1954 Short Story by John Steinbeck Written in Paris Published by The Strand

John Steinbeck © 1954 Yousuf Karsh

The current issue of The Strand Magazine features a fun find—the English version of a whimsically satirical short story John Steinbeck wrote for the Paris paper Le Figaro, where it appeared on July 31, 1954 as Les Puces sympathiques. An expression of the Gallic wit exemplified by Steinbeck’s 1936 short story Saint Katy the Virgin and his 1957 novel The Short Reign of Pippin IV, “The Amiable Fleas” recounts a tragic-comic contretemps involving Monsieur Amité, a nervous French chef, and Apollo, his temperamental cat. The tongue-in-cheek item about the publication of the short story in today’s Guardian newspaper—“Crêpes of wrath: unknown John Steinbeck tale of a chef discovered”—quotes this understatement by the magazine’s enterprising editor, Andrew Gulli: “Don’t expect to read something dramatic in the vein of Grapes of Wrath.” According to The Guardian, Gulli found the manuscript among the Steinbeck holdings at the University of Texas, where he also came across the typescript of the Steinbeck sketch titled “With Your Wings”—written for radio broadcast in 1943-44 and published by The Strand in 2014. The Yousuf Karsh photograph above was taken at the Steinbecks’ residence in Paris about the time Steinbeck was writing “The Amiable Fleas” for Le Figaro, where he was a regular contributor, frequent interviewee, and favorite American.