Section:GDN 1N PaGe:20 Edition Date:190801 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 31/7/2019 19:01 cYanmaGentaYellowb
- The Guardian Thursday 1 August 2019
(^20) National
Alison Flood
A whimsical short story by John Stein-
beck about a temperamental French
chef ’s love for his cat is being pub-
lished in English for the fi rst time this
week.
The author of Of Mice and Men, The
Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden lived
in Paris in the mid-1950s, and wrote a
weekly column for the French daily Le
Figaro called One American in Paris.
One of his pieces was a short story,
Les Puces Sympathiques. It was orig-
inally published on 31 July 1954, and
was found in Steinbeck’s papers at
the Ransom Cent er at the University
of Texas at Austin by Andrew Gulli, the
editor of the Strand magazine , which
is publishing it in English this week as
The Amiable Fleas.
Rebecca Smithers
Consumer aff airs correspondent
A motorway service station overlook-
ing the Severn Bridge has been named
the worst in England after visitors crit-
icised its unwelcoming 1960s exterior
and “grim and dismal” toilets.
Severn View services on the M48 in
Gloucestershire attracted a rating of
just 72% in a survey of facilities off ered
by the 111 service stations serving the
English motorway network. Norton
Canes services between junctions 6
and 7 of the M6 toll road in Staff ord-
shire was rated the best for the second
year running in the survey by the inde-
pendent watchdog Transport Focus.
In he survey 11,600 drivers were
questioned on the state of the build-
ings and toilets, food and drink, and
staff friendliness.
Moto, which owns Severn View,
said: “We are disappointed that Severn
View came out bottom despite scor-
ing 90% for the friendliness of its staff.
The small location means we are lim-
ited in the range of brands and services
we can off er. However, we will be re-
doubling our eff orts in the year ahead.”
“Don’t expect to read something
dramatic in the vein of Grapes of
Wrath ,” Gulli warned.
Steinbeck’s chef, Monsieur Amité,
is desperate for a second Michelin
star – so desperate that when things
go wrong in the kitchen on the day of
the inspector’s visit, he ends up kick-
ing his bosom companion and muse,
“a great and dignified cat named
Apollo”. Determined to make amends,
he makes a dish to tempt the cat back.
“When he tasted, he knew he had
succeeded, that any cat who could
withstand this dish was a cat far gone
in insanity. And last, he added one
ingredient, almost a magic, to win
back his friend,” writes Steinbeck.
“The dish went to the oven, came out
faintly brown and smelling like the
breath of goddesses. M. Amité care-
fully fi lled Apollo’s plate, and without
a coat went out in the rain to look for
his darling.”
A far cry from the wide canvases and
depths of human misery he plumbs in
his novels, the story includes inter-
ludes in Steinbeck’s voice as he admits
he might be “a novelist whose work is
so despondent that the whole world
fl ocks to him”. However, he also shares
a glimpse of his optimistic side.
“As a species, we have been in
trouble since we came down from trees
and took up habitation in caves, but
also, as a species, we have survived,”
he writes. “We have not survived on
great things, but on little ones, like a lit-
tle story I have heard – probably an old,
old, story. But this is the way I heard it.”
Steinbeck began writing for Le
Figaro after becoming frustrated by
the journalists who interviewed him
in his home near the Champs É lysées.
“ I spend hours with journalists
helping them to make some kind of
a story and then when it comes out
it is garbled and slanted and lousy. I
wondered why I did not write my own
interviews ... and have it come out my
way,” he wrote to his agent. “In other
words, why should I not write 800
words a week for one French paper –
observations, essays, questions, but
unmistakably American.”
Of cats and
French men:
unknown
Steinbeck
translated
‘Grim loos’ cited in
ranking of worst
service stations
▲ The US author John Steinbeck in
the 1930s, before he moved to Paris,
where he wrote a newspaper column
PHOTOGRAPH: HULTON-DEUTSCH/CORBIS/GETTY
‘We have not survived
on great things but on
little ones, like a little
story I have heard’
John Steinbeck
Writing in Le Figaro
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