“John and the River” Audio: Alan Brasington Reads from Steve’s Hauk’s Short Stories About Young John Steinbeck

Steve Hauk’s short stories about John Steinbeck’s life in Monterey, Pacific Grove, and Salinas, California comprise a work in progress. When we posted “John and the River,” Steve’s story attracted the attention of local readers familiar with Steinbeck’s Salinas, California childhood from memories handed down by parents, grandparents, or friends who knew John Steinbeck and his family. We thought such interest called for something more than text: Steve’s short stories about Steinbeck’s Salinas, California boyhood and early years in Pacific Grove deserved to heard as well as printed. So we reached out to an actor-singer we know in New York and asked him to record “John and the River” for SteinbeckNow.com. His name is Alan Brasington, and he also writes short stories about children. As it happens, he reads about Steinbeck’s Salinas, California with familiarity as well as feeling. Although trained in London and living on the East Coast, he travels frequently and enjoys visiting the places in Pacific Grove, Monterey, and Salinas, California where Steinbeck started before making his Manhattan move. More important, Alan’s heart and ear are tuned to the voices of imaginative, independent children like John Steinbeck, growing up in alien worlds like Salinas, California in times of greater conformity. Enjoy “John and the River” read by Alan Brasington below.

Steve Hauk About Steve Hauk

Steve Hauk is a playwright, short story writer, and art expert in Pacific Grove, California. Co-curator of This Side of Eden—Images of Steinbeck's California, the inaugural art exhibition at the National Steinbeck Center, he has written on John Steinbeck for Steinbeck Review and is the author of two CINE Golden Eagle award-winning PBS-telecast documentaries narrated by Jack Lemmon, Time Captured in Paintings: The Monterey Legacy and The Roots of California Photography: The Monterey Legacy. His plays include Fortune's Way, or Notes on Art for Catholics (and Others)The Floating Hat, Reflections of an American Mossad, The Forgotten Computer Genius, and The Cottages, Scenes from Lives Interrupted. Steinbeck: The Untold Stories, a book of fictional stories published by SteinbeckNow.com and based on Steinbeck's life, is available through Amazon and at selected bookstores. His most recent work is Eden Armed, a similarly imagined play.

Comments

  1. Richard O'Mara says:

    Steve: Congratulations on finding Alan Brasington to read your work, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to his reading of John and the River even though I had read it myself before. Bravo Zulu! (That’s Navy, for a job well done!)

    Richard

  2. Steve Hauk says:

    Richard, I’m glad you like it. He is very good. I think “Bravo Zulu” will become part of my vocabulary, maybe Alan’s, too. I assume the term stems from an historic battle?

Trackbacks

  1. […] Brasington, the versatile voice of Steinbeck Now. Now sit back and enjoy his performance of “John and the River“—the first of Steve Hauk’s short stories about Steinbeck posted at […]

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