{"id":6763,"date":"2023-11-27T11:23:45","date_gmt":"2023-11-27T11:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6763"},"modified":"2023-11-29T21:47:01","modified_gmt":"2023-11-29T21:47:01","slug":"the-short-short-story-of-mankind-by-john-steinbeck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6763","title":{"rendered":"The Short-Short Story of Mankind by John Steinbeck"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Short-Short Story of Mankind<\/em><\/strong> by John Steinbeck (Lilliput<\/em>, November 1955)1<\/sup> opens with two cavemen moaning about the youth of the day, problems with the neighbouring tribe, etc.:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Joe came into the cave all scratched up and some hunks of hair torn out and he flopped down on the wet ground and bled\u2014Old William was arguing away with Old Bert who was his brother and also his son, if you look at it one way.
[. . .]
\u2018Where\u2019s Al?\u2019 one of them asked and the other said, \u2018You forgot to roll the rock in front of the door.\u2019
Joe didn\u2019t even look up and the two old men agreed that kids were going to the devil. \u2018I tell you it was different in my day,\u2019 Old William said. \u2018They had some respect for their elders or they got what for.\u2019
After a while Joe stopped bleeding and he caked some mud on his cuts. \u2018Al\u2019s gone,\u2019 he said.
Old Bert asked brightly, \u2018Sabre tooth?\u2019
\u2018No, it\u2019s that new bunch that moved into the copse down the draw. They ate Al.\u2019
\u2018Savages,\u2019 said Old William. \u2018Still live in trees. They aren\u2019t civilized. We don\u2019t hardly ever eat people.\u2019
Joe said, \u2018We got hardly anybody to eat except relatives and we\u2019re getting low on relatives.\u2019
Those foreigners!\u2019 said Old Bert.
\u2018Al and I dug a pit,\u2019 said Joe. \u2018We caught a horse and those tree people came along and ate our horse. When we complained, they ate Al.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The rest of this rambling non-sf story charts, in a similar tone, the progress of humanity from cavemen to hunter gatherers to farmers to citizens of larger states. The effects of religion and technology and military force are also considered. The concluding observation is that people nowadays are not stupider than cavemen, but exactly<\/em> as stupid as cavemen. This strikes me as overly simplistic, and it is not an observation I would agree with. I doubt that even cavemen were as stupid as they are portrayed here.2<\/sup>
I\u2019ve read quite a lot of Steinbeck and would count The Grapes of Wrath<\/em> among my favourite top ten books, but this is pretty weak stuff.
* (Mediocre). 2,200 words. Story link<\/a>.

1. This story was reprinted in Playboy<\/em> (April, 1957) using the title above. The original Lilliput<\/em> publication was titled We Are Holding Our Own<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. One of my Facebook group referred to this story as \u201cThe Cranky View of Human History\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Short-Short Story of Mankind by John Steinbeck (Lilliput, November 1955)1 opens with two cavemen moaning about the youth of the day, problems with the neighbouring tribe, etc.: Joe came into the cave all scratched up and some hunks of hair torn out and he flopped down on the wet ground and bled\u2014Old William was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1594],"tags":[21,257,1598,1595,1596,1597,176,12],"class_list":["post-6763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-john-steinbeck","tag-21","tag-257","tag-history-of-mankind","tag-john-steinbeck","tag-lilliput","tag-non-sf","tag-playboy","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6763"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6776,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6763\/revisions\/6776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}