputed woman of unexcelled loveliness who resides there, the Red Saint, combine to draw him on to his greatest adventure of all. There in Panama Morgan meets his dream's end, never to be quite the same thereafter. There Morgan will shed his boyish cloak of fantasy and, in doing so, seal his fate as an ordinary mortal like the rest of us, doomed to labor and grow old and die in the shadow of his shattered dreams.

There is much that is surrealistic in this little novel although the portrayal of the time and place of the tale rings true enough, albeit as though seen through an oddly refracted psychological lense. The facts seem solid to, as Steinbeck describes many of the events of the time. But in the end, I found the dream-like quality of this tale less edifying than distracting and so, though it was an easy book to read, it did not completely win me.

SWM
author of The King of Vinland's Saga