The Critical Response to John
Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath
Book by Barbara A. Heavilin; Greenwood Press, 2000
Steinbeck and Hemingway: Suggestions for a Comparative Study
Peter
Lisca
From
many points of view it seems inevitable that John Steinbeck and Ernest
Hemingway should be closely associated in any critical survey of American
fiction from the late twenties to the present, especially as these two figures
are the foremost heirs of our naturalistic literary tradition. Thus they share
certain specialized as well as general studies of American literature. They are
sometimes even examined in the same chapters of such books. But curiously they
have very seldom been studied closely together with the purpose of yielding
reciprocal illumination. The present essay assumes simply that such an
interlocking examination of two writers with so broad a common base might lead to
a sharper perception of each one's particular accomplishment, and proposes to
suggest certain possible fruitful areas of inquiry.
To begin
with the most obvious and least important, it is strange that two such
thoroughly professional writers so much in the public eye should have left so
little notice of each other. Of course all the facts are not known yet in
either case; but if Hemingway, who felt so compelled to publicly attack the
abilities and personalities of so many of his contemporaries, has left any
judgment of Steinbeck, it has not yet been generally noticed. Although, on the
other hand, Steinbeck did not much care to enter into criticism of his
contemporaries, some remarks about Hemingway have come to light. The
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gist of
all of them is a sincere admiration. To Covici of the Viking Press he wrote
(ca. Feb., 1939), "I'm convinced that in many ways he is the finest writer
of our time," and later, to his friend Ed Sheehan he confided, "I was
afraid to read Hemingway until I was well along...I knew he would influence
me." Responding to the present writer's suggestion ( 1956) that...
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Collin G. Matton
A great deal has been written concerning John Steinbeck
use of Biblical motifs and allusions in The
Grapes of Wrath ( 1939). However, one symbolic pattern from the
Judaeo-Christian tradition has not been adequately traced as a revealing
leitmotiv in Steinbeck's commentary on social conditions in the United States
during the 1930's. Examination of the water and flood archetype as used by
Steinbeck, particularly in Chapter 29 of the novel, seems to open a new
interpretation to the conclusion of the novel.
At first, Steinbeck's use of water imagery furthers the
tragic overtones of the novel. In showing water as a destroyer before
developing the creative power of the symbol, Steinbeck seems to be using the
motif structurally. This order of presentation carries the reader from the
tragedy of the first part of the novel to the regenerative pattern of the
conclusion.
The destructive features of the water archetype, in this
chapter, follow a pattern of hierarchical importance. Water destroys nature,
the nature, the works of man, and finally even attempts to destroy man himself.
The destruction of nature reverses the Biblical account of creation. In the
Biblical pattern of creation, the first three days are days of separation:
light from darkness, the waters above from the waters below, and the dry lands
from the water. The account in The
Grapes of Wrath, however, mingles light and darkness in gray, the waters
above and those below in a flood, and
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the land and water in mud. The effect of this is to
reverse a clearly organized creative account into an apocalyptic vision of
chaos and destruction.
The references to gray (a combination of light and dark)
are numerous in the chapter under consideration.
Over the
high coast mountains and ...
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In the
barns, the people sat huddled together; and the terror came over them, and
their faces were gray with terror. The children cried with hunger, and there
was no food. (387)
Although the setting remains the same in both instances,
the direction of the imagery alters the
import of the selections. In the first
passage, the pattern of human life is
cyclic. 3
It is the women "who panted with pneumonia," not the children. It
is the "old people" who were "curled up in the corners." In
spite of these destructive elements, the
creative element is given birth-"babies were born." Significantly
enough, the babies were born "in the wet hay of
the leaking barns."
In the later passage, the grayness of nature is carried to the faces of
the people. The destructive element of
hunger is brought even to children, usually a regenerative force. The pattern of human life is linear in that it points to
final destruction of both young and old.
What must be kept in mind is that the passage which is destructive in tone is
placed before that which is optimistic. It is at this point that Steinbeck
seems to shift the tone of the chapter,
and that of the novel.
It is in this chapter that Steinbeck repeats the water
archetype with different connotations. No longer associated with destruction,
the water image becomes a symbol of
birth and regeneration. Again, Steinbeck extends the regenerative pattern from
man's creations to God's creation, Nature. "Tiny points of grass came through the earth, and in a few
days the hills were pale green with the beginning year" (383). The
rejuvenative pattern is quite clearly expressed through the
"beginning" year and the color of
green, always associated with fecundity and hope.
From Northeast
Modern Language Association Newsletter, vol. 2 ( 1970), 44-47.
Notes
|
John Steinbeck. The
Grapes of
Wrath ( New York, 1966), p.
385. All subsequent references to the novel are taken from this edition. |
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Micea Eliade, Patterns
in Comparative Religion ( Cleveland, 1963), p. 210. |
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As Eliade has pointed out, the deluge archetype is
usually associated with a cyclic conception of
the history of man. |
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John Steinbeck's Spatial Imagination in The Grapes of
Wrath
George Henderson
Introduction: Representation as
Social Action
The winter of
1937-38 was especially wet in the San Joaquin Valley. Steady and heavy rains
saturated the San Joaquin flood plain, particularly in cottongrowing Madera
County. In February of that winter John
Steinbeck wrote to his agent Elizabeth Otis:
I must
go over into the interior valleys. There are about five thousand families
starving to death over there, not just hungry but actually starving. The
government is trying to feed them and get medical attention to them with the
fascist group of utilities and banks and
huge growers sabotaging the thing all along the line and yelling for a balanced
budget. In one tent there are twenty people quarantined for smallpox and two of the women are to have babies in that tent
this week. I've tied into the thing from the first and I must knock these
murderers on the heads. Do you know what they're afraid of? They think that if these people are allowed to live in camps
with proper sanitary facilities, they will organize and that is the bugbear of the large landowner and the corporation
farmer. The states and counties will give them nothing because they are
outsiders. But the crops of any part of this state could not be harvested without
these outsiders. I'm pretty mad about it. No word of
this outside because when I have finished my job the jolly old associated
farmers will be after my scalp again ( Steinbeck and Wallsten158).
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For several years Steinbeck had been eyeing the situation
of migrant agricultural workers in the "interior valleys." In October
1936 The San Francisco News ran
"Harvest Gypsies," a series of Steinbeck's articles, commissioned by
the paper's chief editorial writer (see St. Pierre, 79-81 for excerpts). In
those brief pieces a reader could find most of the major...
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References
Babcock Barbara. ( 1978) The Reversible World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Cosgrove Denia. ( 1983) Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape. London: Croom, Helm.
Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration. (
1984) [ 1939] The WPA Guide to
California. New York: Pantheon Books.
French Warren. ( 1966) The Social Novel at the End of an Era . Carbondale and
Edwardsville, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press.
Kappel Tim. ( 1982) "Trampling Out the
Vineyards--Kern County's Ban on The Grapes
of Wrath."
California History. 61.3:
210-21.
Lisca Peter. ( 1977) [ 1957] "The Grapes of
Wrath as Fiction." In Steinbeck ( 1977): 729-47.
Lutwack Leonard. ( 1984) The Role of Place in Literature . Syracuse,
New York: Syracuse University Press.
Martin Stoddard. ( 1983) California Writers. New York: St. Martin's Press.
McWilliams Carey. ( 1969) [ 1939] Factories in the Field: The Story of
Migratory Farm Labor in California. Archon Books.
St. Brian Pierre. ( 1983) John Steinbeck: The California Years. San Francisco: Chronicle
Books.
Stallybrass P., and White A. ( 1986) The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. Ithaca: Cor-nell
University Press.
Steinbeck, Elaire, and Robert Wallsten ( 1975) Steinbeck: A Life in Letters. New
York: The Viking Press, Inc.
Steinbeck John. ( 1977) [ 1939] The Grapes of Wrath:
Text and Criticism. Peter Lisca , ed. ( The Viking Critical Library) New
York: Penguin Books.
Taylor Frank J. ( 1977) [ 1939] "California's Grapes of
Wrath," in Steinbeck ( 1977): 643-56.
Taylor Walter Fuller. ( 1977) [ 1959] "The Grapes of
Wrath Reconsidered," in Steinbeck ( 1977): 757-68.
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Dialogic Structure and Levels of Discourse in Steinbeck's The Grapes
of Wrath
Louis Owens and Hector Torres
The
development of the novel is a function of the deepening of
dialogic essence, its increased scope and greater precision. Fewer and fewer
neutral, hard elements ("rock bottom truths") remain that are not
drawn into dialogue.
-- M. M.
Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination
Much attention has been paid to the most basic level of narrative structure in The Grapes
of Wrath,
to the alternation of the story of the Joads with the story of the Dust Bowl exodus as a whole. Critics
have discussed Steinbeck's rationale for such a structure and have closely
examined devices the author uses to weld the two kinds of chapters into a unified novel. 1 In spite of long interest in the immediate dialectic of the alternating chapters, however, almost
no attention has been devoted to the still more complex dialogic structure and
levels of discourse in The Grapes
of Wrath.
In attempting to write the story of a human tragedy on a national scale, Steinbeck was faced with
a dilemma. The documentary, a form with which he was thoroughly familiar,
tended to give the big picture, tended to focus on the suffering multitudes,
with the effect of educating the viewer
or reader but at the same time distancing him from the intimate suffering and
pain of
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those caught up in the disaster. "It means very
little to know that a million Chinese are starving unless you know one Chinese
who is starving," Steinbeck wrote in 1941 in the preface to his script for
the documentary, The Forgotten Village.
In discussing the film, he added:
A great
many documentary films have use...
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sequence. First, the earth sprouts its new shoots of green grass and then the hills--a few days
later in narrative time--become green "with the beginning year." The
narrator, inevitably subject to narrative time, can only represent the pure
movement of nature and the seasons. At
the same time, however, the careful parallelism of
the clauses recalls the voice of
biblical discourse, the mythic timeless voice of
the novel. These two voices are in tension; the narrative must both move within
time and remain timeless, and there is no way to reconcile these two narrative
impulses. In effect, the narrator has moved past the time in which Rose of Sharon sits in the barn with her mysterious
smile, but Steinbeck has clearly told his reader that the new earth and the new
time will abide. Hence, the Rose of
Sharon figure that will appear in the final chapter of the novel is not a sign of
final human despair. By the same token, however, the mythic biblical voice
cannot itself be a sign of ultimate
regal authority. Thus the dialectical structure of
The Grapes
of Wrath,
with its dialogic infrastructure and style (the various dialogic voices and
syntax) effectively resists closure and requires that the reader approach the
novel with the same ability to resist ideological closure, with no ultimate
voice of authority, no transcendent
teleology, no final scapegoat.
Notes
|
See for example, Peter Lisca, The Wide World of John
Steinbeck ( New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1958)
177-77; Louis Owens, John
Steinbeck's Re-Vision of America
( Athens: University of Georgia Press,
1985) 128-40; and Louis Owens, The Grapes of
Wrath: A New Eye in the West (
Boston: Twayne, 1989). |
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John Steinbeck, The
Forgotten Village ( New York: Viking Press, 1941), unpaginated
preface. |
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In employing the notion of
"dialogic structure," we are, as our epigraph suggests, following
the systematic elaboration M. M. Bakhtin gives in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. Caryl Emerson
and Michael Holquist, ed. Michael Holquist ( Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), relying specifically
on essay four, "Discourse in the Novel." In that essay Bakhtin
discusses what he takes as the distinctive feature of the novel, arguing that: "The fundamental condition of the novel, that which makes a novel a
novel, that which is responsible for its stylistic uniqueness, is the speaking person and his discourse"
(emphasis in the text, 332). On such a constitutive and regulative principle,
the lexical and syntactic choices that go into the creation of discourse in the novel are subject to the
same ideological forces that shape everyday speech. Bakhtin goes on to argue
that, "The |
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novel, being a dialogized representation of an
ideologically freighted discourse, . . . is of all verbal genres the one
least susceptible to aestheticism as such, to a purely formalistic playing
about with words"(333). Thus, in narrative discourse, the... -136- |
ethics are nurtured by the ascension to authority of Ma Joad and her ethical vision of the family of
man.
From Studies in
American Fiction (Autumn 1989), 203-11.
Notes
|
Jackson J. Benson has examined the influence of Collins' reports upon the composition of The
Grapes of
Wrath in The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer ( New York:
Viking Press, 1984), especially pp. 338-48, 361-71. In his "Background of The Grapes
of Wrath,"
JML, 5 ( 1976), 194-216,
Benson also provides a careful study of
Steinbeck's personal relationship with Collins, including their labors
together among the migrants. Steinbeck himself acknowledged his debt to
Collins in several places, most notably in the epigraph to The Grapes
of Wrath:
"To TOM who lived it." During the writing of the novel, from June 1 to October 26, 1938, Steinbeck
continued to receive correspondence and data from Collins. For example, in
the journal he kept while writing the novel, recently published as Working Days: The Journals of "The Grapes
of Wrath,"
1938-1941, ed. Robert DeMott ( New York: Viking Press, 1989),
Steinbeck wrote: "Letter from Tom with vital information to be used
later. He is so good. I need this stuff. It is exact and just the thing that
will be used against me if I am wrong" (p. 33). Collins also visited
Steinbeck at his Los Gatos home in early September, at which time Steinbeck
was writing the Weedpatch chapters of
the novel. Apparently the visit did not go well, very likely because of Steinbeck's acute exhaustion at this late
state in the writing, and it was one of
the last times the two men saw each other. |
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The Collins reports are held in the Farm Security
Administration papers at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, and the Federal
Archives and Record Center at San Bruno, California. The sections quoted from
in this study have been made available through the courtesy of the Steinbeck Research Center, San Jose
State University. Quotations are cited by the date of the weekly reports. |
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John Steinbeck, The
Grapes of
Wrath ( New York: Viking Press,
1939), p. 230. Further quotations will be cited parenthetically. |
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The San
Francisco News reports, published from October 5-12, 1936, have
recently been republished in one volume as The Harvest Gypsies ( Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1988), p. 22.
This edition reprints the striking photographs of
Dorothea Lange that accompanied the original stories. In the articles,
Steinbeck also points out the political disenfranchisement of the men that further robbed them of their sense of
ruling authority: "They have come from the little farm districts where
democracy was not only possible but inevitable, where popular government |
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PART II
1990-1999 LOOKING FORWARD TO A NEW MILLENNIUM
Steinbeck's Debt to Dos Passos
Barry G. Maine
A literary debt is something like the national debt: no
one knows exactly how it is incurred, what it stands for, how it can be repaid,
or if it means anything at all. Such is the nature of John Steinbeck's literary debt to John Dos Passos. Like all
such debts, it is easier to describe a market influence than it is to pin down
a specific borrowing. Dos Passos was at the center of the flowering of
talent and experiment in American writing during the 1920s. His experiments
with narrative form and technique, his ear for the American idiom, his mixing of fiction and non-fiction materials, and his
wedding of private lives and public
history have had a far-reaching impact upon American writing in the twentieth
century. Jean-Paul Sartre has observed that it was Dos Passos and Hemingway who
offered an alternative to analysis as a way of
telling a story. 1 George
Steiner, writing in the late 1960s, has suggested that because of his development of montage in
narrative fiction, it is Dos Passos, not Hemingway, who "has been the
principal American literary influence of
the twentieth century." 2 Most
recently Alfred Kazin, in his American
Procession, claims that Dos Passos is a writer whom other American
writers copy without realizing it. 3
In the early 1930s Dos Passos was hailed in America and
abroad as the most promising writer of
his generation by such critics as Edmund Wilson, Malcolm Cowley, and Horace
Gregory. The political left hailed Dos Passos as the leading voice among
proletarian writers in America. In 1938, the year before the publication of Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath,
Dos Passos's
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popularity reached its zenith with the publication of his
complete U.S.A. trilogy. That
same year, writing in France, Jean-Paul Sartre declared that Dos Passos was the
greatest living writer in the western world.4
Such a pronouncement probably reveals more about the direction of Sartre's
development than the stature of Dos P...
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Notes
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Jean-Paul Sartre, "American Novelists in French
Eyes," Atlantic Monthly, 201
( August 1946), pp. 114-18. |
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George Steiner, Language
and Silence (New York: Atheneum, 1967), p. 116. |
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Alfred Kazin, An
American Procession ( New York: Knopf, 1984), p. 382. |
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Sartre, "Dos Passos and 1919," Literary and Philosophical Essays (
London: Rider, 1955), p. 96. |
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See Robert DeMott, Steinbeck's Reading: A Catalogue of
Books Owned and Borrowed ( New York: Garland, 1984), pp. 34-35; and
Jackson J. Benson, The True
Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer
( New York: Viking Press, 1984), pp. 201, 667. |
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Michael Folsom, ed., Mike Gold: A Literary Anthology ( New York: International,
1971), p. 245. |
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Malcolm Cowley, Think
Back on Us: A Contemporary Chronicle of
the 1930s ( Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967), p.
350. |
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John Steinbeck to Joseph
Henry Jackson, 1939. Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. |
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Steinbeck. The Grapes of
Wrath ( New York: Viking Press,
1939), p. 83. All further page reference are to this edition. |
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John Dos Passos, U.S.A.
( Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1938), p. v. All further page references are to
this edition. |
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Sartre, "Dos Passos and 1919," p. 90. |
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Ibid., p.
92. |
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Ibid., p. 89.
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Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art
( Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1968), passim. |
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Maria Elizabeth Kronegger, Literary Impressionism ( New Haven: College and University
Press, 1973), p. 60. |
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One might argue that the film version of The
Grapes of
Wrath has something to do with
this "presence" of
Steinbeck's characters beyond the text, but I think it is just as likely that
by restricting the reader's experience of
his characters to their speech and actions, Steinbeck invites us to assume a
life for them (of reflection, for
example) beyond what he shows. By way of
contrast, in U.S.A. the
expressionistic point of view
represents to the reader the "full consciousness" of each character (often with satiric
effect) even as it exposes the limitations and cultural origins of that consciousness; consequently, there
is no illusion created of any life
beyond the text. |
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Marcel Proust, Le
Temps retrouve ( Paris: Livre de Poche, 1954), p. 256. |
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The World of John
Steinbeck's Joads
Robert Murray Davis
A hundred years ago as I write, people waited in covered
wagons and on horses for the signal to begin the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889 and get a new start on free land.
Fifty years ago John Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath
chronicled the beginning of the Joad
family's trip west from Sallisaw, Oklahoma, out of
an exhausted land, hoping for another new start in California. These images of Oklahoma dominate the popular
imagination-and neither has much to do, geographically or historically, with
eastern Oklahoma.
Steinbeck is so closely identified with Oklahoma that for
years even scholars believed, apparently from internal evidence in the novel,
that he had come to Oklahoma to travel west with the Okies. Jackson R. Benson,
his first real biographer, actually traced his movements and discovered that he
had driven across the state on U.S. 66, well north of the Joads' route until Oklahoma City, but did no special
research. Steinbeck did travel with migrant Okies, but only in California.
Some Oklahomans were aware that Steinbeck knew absolutely
nothing about the Sallisaw area, but even they concentrated on the general
picture of the collapse of tenant and small farming and the
destruction of a whole class of people and a way of life. Those who did notice seem, from Martin Shockley's
account in "The Reception of The Grapes of
Wrath in Oklahoma," 1 to have used
his errors in description as an excuse for rejecting
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Poor Whites: Joads and Snopeses
Abby H. P. Werlock
John Steinbeck and William Faulkner first met in 1955, for
cocktails, at the Steinbeck's New York city apartment--with predictable
results. 1 Faulkner was
drunk, moody, and taciturn. To a woman guest who kept trying to elicit
responses about his fiction, Faulkner finally retorted, "Madam, I write
'em, I don't read 'em," and abruptly left the party. 2 Mrs.
Steinbeck later remarked to a friend that Faulkner was "a very strange
man" ( Blotner1523). For Steinbeck the unpleasant evening clearly
continued to rankle, for, when Faulkner later apologized for his behavior,
saying he must have been terrible, Steinbeck replied, "Yes, you were"
( Benson770).
This lack of
amicability between the two men might have been expected, considering the
disparaging and faintly hostile statements each writer had been making about
the other for a number of years. On
occasion Steinbeck had privately referred to Faulkner as part of the "neurosis belt of the South" ( Benson773). On occasion
Faulkner had privately criticized Steinbeck for his view that man and society
could improve; such an approach, said Faulkner, "softened Steinbeck's view
and made him a sentimental liberal" ( Blotner1470). Steinbeck complained
to a friend that Faulkner was "a good writer. . . turning into a god
damned phony" and that he "stole" Steinbeck's words from a
recent Saturday Review article.
3 Knowing
Faulkner's humorously infamous statement about the artist's inherent right to
steal from anyone, even his own grandmother, one might be less apt to doubt
Steinbeck's accusation. In any case, Steinbeek's bitterness focused
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Although injustice claims its victims along the way, the
fight against it continues at the ends of
both novels. The communal effort advocated in both The Grapes of Wrath
and The Mansion is mirrored in
the collaborative work of Steinbeck and
Faulkner as volunteers in President Eisenhower's People-to-People Program in
the 1950s ( Benson709-801). Therein, old hostilities dismissed or ignored, the
two writers discovered common ground in their mutual distaste for literary talk
and in their disdain for oppression in any form. Steinbeck and Faulkner signed
their names to a proposal to aid the Hungarian refugees, to disseminate
American books in Eastern Europe, and to free America's "greatest
poet," Ezra Pound ( Benson800-801). Although Steinbeck's Joads and
Faulkner's Snopeses have come to signify different literary archetypes and
divergent views of humanity, both
authors successfully employ their chosen "families" to make a similar
point: Steinbeck and Faulkner articulate a resounding "No" to
exploitation and totalitarianism and an emphatic "Yea" to the rights
and dignity of the ordinary individual.
From San Jose
Studies 18:1 (Winter 1992), 61-71.
Notes
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Jackson Benson, The
True Adventures of John Steinbeck
Writer ( New York: Viking Press, 1984), p. 770. Further references
will be given parenthetically in the text. |
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Quoted by Joseph Blotner, Faulkner: A Biography, Vols. I and II ( New York: Random
House, 1974), p. 524. Further references will be given parenthetically in the
text. |
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Elaine A. Steinbeck and Robert Wallsten, eds. Steinbeck: A Life in Letters ( New
York: Viking Press, 1975), p. 529. Further references will be given
parenthetically in the text. |
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Mimi Gladstein, "Ma Joad and Pilar: Significantly
Similar," Steinbeck Quarterly,
14, 1981, p. 93. Further references will be given parenthetically in
the text. |
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Andrea Dimino, "Why Did the Snopeses Name Their Son
'Wallstreet Panic'? Depression Humor in Faulkner's The Hamlet," Studies in American Humor 3,
Summer-Fall, 1984, p. 156. Further references will be given parenthetically
in the text. |
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Paul Eugene McCarthy, "The Joads and Other Rural
Families in Depression Fiction," South
Dakota Review 19:3, 1981, p. 64. |
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California
Answers The Grapes of Wrath
Susan Shillinglaw
Four months after publication of The Grapes of
Wrath, John Steinbeck responded
sharply to mounting criticism of his
book: "I know what I was talking about," he told a Los Angeles Times reporter. "I
lived, off and on, with those Okies for the last three years. Anyone who tries
to refute me will just become ridiculous." 1 His angry
retort is largely on target--but the opposition was in earnest and had been
even before his novel was published.
In 1938 corporate farmers in California responded
forcefully to the consequences of
continued migration: the twin threats of
unions and a liberal migrant vote. 2 Beginning
early that year a statewide publicity campaign to discredit the "migrant
menace" had been mounted by the Associated Farmers and the newly formed
CCA, or California Citizens Association, a group with the broad support of banks, oil companies, agricultural land
companies, businesses, and public utilities. 3 Well-funded
and well-placed, the CCA and the Associated Farmers produced scores of articles meant to discourage further
migration, to encourage Dust Bowlers already in California to return to their
home states, and to convince the federal government that California's migrant
problem was a federal, not a state, responsibility. These articles vigorously
defended farmers' wage scales and housing standards. They complained about the
state's generous relief, which, at almost twice that of Oklahoma and Arkansas, had "encouraged" migration.
And they often maligned the state's newest residents. "The whole design of modern life," noted an article in the SanFrancisco Examiner
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Francisco Examiner entitled "The Truth About
California," "has stimulated their hunger for change and adventure,
fun and frippery. Give them a relief check and they'll head straight for a
beauty shop and a movie."4
The publication of Steinbeck's Notes
|
Tom Cameron, "The Grapes
of Wrath
Author Guards Self from Threats at Moody Gulch," Los Angeles Times, July 9, 1939, pp. 1-2. |
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James N. Gregory, American
Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California ( New
York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 88. |
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Walter J. Stein, California
and the Dust Bowl Migration ( Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973),
p. 97. Gregory calls this stage of
reaction "the second anti-migrant campaign" ( American Exodus, p. 88). Since the
mid1930s, valley residents had viewed the Southwestern migrants with
increasing disdain, complaining of
their poverty and strange ways and, more pointedly, of their need for schooling and health care, which had sent
taxes soaring. The crisis in the migrant problem came in 1938, when the
second Agricultural Adjustment Act
set new controls for California cotton, resulting in fewer acres planted and
fewer jobs for migrants. |
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Elsie Robinson, "The Truth About California: Red
Ousters urged as State's Only Solution to End Migrant Evil," San Francisco Examiner ["March
of Events" section], January 14,
1940, p. 1. |
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See George
Thomas Miron, "The Truth
About John Steinbeck and the Migrants" ( Los Angeles, 1939), p.
4, Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley; and John E. Pickett, "Termites Steinbeck and
McWilliams," Pacific Rural
Press, July 29, 1939. Interview with Richard Criley, June 21, 1990. |
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Similarities between the two are intriguing. Like
Steinbeck, Ruth Comfort Mitchell loved dogs, the outdoors, and music,
believing that of all the arts,
"music is the only art that restores us to ourselves." While still
a teenager, she, too, devoted her time to writing; her first poem, "To Los Gatos," was
published in the local paper when she was thirteen, and at nineteen she had
launched a successful career as a writer for vaudeville. Also like Steinbeck,
she refused to see her most popular productions during their New York runs.
When Mitchell and her husband built a house in Los Gatos in 1916, she, like
Steinbeck, built a study "with the floor space of a postcard" where she wrote for four to twelve hours
daily. See Stella Haverland, "Ruth
Comfort Mitchell," pp. 122-26, Ruth Comfort Mitchell Papers, San
Jose Public Library. |
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Pittsburgh Dispatch,
August 29, 1909. |
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Los Angeles Times Sun, Ruth
Comfort Mitchell Papers, San Jose Public Library. |
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Sanborn Young owned the two thousand-acre Riverdale
Ranch, a dairy ranch near Fresno in the San Joaquin Valley; he was also part
owner of the New Idria quicksilver
mine in San Benito County. He took his new wife to his dairy farm after their
marriage in 1914; it was during her few years on that farm and in subsequent
visits that she gained her perspective on California's labor problems. A senator from 1924 to 1928 and 1930 to 1932, Young
became a prominent voice in state politics, largely through his support of narcotics control. In 1931 he and
Mitchell attended an international conference on narcotics in Geneva |
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-196-
Audience and Closure in The Grapes
of Wrath
Nicholas Visser
Although The Grapes of
Wrath continues to be regarded as
Steinbeck's major achievement, changing critical fashions have ensured that the
novel's status remains uncertain. The novel's standing came under pressure as
early as the decades immediately following its publication, as literary studies
with the onset of the Cold War
intensified a long-standing tendency in modern poetics to strip literary texts of social and political implications. It was
not difficult to decontextualize most of
the literature of earlier times, but
because the thirties were part of living
memory, and because so much of the
decade's literature was politically left-wing, the need to depoliticize it was
particularly urgent. Where critics could not manage that task, if only because
social content was too firmly in the foreground to be obscured, they simply
declared such literary works unworthy of
serious attention. So strong were these pressures that one of the first critics to write a full-length
study of Steinbeck, Harry T. Moore,
later wrote an epilogue to the second edition of
his book recanting his earlier approval. 1 Why he would
have bothered to publish a second edition is unclear.
Recent criticism has done little to reverse the situation.
Poststructuralist critics generally ignore, when they do not derogate, writers
who presume to represent actual material conditions and social processes;
accordingly a writer like Steinbeck, particularly the Steinbeck of In
Dubious Battle or The Grapes of
Wrath, has little to offer them.
Even recent Marxist criticism has
-201-
"bourgeois circles" who are the only available
audience may understate the consequences of
the techniques novelists may have to use to accomplish that task. Reaching that
audience might entail the simultaneous (and intimately related) dilution of the novel's politics and distortion of its form.
From Studies in
American Fiction (Spring 1994), 22:1, pp. 19-36.
Notes
|
Harry Thornton Moore, The Novels of John Steinbeck:
A First Critical Study ( 1939; 2nd ed. New York: Kennikat, 1968). |
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David Craig and Michael Egan, Extreme Situations: Literature and Crisis from the Great Way to the
Atom Bomb ( London: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 162-63. |
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|
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Frederick Engels, "Letter to Minna Kautsky,
November 16, 1885," in Marx and
Engels on Literature and Art, ed. Lee Baxandall and Stephan Morawski (
St. Louis: Telos, 1973), p. 113. |
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Quoted by Peter Lisca, The Wide World of John
Steinbeck ( New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1958), p. 148. |
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Warren French, The
Social Novel at the End of an Era
( Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1966), p. 47. |
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Craig and Egan, p. 162. |
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Jean-Paul Sartre, What
is Literature, trans. Bernard Frechtman ( London: Methuen, 1955),
especially the chapter entitled "For Whom Does One Write," pp.
49-122. The notion of a virtual public
raises a contentious issue, since theorists have recently been calling into question
the practice of speaking "on
behalf of" others, asserting that
to do so is presumptuous and patronizing. While such reservations usefully
lay bare what are often unfounded claims to be able to "represent"
the oppressed in both the artistic and political senses of the word-something too readily assumed in
much would-be radical literature--at the same time the position itself too
easily absolves writers of any broader
social role whatever and licenses them to confine their efforts to
untrammeled textuality. For a succinct statement of the complex meanings of
"represent," see W. J. T. Mitchell, "Representation," in Critical Terms for Literary Study, ed. Frank Lentricchia and
Thomas McLaughlin ( Chicago: Univ. of
Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 11-22. |
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Quoted by Lisca, p. 146. |
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Sartre, p. 72. |
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J ohn Steinbeck, The
Grapes of
Wrath ( London: Pan, 1975), p.
218. Further references will be given parenthetically in the text. |
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See Benson, pp. 420-23 and Lisca, pp. 144-50. |
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Quoted by Benson, p. 375. |
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It is not usually noted that the awkwardness of the scene stems in part from the fact
that while Ma shoos the family from the barn, learning Rose of Sharon |
The
Darwinian Grapes of Wrath
Brian E. Railsback
"I often bless all novelists."
-- Charles Darwin, The
Autobiography of Charles Darwin,
1892
A study of Charles
Darwin and the art of John Steinbeck
must, like any expedition through the novelist's life work, finally arrive at
his masterpiece, The Grapes of
Wrath. In no other book is
Steinbeck's dramatization of Darwin's
theory more clear; the novel resonates with the naturalist's ideas. Through
Steinbeck's narrative technique, from the parts (i.e., the characters in the
Joad chapters) to the whole (the intercalary chapters), we are presented with a
holistic view of the migrant worker
developed through Steinbeck's own inductive method. This epic novel
demonstrates the range of Darwin's
theory, including the essential aspects of
evolution: the struggle for existence and the process of natural selection. The migrant workers move across the land
as a species, uprooted from one niche and forced to gain a foothold in another.
Their struggle is intensified by capitalism's perversion of natural competition, but this only makes
the survivors that much tougher. Because of
their inability to see the whole picture, the bankers and members of the Farmers Association diminish themselves
by their oppressive tactics while the surviving migrant workers become
increasingly tougher, more resourceful, and more sympathetic. Ultimately,
seeing Darwin ideas in The Grapes of
Wrath enables us to perceive some
hope for the Joads and others like them--here is Steinbeck's manifesto of progress, based on biological
-221-
Judge, Observer, Prophet:
The American Cain and
Steinbeck's Shifting Perspective
Barbara A. Heavilin
Concerned with how he writes as well as with what he
writes, John Steinbeck often recorded his methods of
obtaining materials for his books and his process in writing them. His
observations reveal not only methods of
invention but also an authorial point of
view that modifies and shifts over time. For example, in gathering materials to
write Travels with Charley in Search of America, he uses an inductive method
to obtain feelings, facts, and exper-iences in order to have "the means to
think." Traveling across America in his truck, Rocinante, he seeks first
to discover "the small diagnostic truths which are the foundations of the larger truth," then to answer the
question "What are Americans like today?" and finally to describe the
"American image." 1 These
"small diagnostic truths" of
necessity provide a subjective, myopic view, an accumulation gathered bit by
bit of the individual facets which make
up his picture of "Americans."
Later, from a distance, from a more contemplative and objective perspective, he
draws a more composite picture in America
and Americans, providing the reader with a sense of wholeness, of unity in
diversity.
-233-
A Postmodern Steinbeck, or Rose of Sharon Meets Oedipa Maas
Chris Kocela
John Steinbeck has made his feelings clear with regard to
the critical classification of his work.
In his response to two mid-fifties articles on The Grapes of Wrath,
he writes: "I don't think the Grapes of Wrath
is obscure in what it tries to say. As to its classification and pickling, I
have neither opinion nor interest. . . . Just read it, don't count it!" (
1955, 53). If this injunction did little to slow the work of critics forty years ago, however, it will
be heeded even less by those of us who
have grown up alongside the nebulous cultural/theoretical phenomenon called
"postmodernism." Postmodernist fiction has been defined in part by
its fostering of reading strategies
which deliberately subvert those institutionalized by modernist literature. 1 Even if one
were now inclined to follow Steinbeck's advice, it is almost impossible to
separate "reading" from "counting" in an age which must
have the work of Steinbeck's generation
bottled and labelled before it can "read" its own. From this
postmodern vantage any reassessment of The Grapes
of Wrath
is doubly "pickled." Yet as I hope to demonstrate, a return to
Steinbeck's best-known novel from the perspective of
contemporary fiction theory vindicates aspects of
its structure and characterization often criticized in the context of a strictly modernist canon.
-247-
reading gets the equivalent of
a wink from Rose of Sharon, it becomes
both means and end in The Crying of Lot 49. Ultimately, in Pynchon's
novel, it reveals only more text, more reading, and a return to its own
beginning.
This essay is an original contribution to this text.
Notes
|
Charles Newman argues that the "postmodern
mentality" is a reaction against not only the "First
Revolution" of modernist art, but
also--and more importantly--against the "Second Revolution" of its critical transmission (27-35). To the
extent that these Revolutions have become indistinguishable, "[t]he very
act of fiction now implies an act of criticism, insofar as fiction is seen as
a series of transformations in modes of thinking" (116). Brian McHale echoes
this notion in his discussion of
Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow,
which "holds the mirror up not so much to Nature as to Reading" (
1992, 87). |
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The second of
these, "John Steinbeck and Modernism," has been reprinted in
Ditsky, Critical Essays, and
I refer to that version, unable to obtain the original. This essay has also
been revised in French's more recent book ( 1994). Notably absent in the
latest revision are a number of
speculations about the "postmodern sensibility" which was not, in
1976, buttressed by any group of
representative works ( 1989, 161). |
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For French, it marks Steinbeck's attempt to go beyond
modernism, which his later work shies away from in returning to a less
successful premodernist mode ( 1989, 162). For DeMott, the novel effects
Steinbeck's shift from social realism to metafiction through its
"repugnant posterity," provoking in him an artistic
"backlash" against its popular success (xliii). |
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For speculation about the politically subversive
potential of best-selling postmodern
novels, see Hutcheon 1988, 202-03. |
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One of the more
blatant examples of this is Harold
Bloom's assertion that "Steinbeck suffers from too close a comparison
with Hemingway" (1). For a detailed refutation of this criticism, see Heavilin 1990. |
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|
This quote is presented in a summary of an undated letter from Steinbeck to Elizabeth Otis, in
Steinbeck and Wallsten 162. DeMott places the date of the letter at March 23, 1938 (xxvii). |
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|
These lines are taken from a letter written by Steinbeck to Columbia undergraduate
Herbert Sturz in February, 1953. The entire text of the letter can be found in Dircks91-92.
As she notes, it is Steinbeck's only explicit statement on the purpose of the interchapters (86). |
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All page references to Steinbeck's novel are to the 1992
Penguin edition, and will be prefaced GW
where necessary. |
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-263
The sight of sawdust, even pencil shavings, made him
[Mucho] wince, his own kind being known to use it for hushing sick
transmissions, and though he dieted he could still not as Oedipa did use honey
to sweeten his coffee for like all things viscous it ...
-265-
Steinbeck and the Critics: A Study "in
Artistic Self-Concept
Michael Meyer
John Steinbeck and Stephen King do not seem to have a lot
in common. The first is known for classic fiction, novels, and short stories that
are required reading in America's middle and secondary schools and as the
winner of the Nobel Prize in 1962. The
second is a cult hero, a prolific composer of
mystery and horror stories, and an icon of
contemporary pop culture. His newest works are seemingly guaranteed to be
instant best sellers, but they are seldom assigned as classroom reading or
material for serious study. Yet these authors share one specific character
trait: an unstable artistic self image, causing them to take negative critical reception
of their respective works as personal
attacks. For example, both authors aspired to greatness, yet both made it clear
that in their opinion it was their writing that mattered, not the fame or
fortune that accompanied it. At one time, both were criticized as mere hacks,
authors who churned out inferior prose for inferior minds; in addition, both
were writers with a following who, after attaining initial recognition by a
reading public, were able to produce best sellers time and time again, regardless
of the topic. In fact, their books
seemed to sell on the basis of
reputation rather than on any intrinsic excellence of their own.
Finally, it was said of
both that success corrupted them and that the quality of their writing deteriorated as they began to work for cash
rewards rather than out of artistic
desire for excellence. Of course, both
denied such motives. In Nightmares and
Dreamscapes, King stated: "But it isn't about
-267-
The Grapes of Wrath
and the Literary Canon of American
Universities in the Nineties
Mary M. Brown
In the spring of
1996 when I was preparing to write this chapter on the status of The
Grapes of
Wrath in the American literature
canon of the 1990's, rock star Bruce
Springsteen was touring America with his "Tom Joad" tour. Many were
speculating that the success of the tour
and of the album The Ghost of Tom Joad
would help sell some copies of The Grapes
of Wrath,
the implication being that Springsteen's use of
Steinbeck's character would engender interest in a book largely foreign to end-of-the-century teens and twenty-somethings.
Even Steinbeck's family seemed grateful for the potential boost from
Springsteen. An Entertainment News Service release reported that Steinbeck's
son "thanked Springsteen [personally] for reviving the Joad
character"; Steinbeck's widow was "honored" by the attention to The Grapes
of Wrath
from the rock star and by the parallels that Springsteen found between the plight
of the book's Joads and that of more contemporary American immigrants. The
title song of the album is a kind of lament by a first person narrator down on
his luck--homeless, jobless, a part of a
Southwest community made up largely of
others in similar situations:
-285-
The Enduring Values of
John Steinbeck's Fiction: The University Student and The Grapes of
Wrath
Kenneth Swan
The world has changed dramatically since Steinbeck wrote The Grapes
of Wrath
in the thirties. Our age is an age of affluence
contrasted to a time in the novel of
poverty and hostile environment. Ours is an age of
internationalization contrasted to the local, the regional, and the provincial.
Ours is an urban age contrasted to the rural and the agrarian; an age of education contrasted to the age of the unlearned and the uneducated; an age of technology and the computer contrasted to
the backwoods and the unsophisticated, an age of
science fiction contrasted to the realism of
the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. So why do the students of the nineties still read the fiction of John Steinbeck? Certainly, there is always
the intriguing appeal of the long ago
and far away, but The Grapes of
Wrath does not fit well in the
genre of the literature of nostalgia. Its realism is too brutal for
that, and its naturalistic detail too discomforting in its vivid portrayal of the dehumanization of character and the destruction of
the Joad family despite their heroism. So why are university students still
intrigued with John Steinbeck? I asked that question of several of my
students, and I discovered that there was a consensus in their responses and
that they find enduring values that have broad appeal to today's university
students.
Accustomed to an organizational structure involving plot
development or character delineation, students are initially troubled with the
organization
-299-
Honoring
an American Classic: Viking's 1989 Edition of
John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
(Review)
Linda C. Pelzer
Fifty years after its first publication on 14 April 1939, The Grapes
of Wrath
still gives voice to America's dispossessed. They may no longer be Okies set
adrift by dust and Depression, but whether Hispanic migrants working the
California fields or Midwestern farmers battling bankruptcy, their plight is no
different from the Joads', and no less poignant. This is the point of Studs Terkel's moving and perceptive
introduction to the fiftieth anniversary edition of
John Steinbeck's masterpiece. This is the quality that accounts, perhaps, for
the novel's continued ability to touch its readers' hearts and minds. When Tom
Joad vows to "be there," "wherever they's a fight so hungry
people can eat," "wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy," his
words resonate to the deep heart's core of
our common humanity, moving us not only to feel the numbing poverty, the
torturous suffering, the callous anonymity that constitute life for a vast
American underclass but to recognize as well the quiet dignity with which they
endure such indignities. Fifty, indeed sixty, years after its first
publication, The Grapes of
Wrath remains a powerful
testament to human resilience and solidarity.
Steinbeck's epic tale of
struggle and survival focuses on the Joads, a family of Oklahoma tenant farmers forced by natural disaster and
economic exigency to make their way to California's migrant labor camps. Their
-309-
The 1993 Everyman's Library Edition of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of
Wrath (Review)
Barbara A. Heavilin
In the 1993 Everyman's Library edition of The
Grapes of
Wrath, 1 Brad
Leithauser's Introduction begins with an inauspicious thesis: "In its
tone, its methods, and the solutions it tenders for the social problems it
documents-indeed, in its very willingness to tender solutions for colossal
social problems--the book seems miles distant from most contemporary
fiction" ( v ). Such a thesis
promises little that is applicable to this novel because Steinbeck, like
postmodern writers such as Toni Morrison, offers no solution for the problems of the Joads. Although the novel's final scene
celebrates a triumph of the spirit, it
leaves their problems squarely in the hands of
the reader. As Morrison concluded Jazz,
so Steinbeck might have concluded, "Say make me, remake me. You are free
to do it and I am free to let you because look, look. Look where your hands are.
Now" 2 ( 229 ).
Not surprisingly, in this comparison/contrast between The Grapes
of Wrath
and his vaguely conceptualized reference to "most contemporary
fiction," Leithauser finds that this novel's "piece-by-piece
construction" and "incremental pacing" bear the "smack of yesteryear" ( v ). Further, like Harold
Bloom and Leslie Fiedler, he labels Steinbeck and his work as
"middlebrow," interestingly choosing their terminology as he takes on
their points of contention. Like them,
too, he ridicules Steinbeck's handling of
character, diction, dialogue, structure, and symbolism.
-313-
inconsistencies serve to make the ending, playing on the
Everyman's Library motif, seem facile and insincere even though the qualifier,
"occasionally," shows that what at first seems to be a compliment is
given grudgingly, withholding as much praise as it gives:
The book
occasionally offers one of the rarest
and most gratifying pleasures that literature opens up to us. We behold in it
that little miracle of transformation by
which, with just a bit of fleshing out,
a stick figure becomes an Everyman. (xvi)
This review is an original contribution to this text.
Notes
|
( New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993). Hereafter references
to this work appear parenthetically in the text. |
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( New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 229. |
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"A New Consideration of
the Intercalary Chapters in The Grapes
of Wrath,"
Markham Review, May 1973. |
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San Jose Studies ( San
Jose State University), 1 ( November 1975). |
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South Dakota Review, 34. 2
(Summer 1996), 192-205. |
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He also bemoans the opposite: "Most books by
Steinbeck leave one unable to shake a regretful sense--in view of his many strengths--of how much better a writer he might have
been" (xv). |
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-315-
The 1996 Library of
America Edition of John Steinbeck's
"The Grapes of Wrath" and Other
Writings 1936-1941 (Review)
Barbara A. Heavilin
In one volume, together with The Long Valley, The
Log from the Sea of Cortez, and The Harvest Gypsies, in 1996 the
Library of America published the first
unexpurgated edition of John Steinbeck The Grapes
of Wrath,
described as follows:
The text of The Grapes
of Wrath
has been newly edited based on Steinbeck's manuscript, typescript, and proofs. Many
errors have been corrected and words omitted or misconstrued by his typist have
been restored. (Front Flap)
Steinbeck scholar Robert DeMott, with Elaine Steinbeck as
special consultant, provides "a newly researched chronology, notes, and an
essay on textual selection." In addition, The Harvest Gypsies, "Steinbeck's 1936 investigative report
on migrant workers which laid the groundwork for the novel, is included as an
appendix." This volume provides both an indispensable beginning point for
those interested in Steinbeck and an invaluable critical addition to the
scholar's library. DeMott writes with the expertise and warmth of one whose scholarship has informed his
thinking-from an intimacy that only comes with long and close acquaintance.
-317
Viking's
1997 Edition of John Steinbeck's
"The Grapes of Wrath": Text and
Criticism (Review)
Beverly K. Simpson
In the preface to Viking's second critical edition of John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath,
Peter Lisca states that
what
distinguishes this one novel is not only its greater authenticity of detail but also the genius of its author, who, avoiding mere propaganda,
was able to raise those details and themes to the level of lasting art while muting none of
the passionate human cry against injustice. 1
Lisca maintains that "this second Viking Critical
Library edition of the novel together
with historical and critical materials enriches our appreciation of its greatness" ( xi ). The text in this
revised edition "follows the Library of
America edition of The Grapes
of Wrath,
. . . corrected with reference to the original manuscript, typescript, and
galleys" (xvix). The book begins with an introductory summary about
Steinbeck's life and works and contains a four page chronology of Steinbeck's works and life. "A Note on
the Text" records "by page and line number . . . transcription errors
that have been corrected," "places where censored passages have been
restored," and "typographical errors made in the first edition that
have been corrected" ( xix ). Of particular interest is a map, "The
Itinerary of the Joads," which
details their journey from Oklahoma to California and includes page references
to the text.
-321
Happy[?]-Wife-And-Motherdom": The Portrayal of Ma Joad in John Steinbeck's The Grapes
of Wrath,"
Nellie Y. McKay reiterates "the centrality of
women to the action" of the novel
(664) while pointing out that Ma Joad "never achieves an identity of her own or recognizes the political reality
of women's roles within a male-dominated
system," that "she is never an individual in her own right"
(665-666).
In "The Grapes of
Wrath: Steinbeck And the Eternal
Immigrant," ( 1993) Mimi Reisel Gladstein relates that
"perhaps the theme of the eternal
immigrant is another reason . . . the story of
the Joads speaks to such varying audiences" (684). She points out that
"Chapter 19 is one of the most
clearly articulated instances in which Steinbeck's narrative demonstrates that
he understood that the Oklahomans were more immigrant than migrant in the minds
of his fellow Californians" (685).
Gladstein explores the theme of
"ethnophaulism" ("finding a derogatory term with which to label
the new arrival") such as Okies (687). Because Steinbeck"shows that
he understands the effects of this kind of name-calling," Gladstein states, this
novel "speaks of me, an immigrant,
who with my family experienced the pains and promise of immigration, an experience Steinbeck wrote of so tellingly in his story of the Joads" (688; 691).
The book closes with seven pages of "Topics for Discussion and Papers" and a selected
bibliography. Such a comprehensive text with the three additional chapters
provides the reader with a welcome overview of
author, text, reactions, and criticism. The editors' chronicle the move from
emotional reactions to The Grapes of
Wrath to critical analysis. The
varied, yet comprehensive, analysis of
the critical response to The Grapes of
Wrath encourages new Steinbeck
readers/scholars to participate in this dialogue and submit their own
contribution.
Note
|
John Steinbeck, The
Grapes of
Wrath: Text and Criticism, 2nd
ed. Edited by Peter Lisca with Kevin Hearle. ( New York: Viking, 1997), xi.
All page references hereafter will be cited parenthetically in the text. |
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____________________
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This review is an original contribution to this text. |
-325-
Fermenting The Grapes
of Wrath:
From Violent Anger Distilling Sweet Concord
Michael Meyer
John Steinbeck's interest in Eastern thought, including
the philosophy of Lao Tze and the
precepts of Buddha, is now generally recognized
by critics. Perhaps it also accounts for his wide popularity in such Asian
nations as Korea, Thailand and Japan. Unfortunately, in the years that have
passed since 1978 when Peter Lisca traced this Eastern influence on Cannery Row and John Ditsky similarly
discussed East of Eden and the East, little has been done to connect
Oriental tenets of belief with other
texts in the Steinbeck canon.
Yet a consideration of
the impact that Taoist philosophy may have had on Steinbeck's writing indicates
that books other than Cannery Row
and East of
Eden have been informed by Eastern principles. In fact, Robert DeMott
has determined in Steinbeck's Reading
that a copy of the Tao Teh Ching was available to
Steinbeck in the lab of his close
friend, Ed Ricketts. Finally, Steinbeck's tendency to rewrite or reinterpret
classics such as Everyman (The Wayward
Bus), King Arthur ( Tortilla
Flat), Shakespeare ( The Winter
of Our Discontent), and the Bible
( East of
Eden, The Grapes of Wrath) makes it
intriguingly possible that he may also have embedded Eastern precepts in his
texts--especially the thought
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Master and to taste some of
the sweetness of the wine of truth to be found in the tenets of a great Chinese philosopher.
This essay is an original contribution to this text.
References
Steinbeck John. "The
Grapes of
Wrath": Text and Criticism.
Ed. Peter Lisca, updated with Kevin Hearle ( New York: Penguin Books, 1997).
Tzu Lao. Tao Te
Ching: The Classic Book of Integrity and
the Way. Trans. Victor H. Mair. ( New York: Bantam Books, 1990).
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Selected Bibliography
Beyond
the sometimes resplendent--and perhaps almost erotic-property of books and allure of manuscripts, there is the sad knowledge that print-based
lists, bibliographies, and catalogs, by their very nature are outdated-and
therefore forever incomplete-as soon as they are published. With that awareness
the Sisyphean absurdity surrounding the compiler's task begins to emerge.
-- Robert DeMott in Steinbeck's
Typewriter
Cup of Gold. New York: Robert McBride, 1929.
The Pastures of Heaven. New York: Brewer, Warren &
Putnam, 1932.
To a God Unknown. New
York: Robert O. Ballou, 1933.
Tortilla Flat. New
York: Covici-Friede, 1935.
In Dubious Battle. New
York: Covici-Friede, 1936.
Of Mice and Men. New York: Covici-Friede, 1937.
The Long Valley. New
York: Viking Press, 1938.
The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Viking Press, 1939.
The Moon Is Down. New
York: Viking Press, 1942.
The Red Pony.
Illustrations by Wesley Dennis. New York: Viking Press, 1945.
Cannery Row. New
York: Viking Press, 1945.
The Wayward Bus. New
York: Viking Press, 1947.
The Pearl.
Drawings by Jose Clemente Orozco. New York: Viking Press, 1947.
Burning Bright: A Play in Story
Form. New York: Viking Press, 1950.
East of Eden. New York: Viking Press, 1952.
Sweet Thursday. New
York: Viking Press, 1954.
The Short Reign of Pippin IV. A Fabrication. New
York: Viking Press, 1957.
The Winter of Our Discontent. New
York: Viking Press, 1961.
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About
the Editor
BARBARA A. HEAVILIN is Associate Professor of English at Taylor University.
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