Bill Clinton spoke, Stevie Wonder sang, and there was dancing in the aisles at Greater Grace Temple for Aretha Franklin’s funeral in Detroit on Friday. That was hardly the style of the service for John McCain held at Washington’s National Cathedral today, however. Barack Obama and George Bush eulogized their former rival with discretion. “Danny Boy” was delivered, with care, by a former opera star. The camera caught dignitaries in the audience—among them a current cabinet member and a former secretary of state—nodding off in their seats. But no one danced at John Steinbeck’s funeral 50 years ago either. Like McCain, Steinbeck ordered a by-the-book Episcopal service for himself before he died. Both of his sons served in Vietnam, like McCain, and he declined to criticize a war he doubted could be won out of the same sense of duty. Yet he was vocal about civil rights, and his death in 1968 followed that of Martin Luther King, Jr., the motivating inspiration for everyone in attendance at Aretha Franklin’s event, and for the most memorable speaker at John McCain’s. He liked opera and jazz equally, and he missed hearing music at the funeral of his friend Adlai Stevenson in 1965. The services for John McCain and Aretha Franklin this week had different beats for sure. But they marched in the same direction—toward hope for justice. They were singing Steinbeck’s song.
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I liked your article. As you said, “…they marched in the same direction—toward hope for justice. They were singing Steinbeck’s song.”
Steinbeck was a complicated man, theologically: He, at the end of the day, didn’t “believe” in it: like Ed Ricketts; he followed a “non-teleological” path. But he didn’t “believe” in that, either. As you say, he ordered a “by-the-book Episcopal service for himself before he died.” He did not believe in life after death based, on one biography, on “simple tissue feeling.” Yet he was aware, at his sister’s funeral, of a “presence” (for lack of a better term)” of a spirit hanging over her coffin.
Steinbeck was a true agnostic, in all the best sense of that term. Yet, he was honest enough to allow for the benefit of the doubt; as all agnostics should. Like Steinbeck wrote in “Cannery Row:” “…most people in Cannery Row do not believe in such things and then live by them.”