I was waiting around for a friend at Barnes and Noble, thumbing through the books on a display table. (Those tables really work. I saw eight things I had to talk myself out of buying. Then again, it was a bookstore, where I generally have to talk myself out of buying anything that I look at closely. And I didn't actually buy anything. So I take it back: those tables were a total failure.) One of the books was East of Eden, which I have never read on account of a poor experience with The Grapes of Wrath, which made me miserable and thirsty.
Anyway, at the bottom of the title page there was a wee picture of a flying pig. It looked like this picture which I have stolen from the website of a t-shirt company. You should buy a t-shirt from them so they don't sue me.
Printed just below was an explanation that may or may not have been better worded than what I am about to quote from Wikipedia, or may possibly be the same:
"The Pigasus was used by John Steinbeck as a personal stamp with the Latin motto Ad astra per alia porci (to the stars on the wings of a pig). The pigasus was supposed to symbolize Steinbeck as 'earthbound but aspiring. . . . A lumbering soul but trying to fly . . . (with) . . . not enough wingspread but plenty of intention.'"
Not for the first time in a bookstore, I laughed aloud at a disruptive volume and consequently felt compelled to slink away to a different section where no one would recognize me. It was the porci that did it. SNORT. On the basis of this alone, I might have to give Steinbeck another try. My mother and a lot of other people seem to like him. And who knows; if he were alive, maybe he would enjoy a Pigasus made of bacon and chocolate. However, before I approve of that inappropriate combination, pigs will fly.
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