The Grapes of Wrath, the book John Steinbeck finished writing in time to vote for Culbert Olson as Governor of California in 1938, is still running strong with readers, despite naysayers like the Los Gatos Republican who wrote a counter-novel, now forgotten, in 1940. This year The Grapes of Wrath has competition in the race for Great American Read—a project of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with support from the Anne Ray Foundation, to encourage reading by allowing anyone over 12 to vote early and vote often for his or her favorite from a list of 100 novels, all in English, that polled well with viewers. The contest would probably appall Steinbeck, a one-man, one-vote Democrat who thought popularity pageants were stupid, especially where writers were concerned. Among the books we know he read was Two Years Before the Mast, a seagoing Grapes of Wrath written in 1840 by Richard Henry Dana, the Massachusetts lawyer and reformer who coined the phrase “vote early and vote often” in a letter about election rigging in his day. Great American Read rules permit repeat voting by the same person and reward social networking to spread the word about books, 21st-century style. So get with the program. Vote early and vote often for The Grapes of Wrath.
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