Mad at the World, the new life of John Steinbeck by biographer William Souder, continues to attract pre-publication praise, most recently in an October 1 Washington Post review by Alexander J. Kafka, senior editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Describing Souder’s work as “painstakingly researched, psychologically nuanced, unshowy, lucid,” and perfectly fitted in style to its psychologically challenged subject, Kafka speculates that, while “Ernest Hemingway loomed large as a figure of comparison” with John Steinbeck when both writers were alive, “Steinbeck might be considered a more American-centered version of Hemingway” today, almost six decades later. Noting that Steinbeck’s “charming and bogus” 1962 travel book Travels with Charley “masqueraded as reporting but was mostly another reach of [Steinbeck’s] imagination,” the Washington Post review concludes that “Souder, in his own humble style, has brought a deeply human Steinbeck forth in all his flawed, melancholy, brilliant complication.”
Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck will be released by W.W. Norton and Company on October 13. Steinbeck Review subscribers are invited to register for an October 19 reading and conversation with William Souder led by Nicholas Taylor (left), professor of creative writing and director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University.
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Hi, Wil, Congratulations on your continuing work for the Steinbeck legacy! The new book by William Souder is reviving interest in Steinbeck, his “lover’s quarrel with the world,” as Robert Frost put his own reasons for writing. I can’t help wondering how Steinbeck would lampoon the current occupant of the White House, or White house, for all his sins against the poor of the nation and the world. (Personal, to you: I looked for the NYT Preview of Mad at the World, but somehow couldn’t locate it with the link provided.)