John Steinbeck once equated a book with a “wedge driven into a man’s personal life.” The shorter the book, wrote Steinbeck, the more easily removed the wedge. But a long book—in fact a very long book, maybe his own East of Eden—sticks around for a while. It lingers. The best stories are these, Steinbeck thinks, the ones that stick around for a while, like a wedge in one’s life. And, therefore, the best stories are long stories. Sometimes, very long stories.Yellowstone is a very long story. Now over five seasons and encompassing (so far) two spinoff series, the Yellowstone universe takes the saga of the Dutton family back seven generations. It’s believed we’ll be getting stories for each generation. It Steinbeck terms: that’s a pretty big wedge. There are other reasons to compare the Sheridan-verse to Steinbeck (and we’re not saying writer Taylor Sheridan is a modern-day Steinbeck, but we’re also not not saying he’s some modern iteration of the American writer)—legacy, generational strife, morality on the edge of urban expansion, and people being terrible versions of themselves and enacting cruelty on others. Family values.Another similarity: a lot of goddamn characters.Trying to explain everyone in writing—what with all the Johns and Jacks and variations thereof—would be even more confusing. So we have a diagram:Men’s HealthThere is some stuff to write about, thoug… Click below to read the full story from Men’s Health
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