Published 82 years ago today, the classic 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath may have been birthed by John Steinbeck over nine months of intense daily labor in the mountain home he shared with his first spouse, near Los Gatos, California. But the book’s true midwife was Carol Henning Steinbeck, the partner, amanuensis, and editor who helped guard her husband’s privacy, gave the book its title, and typed fair copy, translating Steinbeck’s micrographic scribble into readable pages mailed by the batch to his nervous publisher in New York. The expert on this pregnant subject is Susan Shillinglaw, Pacific Grove resident and author of the 2013 biography Carol and John Steinbeck: Portrait of a Marriage, and the person local reporter Lisa Crawford Watson turned to for yesterday’s Monterey County Herald piece marking the anniversary of The Grapes of Wrath‘s publication—and the partnership without which it would have had neither the title, nor the readability, that insured its survival. There were no children and “Carol did creative things,” says Shillinglaw, “but her voice was muted,” and the marriage—unlike the masterpiece she helped birth—didn’t last. Fortunately for her memory attention is finally being paid, as amply demonstrated in Watson’s thoughtful article.
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