John Steinbeck and John Kennedy: Heroes of Hope Joined at the Funny Bone

November 21, 2013 by 6 Comments

Composite image of John Steinbeck and John KennedyAnyone alive at the time always remembered the day John Kennedy died. John Steinbeck and his wife Elaine were in Warsaw on a U.S. cultural mission and helped embassy personnel deal with a flood of well-wishers while grieving quietly, inwardly, through the long November night. Though the John Kennedy-John Steinbeck bond was never as close as Steinbeck’s friendship with Adlai Stevenson, the previous Democratic presidential nominee, Steinbeck admired Kennedy’s warmth, wit, and wonderful way with words. It was the respect of one wordsmith for another, and it led to Jackie Kennedy’s suggestion that John Steinbeck write John Kennedy’s official biography.

John Steinbeck: Stevenson in ’52, ’56, and ’60!

A staunch New Deal Democrat with small town Republican roots and a record of wartime advice and service to his hero Franklin Roosevelt, Steinbeck had little to say publicly about Harry Truman, FDR’s successor.  But he didn’t hold back when Eisenhower and Nixon emerged. He thought Ike was tongue-tied, under-informed, and unqualified to be president. How could anyone who mangled syntax and read westerns for entertainment possibly be fit for the White House? Nixon he deeply disliked and distrusted for reasons that proved prophetic. In the 1952 presidential election, Steinbeck supported Adlai Stevenson, but he didn’t meet Stevenson until the Democratic convention he covered as a special reporter in 1956.

Image of Adlai StevensonJackson Benson, John Steinbeck’s principal biographer, described the opening act of Steinbeck’s long-running friendship with Stevenson in The Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer:

From the time of this meeting, the Steinbecks and Stevenson became close friends, visiting each other often in the years that followed. At the convention, Stevenson grabbed Steinbeck, pulled him into a little room, and said “Sit down. I need a drink.” The two sat talking for half an hour, John telling him of the humorous things he had heard on the floor. Every time he got up to go, Stevenson asked him to stay. It was the first time in days, Stevenson told him, that he had had a chance to relax.

John Steinbeck, who disliked funerals, attended Stevenson’s service in Ilinois in 1965. In 1960 he had hoped his friend would run again, this time against Dick (“I liked him better when he was a mug”) Nixon, adding his name to a list of celebrity authors and academics advocating for Stevenson over Kennedy, the Democrats’ rising star. But the charismatic young Senator from Massachusetts—the home state of Steinbeck’s paternal grandparents—swept the spring primaries and won the American presidency by a Chicago hair. Kennedy was Catholic, a writer, and a war hero, appealing qualities. The Steinbecks supported his campaign and were invited to his inauguration.

John Kennedy’s Inauguration and its Endless Invocations

John Kennedy once described Washington as combining Southern efficiency with Northern charm. He might have mentioned Southern humidity and Northern winters as well. The 1961 inauguration was marred by one of Washington’s worst snowstorms; while Kennedy’s acceptance speech warmed John Steinbeck’s heart, Elaine’s feet were freezing. In a section of the manuscript omitted from Travels with Charley when it was published, Steinbeck recorded the event with epic hilarity. (Given Kennedy’s constant back pain from disease and injury, Steinbeck’s reference to women’s “backache” seems especially ironic. Today we know more about Kennedy’s medical condition than anyone admitted at the time.)

I got us to our seats below the rostrum of the Capitol long before the ceremony—so long before that we nearly froze. Mark Twain defined women as lovely creatures with a backache. I wonder how he omitted the only other safe generality—goddesses with cold feet. A warm-footed woman would be a monstrosity. I think I was the only man who heard the inauguration while holding his wife’s feet in his lap, rubbing vigorously. With every sentence of the interminable prayers, I rubbed. And the prayers were interesting, if long. One sounded like general orders to the deity issued in a parade ground voice. One prayer brought God up to date on current events with a view to their revision. In the midst of one prayer, smoke issued from the lectern and I thought we had gone too far, but it turned out to be a short circuit.

Image of Elaine and John SteinbeckJohn Kennedy—a Catholic in the same way that John Steinbeck was an Episcopalian, nominal and not by choice—secretly agreed with Steinbeck about the endless prayers. Below the official text of the letter sent to the “distinguished artists who were kind enough to be in Washington,” Kennedy provided a handwritten critique of the episode for Steinbeck’s private enjoyment: “No President was ever prayed over with such fervor. Evidently they felt that the country or I needed it—probably both.” Two witty Johns joined at the funny bone, sharing the same artery to America’s master of irreverence, Mark Twain. As quoted in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters (edited by Elaine Steinbeck and Robert Wallsten), John Steinbeck enlarged on the tale, which grew in height over time:

I had never seen this ceremony. I found it very moving when they finally got through the prayers to it. As Elaine says, most ministers are hams but they haven’t learned the first rule of the theatre—how to get off. When [Cardinal] Cushing got to whumping it up I thought how I’d hate to be God and have him on my tail. The good Cushing didn’t ask, he instructed; and I bet he takes no nonsense from the Virgin Mary either nor from the fruit of her womb, Jesus.

Image of John Kennedy's inaugural addressBut the young president’s address was stirring, and Steinbeck was more than moved. He admired Kennedy’s speech like a writer, for style as much as substance. The reason for his respect became the punch line of a literary joke, delivered dead-pan to reporters looking for a scoop about Steinbeck. Benson’s biography explains that the author answered their questions about the Steinbecks’ visibility around Washington with the same kind of humor shown by Kennedy in private:

Since he was [at the inauguration] and receiving all this attention, Steinbeck was assumed by some in the press to be up for some job in the administration. When he was asked, on one occasion he said that he had been named Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but he had not yet got his uniform fitted. To others, he replied that he was the new Secretary of Public Health and Morals and Consumer Education. When asked his reaction to the inaugural address, he said, for the television audiences, “Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the Republic.”

Syntax—high praise for any politician, and music to Steinbeck’s ears after the painful atonality of the Eisenhower era.

Kennedy’s Assassination and Steinbeck’s Refusal

Following the inauguration John Steinbeck and John Kennedy met several times, and Steinbeck was later selected to receive the Medal of Freedom—an honor the President would not live to bestow. In the spring of 1963, the author and his wife accepted the invitation to travel behind the Iron Curtain as cultural emissaries for the high-culture administration where a francophone First Lady set a sophisticated European tone. Remarkably, in retrospect, Steinbeck insisted that another writer accompany them: Edward Albee, the young creator of the biting Broadway stage hit, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Albee was acerbic, audacious, and gay; his sharp-edged play lacerated marital monogamy and introduced audiences to vocabulary formerly reserved for the drill field. Hard to believe today, but Steinbeck’s demand was granted and the trip to the Soviet bloc took place as planned, Albee (below) included.

Image of Edward AlbeeThe Steinbecks had reached Poland when they heard the news from America on November 22. Jay Parini quotes Elaine’s version in John Steinbeck: A Biography:

“That was a day none of us would ever forget,” says Elaine. “John and I had just gotten back to Warsaw when the news broke on the radio that John Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. The first report was that he was wounded, and we were horrified. Then we heard he was dead. It was so moving what happened: the Poles all surrounded us and hugged us, saying how sorry they were to hear this terrible, terrible news [and we] needed time to mourn. We called the State Department, and they suggested that we go to Vienna for a few days. There was a funeral service for Kennedy at the cathedral there. It was a memorable and moving day.”

Cutting short their itinerary, the Steinbecks returned to Washington for debriefing by the State Department over three days in late December, precisely five years before Steinbeck would die in New York at the age of 66. The Steinbecks’ letter of sympathy to Jackie Kennedy, written a few days earlier, received a surprising response from the former First Lady. Benson explains:

In the meantime, [Mrs. Kennedy] wanted someone to write a definitive biography of her husband, and she had thought Steinbeck the writer most suitable. She got in touch with mutual friends and made some inquiries and then wrote the Steinbecks to come see her in Washington. When John and Elaine called on her, they could see that, although she had herself under control, she was still obviously in a state of shock. She talked to them about the kind of book she had in mind and very openly and movingly about the President and about her relationship to him. At one point Elaine began to cry, and Mrs. Kennedy said, “Please, Elaine, if you must cry, go to the bathroom and pull yourself together. I can’t bear it now, and I’ll go to pieces.” Their visit stretched into a stay of several hours, as every time they started to leave, Mrs. Kennedy would beg them to stay—“I’ve nothing in the world to do.”

Image of Jackie Kennedy as First LadyAfter careful consideration and more meetings, John Steinbeck declined Mrs. Kennedy’s suggestion that he write her husband’s book. As Benson observes, “what he had in mind does not seem to have been an orthodox biography.” Steinbeck never produced his planned autobiography either, and for much the same reason. Writing to his college friend Carlton Sheffield a few days before the February meeting with Mrs. Kennedy, Steinbeck said that if he ever wrote his own life story he wanted to make it a “real one”—“since after a passage of time I don’t know what happened and what I made up, it would be nearer the truth to set both down.” As Benson suggests, the novelist “never found solutions to the problems of form presented” by factual biography. In April he gave Mrs. Kennedy his answer—not now: “One day I do hope to write what we spoke of—how this man who was the best of his people, by his life and death gave the best back to them for their own.”

John Steinbeck’s Arthur and John Kennedy’s Camelot

Steinbeck didn’t invent the Camelot trope for the Kennedy years, but as a serious student of Arthurian literature he could use it convincingly. When read today, the letter he wrote Mrs. Kennedy after their initial meeting about her husband’s book is—in its poetry, power, and prescience—better than “an orthodox biography” could ever be:

The 15th century and our own have so much in common—loss of authority, loss of gods, loss of heroes, and loss of lovely pride. When such a hopeless muddled need occurs, it does seem to me that the hungry hearts of men distill their best and truest essence, and that essence becomes a man, and that man a hero so that all men can be reassured that such things are possible. The fact that all of these words—hero, myth, pride, even victory, have been muddled and sicklied by the confusion and permission of the times only describes the times. . . .

Steinbeck wrote the closing moral trilogy of his career—The Winter of Our Discontent, Travels with Charley, America and Americans—in the reflected light of Kennedy’s Camelot and the sudden shadow that fell across America following his death. I wonder. Has it occurred to others that John Steinbeck died so soon after the abdication of his friend Lyndon Johnson and the election of Richard Nixon in 1968? Death spared Steinbeck the Watergate scandal, Reaganism, and the retrograde racism of today’s insurgent Tea Party. Surely he would have detested and denounced each, not merely for mendacity, but also for lacking any trace of Kennedy’s intellect, warmth, or wit.

The quality of educated humor went out of the body politic with the death of John Kennedy, and I think Steinbeck knew it as it was happening. His most memorable epitaph for the elegant president who joked with him, Twain-like, about priests and public prayers appears near the end of the letter just quoted. Fifty years after John Kennedy’s assassination, John Steinbeck’s words of comfort to the slain president’s widow still thrill with hope for the return of an American Camelot:

At our best we live by legend. And when our belief gets pale and weak, there comes a man out of our need who puts on the shining armor and everyone living reflects a little of that light, yes, and stores some up against the time when he has gone. . . .

.

Image of Barack Obama and Ted Kennedy

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John Steinbeck, Carl Jung, and Phalanx in Tortilla Flat

November 21, 2013 by 4 Comments

Image of Carl JungJohn Steinbeck was ambivalent about psychology. In 1962 he lashed out at his country’s modern “psychiatric priesthood” in Travels with Charley. But 30 years earlier he had stayed up nights discussing the psychological insights of Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychologist-psychiatrist shown here, with Ed Ricketts, Joseph Campbell, and other members of the bohemian Cannery Row circle in the Monterey of his youth. As a result, Jungian principles of a collective human unconscious, the meaning of symbols and myths, and the essential role of certain types of individuals in group behavior inform Steinbeck’s most successful fiction of the 1930s. To a God Unknown and In Dubious Battle are frequently cited examples. As I will show, the insights of Jung in advancing Steinbeck and Ricketts’ phalanx theory are equally evident in Tortilla Flat, the book that launched Steinbeck’s reputation as a promising new writer.

Carl Jung, John Steinbeck, and the Problem of Language

I reached this conclusion not through studying literary theory in a classroom but by reading Carl Jung and John Steinbeck and applying their insights in my three-decade career designing, developing, and leading critical skills and management training programs for corporations such as RCA, KPMG Peat Marwick, Honeywell, AT&T, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of New Jersey, and others. In business, critical skills include tasks where failure to properly perform may cause death, serious injury, or financial loss. Central to the development of cost-effective critical skills training programs in my work was assuring clearly and uniformly understood terms, concepts, and models. To do this, a good instructional designer must define terms and concepts so that training objectives and process are easily communicated and comprehended.

This is usually not too much of a problem in industries and professions that have well-defined lexicons, such as law, engineering, and accounting. It is more difficult when training enters more the ambiguous arena of consulting, marketing, management, and sales. But these activities also require clearly-understood language for personal, interpersonal, team, and group-related tasks. Naturally the field of psychology seems an appropriate place to handle individual, interpersonal, and teaming challenges that arise in the process of doing business and improving outcomes. Yet key terms and basic concepts vary greatly throughout psychology from one school of thought and practice to another. For instance, the essential term ego is defined quite differently by followers of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud and was ignored completely by later behaviorists such as B.F. Skinner.

Because reliable sources to develop a useful lexicon for applying psychological theories outside the box of clinical psychotherapy are few—and because individual psychologists frequently employ esoteric language and the terms, concepts, and models commonly used are often misunderstood between different schools of psychology—the study and practice of psychology in its various fields and forms is almost universally looked down upon by more precise sciences as fundamentally unscientific. The language problem inherent in psychology is a major reason why empirically-minded biologists and chemists—the sciences that attracted and engaged John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts—continue to hold psychology in low esteem.

Discovering the John Steinbeck-Carl Jung Connection

I have been a Steinbeck fan since I first read his fiction, which I found irresistibly unpretentious, down-to-earth, and clear in style and story. Who could argue with the humor and accessibility of Tortilla Flat, his earliest best seller, for example? As in Steinbeck’s later novels, the characters in Tortilla Flat are so thoroughly defined that you felt you had known them all your life.

After rereading Tortilla Flat approximately 30 years ago, I began to sense a Jungian influence in its narrative flow and structure, an observation that was confirmed when I read the biographies of John Steinbeck that started to appear in the 1980s. When I learned that the young mythologist Joseph Campbell was part of the Cannery Row scene swirling around Steinbeck’s friend Ed Ricketts In 1932, and that Campbell’s correspondence with Ricketts continued until Ricketts’ death in 1948, there was no doubt in my mind about the influence of Carl Jung on Steinbeck’s writing—including Tortilla Flat—during the years that followed. I was equally intrigued to discover that the influence of Carl Jung on John Steinbeck did not originate with Ricketts or Campbell as some have supposed. John Steinbeck was a deep reader with wide interests who took philosophy as a student at Stanford. As a result, he came to Cannery Row in the early 1930s with knowledge about modern psychology.

The Phalanx and “Breaking Through”

The unconscious influence on behavior of individuals—Steinbeck’s “human units”—within an objective focused gathering, group, or MOB that Steinbeck called the phalanx is, I believe, worthy of closer examination today. As mentioned, To a God Unknown and In Dubious Battle are frequently adduced as examples from the fiction of the 1930s. But a piece of nonfiction published by Steinbeck in 1942, Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team, includes a description of the phalanx in the training and development of bomber crews by the wartime Army Air Corps, and The Log from Sea of Cortez explains the phalanx more fully than any other work of nonfiction published in Steinbeck’s lifetime.

The MOB’s objective may seem simply unreasonable or illusionary, such as group bullying or scapegoating those who disagree with the MOB’s belief or creed. But however irrational or inexplicable, it can produce horrors like the Holocaust. Given the explosion of MOB violence around the world in our time and the reported incidence of  bullying in our schools, better understanding the phalanx as Steinbeck developed and used the term seems to me to be more important than ever before.

Steinbeck’s phalanx is based in part on Carl Jung’s collective unconscious, as well as on the ideas of philosophers familiar to Steinbeck from his studies at Stanford, such as those of William James—an important influence on Jung himself in my opinion. As a result of Steinbeck’s reading, discussion, and understanding of Jung, James, and others, I believe that he consciously coined the term phalanx, clearly defined it in his thinking, and applied it in his work, including Tortilla Flat.

As also mentioned, the concept is not something Steinbeck acquired from Ricketts but came to him as a result of his personal awakening to a thread connecting random notes that he kept in a cigar box beginning as early as the 1920s. When I read about the writer’s habit of jotting ideas on bits of paper in a leading John Steinbeck biography, I thought to myself, “what a great example of Jung’s Intuition!”  Significantly, the connection occurred to Steinbeck during his mother’s long illness and the crisis of caring for the parent who dominated his family and his boyhood.

To use Ed Ricketts’ term, this was a “breaking through” for John Steinbeck at age 33—a life-changing epiphany or event resulting in a leap of personal growth. Practitioners of Carl Jung’s method of psychology recognize how a personal tragedy like the death of a parent can awaken the mind’s eye to a new perspective, a deeper consciousness, and greater understanding. Importantly for my point, such an awakening proportionally reduces an individual’s susceptibility to the negative influence of the phalanx, sometimes by raising his or her resistance to participation in MOB violence and destruction. A desire to break through to deeper knowledge is a defining trait of each of the fictional characters created by Steinbeck, beginning with In Dubious Battle, based on Ed Ricketts.

Levels of Adult Maturity and the Influence of the Phalanx

In developing his phalanx concept, Steinbeck articulated two key characteristics:

* A group, gathering or MOB can take on an autonomous psychology and behave in a manner that may be quite different from what would be displayed by individual members under the same circumstances.

* The psychology of the group frequently appears to be in antagonistic counterpoint to the individual psychology of its human units.

I would add a third point: The higher the development or maturity of the group’s individual members, the less the negative influence exerted by the MOB on the group’s behavior. T

The levels of this development or maturity are fourfold:

Level 1.  Level 1 persons are almost completely unaware of their uniqueness as individuals. They have no ego as the term is used in the clinical sense—that is, the psychological object within which an individual defines himself or herself. Those who exist at this level lead lives that revolve around basic survival, shelter, safety, and procreation. They leave decisions on important matters up to authority figures such as a father or mother. During Jung’s research among African and North American Native tribes, tribal members told him that they leave all thinking and decision-making to their tribal chief or medicine person. They could not distinguish between their dream state and conscious state. They told Jung that they thought anyone charged with the burden of thinking was crazy. They were mainly unconscious.

Level 2. Level 2 individuals awaken to the differences between themselves and others. This is the beginning of the existence of their ego: their awakening to their uniqueness in the world or the universe. An individual at this level typically projects onto external gods and devils. As a result of their development they gradually learn to participate in their personal path, create goals, and use individual tools in dealing with life and its issues. But for the most part they are driven to self-serving aims with their newly discovered skills. They still are mainly unconscious.

Level 3. To understand my description of Level 3, we must agree on the definition of the term ego I intend: one’s conscious image of himself or herself. When we reflect upon ourselves, the image we perceive is the ego. The term is often mistakenly used to refer to an inflated ego where the self-image of an individual exceeds reality. But in truth, the ego is the focal point to which all objects of perception must relate to become conscious. Persons at Level 3 have a nearly completely developed ego and view it as their center, denying the existence of anything about themselves outside its circumference. While the Level 3 individual denies the unconscious, they are nonetheless the victim of unconscious influences in their behavior. Examples include embarrassing slips-of-the tongue or falling in love with a person who is wrong for many reasons. They may also be victims of irrational fears or hates—the Shadow, to use another term from Carl Jung, Level 3 persons are apt to become victims of group influence at the MOB phalanx, however emphatically they may deny this possibility.

Level 4.  For a variety reasons, some painful, Level 4 individuals have awakened to the reality that there is more to themselves than their ego. Accompanying this realization is a curiosity about their newly revealed psychological territory. It     usually doesn’t take them long to explore this uncharted terrain within themselves. Ideally, when they do so they will seek to integrate what they discover about themselves into their existing self-image and further build their ego on stronger ground. The previously unintegrated elements of Self found in their exploration likely were the source of many of the projections they suffered at earlier stages of their development on the way to Level 4 self-knowledge. Level 4 people are thus the most conscious and least vulnerable to phalanx influence. They are truly their own man or woman.

Readers may recognize the differences in persona presented by individuals at the levels I have described. These differences can be perceived through interpersonal dialogue and interaction or through observing behavior. Strong caution must be suggested to avoid pigeon holing another and then acting on that classification. Remember, we are also responsible for the persona we perceive of others and it may be very wrong. Individuals at Level 4 (Ed Ricketts, for example) often appear peaceful, content, friendly, and kind. Those at lower levels may be more easily influenced by fear, hatred, and ignorance. The fiction of John Steinbeck, who I believe intuited this truth about humans, offers unforgettable examples of people at every level of evolution.

The Phalanx in Tortilla Flat

In Tortilla Flat, I believe that phalanx can first be observed in action among Steinbeck’s paisanos as verbalized by the character Pilon, who expresses the group’s feeling that Danny, the “group caretaker,” has abandoned them. Characters like Danny—and later Doc and Fauna in Cannery Row—play the essential group-caretaker role ably articulated and applied in his work as an international management consultant by my friend James Kent, a Steinbeck lover of profound learning and understanding.

Pilon thinks that Danny is spending too much time with Sweets Ramiriz—the grateful recipient of the gift of a vacuum cleaner she can’t use—with the result that the group feels abandoned by their leader: “At first his friends ignored his absence, for it is the right of every man to have these little affairs. But as the weeks went on, and as a rather violent domestic life began to make Danny listless and pale, his friends became convinced that Sweets’ gratitude for the sweeping-machine was not to Danny’s best physical interests.”

The verbalized concern for Danny’s physical health is a rationalization—a banner-call to action—although its actual value-driven inspiration is jealousy about a relationship that has taken Danny away from the group. This distinction is important. In judging group or team behavior in business, logical rationalizations and value-judgments are significant factors in analyzing and predicting group or team actions; since they are functionally different, they require different responses. The distinction is revealed in Steinbeck’s description of the group’s decision to do something about the situation that confronts them: “Wherefore the friends, in despair, organized a group, formed for and dedicated to [Sweets’] destruction.”

As dramatized in John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat, the phalanx is an unconscious complex within a group drawn together with a commonly-held objective by forces from within the collective unconscious. But the attempt to effectively influence the illusionary driving forces of a MOB or community—a common response by authority to such conditions around the world—remains, in practice, a mistake. Targeting the consciously stated objective rather than the unconscious motivation of the group wastes time, resources, and—when force is involved— human lives. Steinbeck learned about the collective unconscious from Carl Jung. We have much to learn about group behavior from John Steinbeck, starting with Tortilla Flat.

This is the first in Wesley Stillwagon’s series on the application of John Steinbeck and Carl Jung’s insights in innovative corporate training program design. To be continued.

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John Steinbeck Celebrated in Old and New Public Art

November 8, 2013 by 3 Comments

John Steinbeck statue at Salinas Public Library shownSalinas and Monterey—the two cities most closely associated with John Steinbeck and his California stories—both celebrate the life and work of the writer though a variety of public art projects. Although few of the murals and sculptures along Cannery Row in Monterey or in Steinbeck’s home town of Salinas approach the level of fine art, they enhance their surroundings while serving social, educational, and sponsorship interests in Steinbeck Country. When Steinbeck lovers visit, most view the works in a spirit of understanding.

The tradition of spreading political and religious messages through large-scale mural paintings originated with the Olmec civilization, the first major civilization in Mexico, and continued through the Spanish Colonial period to the time of the Mexican Revolution and beyond. With a current Hispanic population approaching 75 per cent, it is not surprising that mural representations of Steinbeck and his works are found in the City of Salinas. Thanks to financial support from the Cannery Row Company, works of sculpture predominate in nearby Monterey. Best of all, new art inspired by Steinbeck continues to be produced.

John Steinbeck mural at National Steinbeck Center shown

Detail of the mural outside the National Steinbeck Center

John Steinbeck Murals in Downtown Salinas

Public agencies have played a role, funding the One Voice Murals Project to develop community pride and provide summer work experience for youth throughout Monterey County. Of more than a dozen large-scale murals from Castroville to Greenfield funded by the One Voice Project Arts & Leadership Project, four of the finished pieces—all in Salinas—portray Steinbeck-related themes.

With the help of eight young painters in 1998, supervising muralists Patrizia Johnson and Mel Mathewson created the mural that has become familiar to visitors to the National Steinbeck Center. Dominated by a portrait of the bearded writer, the work is comprised of a collage of images from books and movies including The Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, East of Eden, and The Red Pony. It greets passersby on a wall facing the entrance to the Center at 127 Main Street.

John Steinbeck mural Salinas Chamber of Commerce shown

The ghost of John Steinbeck reflects on the artifacts of area commerce.

Two murals sponsored by One Voice were completed in 2001. Designed by Linda Galusha, the wall of the Salinas Valley Chamber of Commerce building at 119 East Alisal Street shows Steinbeck surrounded by dollar bills and important elements of commerce in the Salinas Valley, from an abacus to an ATM machine, as well as the transportation systems employed to move area agricultural products to world markets. Texas artist Christine Martin led the team that recreated mythical scenes from Steinbeck’s The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights on the wall of the Grapes & Grains liquor store at 385 Salinas Street.

In 2002 a Macedonian-born artist named Blagojce Stojanovki supervised the completion of what is billed as the largest mural in California. Covering four huge wall panels of the Salinas Californian Newspaper Building at 123 West Alisal Street, the work depicts the writer with his books surrounded by images of scenes from his life.

John Steinbeck mural at Salinas Californian Newspaper Building shown

Detail of the Blagojce Stojanovki mural in Salinas

The oldest Steinbeck-related art in Steinbeck’s home town is a bronze sculpture of the author (top of page) created in the early 1970s by Tom Fitzwater—a Greenfield native studying art at Cal State, Long Beach—and donated by the Soroptimist Club of Salinas. The larger-than-life statue stands at the entrance to the John Steinbeck Library at 350 Lincoln Avenue. The identity of the iconoclast who hack-sawed the cigarette from Steinbeck’s hand remains a mystery, along with his, her, or their motivation. Was it a do-gooder intent on protecting youth visiting the library from the evils of tobacco?  A vandal bent on mindless destruction? Not all citizens appreciated the work when it was created.  A photograph of Fitzwater in the collection of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University is captioned “the godawful bronze statue of Steinbeck that birds still gladly poop on today.”

John Steinbeck & Company in Public Art at Cannery Row

Through the Cannery Row Foundation, the Cannery Row Company—owner of real estate along the former ocean-front canning district featured in Steinbeck’s novel of the name—has supported much of the public art that graces this popular Monterey tourist destination, including bronze figures of several of Cannery Row’s most famous characters.

A bronze bust of the writer welcomes visitors to the Steinbeck Plaza at the foot of Prescott Avenue overlooking Monterey Bay. A plaque mounted on the base quotes the novel’s familiar opening paragraph: “Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone . . . .” The sculptor, Carol W. Brown, reported that, still embittered by her desertion and divorce, Steinbeck’s first wife—Carol Steinbeck Brown—delayed the work in progress with numerous requests that the artist portray her husband’s features unflatteringly. Some say she even claimed credit as co-creator of the work.

John Steinbeck bust by Carol Brown at Cannery Row shown

Bust of John Steinbeck by Carol Brown at Cannery Row

Three years after the publication of Cannery Row in 1945, Steinbeck’s close friend and collaborator—the pioneering marine biologist, ecologist, and philosopher Ed Ricketts—died following an automobile accident at a railroad crossing near Cannery Row. Local sculptor Jesse Corsaut created a bronze commemorative bust of Ricketts that is installed in a mini-park at Wave Street and Drake Avenue a few yards from the crossing site. Ricketts holds a star fish in his left hand and has had better luck than the bronze likeness of Steinbeck in Salinas. The star fish is frequently adorned with fresh flowers.

Ed Ricketts bust at Cannery Row in Monterey shown

The Cannery Row memorial bust celebrating Ed Ricketts

Ricketts and Steinbeck were accompanied on excursions to Mexico to collect marine specimens by the artist Bruce Ariss, a member of their charmed Cannery Row circle. The pencil sketches of his companions made by Ariss recently appeared on festive banners placed along the Row. The only public work by Ariss that survives—a panel illustrating the Lone Star Café and discarded boilers featured in Steinbeck’s novel—was salvaged from a larger temporary mural painted by later artists hired to block the view of the Clement Hotel when it was under construction. The Ariss mural stands at the foot of Bruce Ariss Way, opposite Ricketts’ lab, at 800 Cannery Row.

Mural and bust of Kalisa Moore in Monterey shown

Salvaged mural panel and bust of Kalisa Moore at Bruce Ariss Way

In 1957 the Latvian-born entrepreneur Kalisa Moore opened a restaurant in the former La Ida Café, another venue immortalized in Cannery Row. Catering to musicians, writers, and visitors in quest of the Row’s magic mixture of hardscrabble and bohemian lifestyles, she hosted an annual Steinbeck birthday celebration beginning in 1970. After she died in 2008 she was honored as the Queen of Cannery Row with a commemorative bronze bust by Jesse Corsaut. Appropriately, it is located next to the Bruce Aris mural.

Cannery Row Mural of Mack and the Boys shown

Mural of Mack and the Boys by artist John Cerney

Today three photo-realistic murals by Salinas artist John Cerney overlook the Monterey Bay Coastal Recreational Trail, built over the former route of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Each mural features a group of workers relaxing after a day laboring in the canneries, along with an extended caption taken from the text of Steinbeck’s novel. The painting of Mack and the Boys at the rear of 711 and 799 Cannery Row is based on a photograph of the original “boys” including Gabe Bicknell, the inspiration for Steinbeck’s character Mack in Cannery Row.

And the Art Goes On

Tributes to Steinbeck in art continue to attract area interest and support. For example, plans for a sculpture depicting the writer seated on a rock with imagined figures from local history were recently approved by the Monterey Architectural Review Committee. When completed, the work by Carmel sculptor Steven Whyte—“Monument to John Steinbeck and Cannery Row”—will be installed at Steinbeck Plaza, where it is certain to draw new attention to the life and work of Monterey County’s most famous son.

Photos by David A. Laws

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Susan Shillinglaw Details John Steinbeck’s Dramatic Marriage to Carol Henning

October 12, 2013 by 16 Comments

Susan Shillinglaw, writer about the life of Steinbeck, shown at the Steinbeck Studies CenterNobody knows more or writes better about the life of Steinbeck than Susan Shillinglaw, professor of English at San Jose State University, former director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies, and scholar-in-residence at the National Steinbeck Center. Her superb scholarship and elegant style are equally evident in Carol and John Steinbeck: Portrait of a Marriage, the biography of Steinbeck’s marriage to Carol Henning, a Jazz Age rebel with a Great Depression conscience. As Shillinglaw observes, John and Carol were no Scott and Zelda. But their dramatic story book reads like a novel—unfortunately, one with a similarly unhappy ending.

carol-john-steinbeck-susan-shillinglaw

From Jazz Age Joy to Great Depression Decline

Meticulously researched over a period of 20 years, Shillinglaw’s life of Steinbeck and his first wife, from Jazz Age joy through Great Depression decline, describes a companionable marriage of equals and opposites, revealing intimate details of a relationship that began in 1928, at the cusp of Steinbeck’s career, and dissolved following the success of The Grapes of Wrath. Using Steinbeck’s phalanx metaphor, she demonstrates how such a relationship becomes a kind of third person, with characteristics, dynamics, and patterns of development and decay distinct from both partners and ultimately beyond their control. Her subject is the life and death of a relationship, but her protagonist is clearly Carol, a shining figure in the life of Steinbeck who has remained in her husband’s shadow until now.

Years after his divorce from Carol, Steinbeck advised another writer that “your work is your only weapon.” As Shillinglaw shows, John and Carol’s collaboration in Steinbeck’s signature work of the 1930s—always his work, rarely hers—was their mutual weapon against poverty and insecurity until fortune and fame—his, not hers—intervened. The title of Steinbeck’s anthem of the Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath, was her idea. The progressive politics of the protest novels that preceded it—In Dubious Battle and Of Mice and Men—were hers before they were his. She became his muse and motivator, typist and editor, connector and companion. But the 12-year experience drained and disoriented her, leaving her ill-equipped to cope with wealth, notoriety, and competition from the woman who became Steinbeck’s second wife in 1943.

A Life of Steinbeck Story Told by the Perfect Narrator

Carol and John Steinbeck: Portrait of a Marriage is a book only Susan Shillinglaw could have written. The life of Steinbeck has been chronicled by men—notably Jackson Benson, the author of The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer—with an emotional detachment from their distant, difficult subject. Unlike her husband, Carol demanded attention, engagement, and shared context, qualities that Shillinglaw brings to the story of her life before, with, and after Steinbeck. A resident of Pacific Grove and Los Gatos—towns where the Steinbecks lived for most of their marriage—Shillinglaw teaches in the city where Carol was born, raised, and rooted. Married to a biologist at the Hopkins Marine Station, the Monterey outpost of Stanford University where Steinbeck took summer courses, Shillinglaw collaborates with her husband in a imaginative summer program for high school teachers passionate about Steinbeck. The author of an upcoming book on The Grapes of Wrath, she shares context with the woman who—in Steinbeck’s words—“willed it.”

"The Swan" drawing shown from Carol Steinbeck's sportswomen seriesTo the credit of Shillinglaw’s publisher, her life of Steinbeck and Carol Henning’s marriage is affordable, attractive, and accessible to non-academics. Unfortunately, small inconsistencies were overlooked, marring an otherwise masterful achievement. Several sentences introduce names left unexplained until later, end without punctuation, and place closing quotation marks on the wrong side of the period. End notes are copious and unobtrusive, but the name of Dick Hayman is printed twice in a sentence thanking sources, and the index seems incomplete. (Mary Dole, the pineapple-heiress acquaintance of Carol’s estranged sister Idell, is included, but Bennett Cerf—the publisher who arranged the Steinbecks’ introduction to the poet Robinson Jeffers—is omitted.) Jazz Age children of musical families, Carol and John both loved music, a pursuit—like Carol’s drawing and sculpting—documented in satisfying detail. Yet Carol’s talented mother is described as attending music school in San Jose to improve her “piano techniques,” not technique, and Gregorian chant (a collective noun, like opera) is referred to as “Gregorian chants.”

"The Swimmer" drawing shown from Carol Steinbeck's sportswomen seriesMinor errors in major works can be corrected in subsequent editions. I predict that Susan Shillinglaw’s life of Steinbeck and Carol Henning’s together from Jazz Age joy to Great Depression decline—a dramatic story told by the perfect narrator—will have many.

Drawings by Carol Henning Steinbeck courtesy of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies, San Jose State University.

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Ed Ricketts and the Episcopal Church

October 12, 2013 by 2 Comments

Ed Ricketts, child of the Episcopal Church, shown as an adultLike John Steinbeck, the writer’s friend Ed Ricketts was reared in the Episcopal Church, a coincidence of some importance. Described in Cannery Row as “half satyr, half Christ,” “Doc” Ricketts inspired the creation of identifiably Doc-like characters in works of fiction written by Steinbeck over two decades, including In Dubious Battle and Sweet Thursday. The friendship with Ricketts was fundamental to Steinbeck’s thinking through the 1930s and 40s, and the Bay of California scientific expedition undertaken by the men in 1940 produced Sea of Cortez, a collaborative meditation on the meaning of life that reaches an emotional peak on Easter morning in a passage foreshadowing The Winter of Our Discontent, a later Holy Week narrative with an Episcopal church setting.

Intimate Lives That Included Episcopal Church Training

Reared in Chicago, Ed Ricketts—like Steinbeck—attended Episcopal church services as a boy and received Christian training in Episcopal church Sunday school and confirmation classes. Intelligent, introspective, and independent-minded college dropouts, both men outgrew Episcopal Church teaching as adults, becoming skeptical about religion, passionate about science, and unconventional in behavior. When they met in 1930, Ricketts was running a biological-specimen business in Pacific Grove, California, and working on a pioneering textbook of coastal ecology eventually published by Stanford University. Steinbeck, recently married and undiscovered as a writer, was younger and less sophisticated. As he noted in his profile of Ricketts years later, Steinbeck learned deeply about many subjects, including music, from the man with whom he shared a deep personal connection based in part on shared experience in the Episcopal Church.

Reared in Chicago, Ed Ricketts—like Steinbeck—attended Episcopal church services as a boy and received Christian training in Episcopal church Sunday school and confirmation classes.

Their surviving letters demonstrate the intimacy of their relationship and their familiarity with Episcopal church doctrine, custom, and culture. Writing to Steinbeck in 1946, for example, Ricketts reflected with characteristic irony and humor on his mother’s recent death: “Directly after mother was taken very sick, she wanted an Episcopal priest. Terribly unfortunate that a few months before this, the satyr [in him] caught up with him again. . . . The wicked old women, of the church that was founded by charitable Christ, turned on him viciously.”  The parish in question was All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Carmel, the same Episcopal church where Steinbeck served as the godfather for his sister Mary’s younger daughter in 1935.

‘The wicked old women, of the church that was founded by charitable Christ, turned on him viciously.’

As a result of the clerical misbehavior detailed in the letter, Ricketts’ dying mother was visited by the rector of St.-Mary’s-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Pacific Grove, the same Episcopal church where Thom Steinbeck, the author’s son, would be married 50 years later. The Steinbeck family cottage where the writer and his wife were living when Ricketts and Steinbeck first met—and to which Steinbeck retreated when Ricketts died—is located only two blocks from St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. Both literally and figuratively, the Episcopal Church loomed over the lives of John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts—the man he called his soul mate—from the beginning to the end of their intimate, intriguing relationship.

Photo by Bryant Fitch (October 1939) http://www.caviews.com/ed.htm

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Did John Steinbeck Work as A Citizen Spy for the CIA?

October 4, 2013 by 8 Comments

Redacted CIA memo mentioning John Steinbeck shownMy discovery of John Steinbeck’s connection to the CIA could be described as payback for a youthful indiscretion—my own, not the author’s. While reading The Grapes of Wrath in high school, I skipped the “turtle” and other chapters that seemed to me superfluous to the plot line of the Joads’ journey west. The punishment for my teenage sin of omission came years later, when it first occurred to me that John Steinbeck was a CIA spy. The insane-sounding proposition grew from incongruities in Steinbeck’s life that—unlike Tom Joads’ turtle—I found I couldn’t ignore.

Steinbeck: Citizen Spy book cover shown with subtitle: The Untold Story of John Steinbeck and the CIA

FOIA to the CIA: What Do You Have on John Steinbeck?

Why was Steinbeck never called before the House Select Committee on Un-American Activities, despite his alleged ties to Communist organizations? Why did the CIA admit to the Church Committee in 1975 that Steinbeck had been a subject of the illegal CIA mail-opening program known as HTLINGUAL? Did Steinbeck’s connections to known CIA front organizations, such as the Congress of Cultural Freedom and the Ford Foundation, amount to more than mere coincidence? Did the synchronicity continue when Steinbeck did freelance writing for the Louisville Courier-Journal and New York Herald Tribune? Both newspapers were linked to MOCKINGBIRD, another CIA operation, in Carl Bernstein’s 1977 Rolling Stone article “The CIA and the Media.” Why did the CIA redact portions of Steinbeck’s FBI files before they were released under the 1966 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the law that permits full or partial disclosure by government agencies of previously classified documents on request?

Why was Steinbeck never called before the House Select Committee on Un-American Activities, despite his alleged ties to Communist organizations?

There was only one source—the CIA itself—that could definitively answer my questions and confirm or disprove my developing conclusions. I submitted my FOIA request to the CIA in January 2012. With characteristic bureaucratic speed, the CIA responded after eight months, in August 2012, sending me copies of two letters written in 1952. In the first, penned on personal stationery in his own handwriting, Steinbeck offers to work for the CIA. In the second, then-CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith accepts Steinbeck’s offer. The text of these letters and others can be found in my book, Steinbeck: Citizen Spy, at my website or in the FOIA Electronic Reading Room.

The CIA Director Accepts the Author’s Offer of Help

Jan 28, 1952

Dear General Smith:

Toward the end of February I am going to the Mediterranean area and afterwards to all of the countries of Europe not out of bounds. I am commissioned by Collier’s Magazine to do a series of articles—subjects and areas to be chosen by myself. I shall move slowly going only where interest draws. The trip will take six to eight months.

If during this period I can be of any service whatever to yourself or to the Agency you direct, I shall be only too glad.

I saw Herbert Bayard Swope recently and he told me that your health had improved. I hope this is so.

Also I wear the “Lou for 52” button concealed under the lapel as that shy candidate suggests.

Again—I shall be pleased to be of service. The pace and method of my junket together with my intention of talking with great numbers of people of all classes may offer peculiar advantages.

Yours sincerely,
John Steinbeck

‘If during this period I can be of any service whatever to yourself or to the Agency you direct, I shall be only too glad.’

ER 2-5603
6 February 1952
Mr. John Steinbeck
206 East 72nd Street
New York 21, New York

Dear Mr. Steinbeck:

I greatly appreciate the offer of assistance made in your note of January 28th.

You can, indeed, be of help to us by keeping your eyes and ears open on any political developments in the areas through which you travel, and, in addition, on any other matters which seem to you of significance, particularly those which might be overlooked in routine reports.

It would be helpful, too, if you could come down to Washington for a talk with us before you leave. We might then discuss any special matters on which you may feel that you can assist us.

Since I am certain that you will have some very interesting things to say, I trust, also, that you will be able to reserve some time for us on your return.

Sincerely,
Walter B. Smith
Director

O/DCI:REL:leb
Rewritten: LEBecker:mlk
Distribution:
Orig – Addressee
2 – DCI (Reading Official) [“w/Basic” has been handwritten beside this line and scratched out]
1 – DD/P [a check mark and w/Basic handwritten in]
1 – Admin [This has been scratched out] handwritten is “w/Basic”

‘You can, indeed, be of help to us by keeping your eyes and ears open on any political developments in the areas through which you travel.’

Did Steinbeck’s CIA Connection Start in Russia?

Reread A Russian Journal  with the possibility that Steinbeck was working for the CIA prior to 1952 in mind. When Steinbeck traveled to the USSR with Robert Capa in 1947—the second of three trips the author made to the Communist state during his lifetime—Walter Bedell Smith happened to be the U.S. Ambassador to Russia. Steinbeck notes in his account of his and Capa’s Russian journey that they dined with Smith during their stay.

This experience helps explain the personal tone of familiarity expressed in Steinbeck’s 1952 letter to Smith offering to help the CIA. It also suggests the possibility that Steinbeck used his access while in the USSR to gather intelligence for the U.S. government from the Russian interior. While visiting a factory in Stalingrad, Steinbeck observes that the Russians are still melting down hulls from German tanks to make tractors fully two years after the end of World War II, lamenting his frustration at not being able to get current production figures for the facility. Such information would have been particularly important to the U.S. government in 1947, as the Cold War became hotter and American travel behind the Iron Curtain more difficult.

While visiting a factory in Stalingrad, Steinbeck observes that the Russians are still melting down hulls from German tanks to make tractors fully two years after the end of World War II, lamenting his frustration at not being able to get current production figures for the facility.

The 1952 exchange between the author of The Grapes of Wrath and the Director of the CIA provides a new set of parameters for understanding John Steinbeck’s life. In my book I carefully examine each of the letters resulting from my FOIA request to the CIA, the writer’s heavily CIA-redacted FBI files, Thomas Steinbeck’s thoughts on the matter, and likely avenues through which the elder Steinbeck could have served his government covertly both before and after 1952. Viewing the author’s life in terms of possible links to the CIA opens vistas for better comprehending certain works, such as The Short Reign of Pippin IV, that his literary agent, editor, and others discouraged him from writing. In recommending my book to a Steinbeck blogger, a noted Steinbeck scholar described the possible CIA-Steinbeck connection detailed in Steinbeck: Citizen Spy as “a potential game-changer.”

Time will tell.

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Father Junipero’s Confessor

October 4, 2013 by 2 Comments

Father Junipero's Confessor book cover with image of Father SerraWhatever you think you know about Junipero Serra—the 18th century founder of California missions and current candidate for Catholic sainthood—hold that thought. Father Junipero’s Confessor, Nick Taylor’s second novel, won’t shatter your faith if you’re the kind of Catholic who still believes that ends justify means in the work of the Lord. But whether your inner space is sacred, secular, or skeptical about religion, this taut theological thriller will blow your mind.

San Francisco de Asis, Junipero Serra, and God Almighty

A five-foot Franciscan zealot on a 40-year Mission Impossible from Almighty God, Junipero Serra became the most famous follower of San Francisco de Asis since Clare, Francis’s hometown sister saint, and St. Bonaventure, the order’s greatest Doctor of Theology. Theologian and evangelist, mendicant and manipulator, flagellant and force unstoppable by soldier, serpent, or state, Junipero Serra made Monterey’s Carmel Mission headquarters for Operation God in Spanish California. Juan Crespi, Serra’s seminary student back in Majorca, became his closest companion in the quest to win souls for Christ among the native people of Old California. Francisco Palou—Juan Crespi’s fellow seminarian and competitor for Serra’s affection—became the boss’s COO, administering the dearest of California missions to Serra’s heart—San Francisco de Asis, aka Mission Dolores—and serving as his personal confessor. He needed one.

Nick Taylor shown reading from his novel about Junipero Serra

Nick Taylor: Born to Bring California Missions to Life

The author of The Disagreement—a celebrated first novel with a Civil War setting—Nick Taylor is a popular creative writing teacher at San Jose State University, where he is on sabbatical as director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies. A Californian reared in a Catholic home, he’s perfect for the task of bringing Junipero Serra back to life through the consciousness of his right-hand man, a talented manager and self-doubter born before his time. Junipero Serra, a figure molded by the High Middle Ages of San Francisco de Asis, founded California missions and feared neither man nor mountain in his fight with the world, flesh, and devil. Polou, Taylor’s protagonist, is a modern type who learns too little too late.

Nick Taylor's first novel cover, The Disagreement

In the End, a Stunning Secret That Survives Junipero Serra

It reminded me of Watergate. What did Francisco Polou know and when did he know it? Like Deep Throat, Taylor saves his secret for the last page. Enjoy the journey, savor the moment, and don’t look ahead. But be warned before you begin: I finished reading Father Junipero’s Confessor long after midnight, in a hotel room near one of Serra’s nine California missions. I didn’t sleep well.

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Autumn Is Steinbeck Country

October 4, 2013 by 8 Comments

Joseph McKenna shown at computer pondering Travels with CharleyAs I sit at my computer, a single sentence from Travels with Charley perfectly frames autumn in my mind: “It isn’t only color but a glowing, as though the leaves gobbled the light of the autumn sun and then released it slowly.”

Over the years I’ve marveled at Steinbeck’s description of autumn light, as well as other lyrical and poignant passages of Travels with Charley in Search of America. Words, Steinbeck writes, “should be wind or water or thunder.” So it’s no surprise that this particular book, written in the autumn of the author’s life, is a wonderfully colorful and welcome recasting of our seasonal landscape. Travels with Charley is the compline of an exceptional American wordsmith.

Without question, autumn is Steinbeck Country.

It isn’t only color but a glowing, as though the leaves gobbled the light of the autumn sun and then released it slowly.

The moment I sense the season sidestepping toward center stage, I fetch my copy of Steinbeck’s travelogue and hitch a ride. Mine is an irresistible ritual that goes back more than a few autumns; the trip never gets old, which speaks well of our country and its core character and says much about the enduring influence of Steinbeck himself. As The Saturday Review noted in 1962, Travels with Charley is “a book to be read slowly for its savor, and one which, like Thoreau, will be quoted and measured by our own experience”:

“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ships’s whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, once a bum always a bum. I fear this disease incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself.”

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch.

And so begin my travels, again, with Steinbeck and Charles le Chien, “a very big poodle, of a color called bleu.”  Once more I relish the notion of keeping company with such knights of the road, even if only vicariously. I suspect I have not been alone with my two peripatetic companions these many decades. Admitting guilt to having “at best a faulty, warpy reservoir” of a memory, the mature and celebrated author decided to visit his nation afresh in 1960. The journey covered almost 10,000 miles and aimed to ferret out “the small diagnostic truths which are the foundations of the larger truth.” For today’s aspiring and established writers alike, there can be no better standard of integrity than that set by the ailing author of The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden:

“I stayed as much as possible on secondary roads where there was much to see and hear and smell, and avoided the great wide traffic slashes which promote the self by fostering daydreams. I drove this wide eventless way called U.S. 90 which bypassed Buffalo and Erie to Madison, Ohio, and then found the equally wide fast U.S. 20 past Cleveland and Toledo, and so on into Michigan.”

I stayed as much as possible on secondary roads where there was much to see and hear and smell.

Folks ask why Travels with Charley remains my favorite book. To read it carefully, I respond, is to learn—and relearn—that the so-called American character has not been transformed wholesale by faster fast food or personal high-tech hardware, only disguised. Midway, Steinbeck talks aloud to Charley and makes my point with conviction:

“In the eating places along the roads the food has been clean, tasteless, colorless, and of a complete sameness. It is almost as though the customers had no interest in what they ate as long as it had no character to embarrass them….We’ve listened to local radio all across the country. And apart from a few reportings of football games, the mental fare has been as generalized, as packaged, and as undistinguished as the food.”

In the eating places along the roads the food has been clean, tasteless, colorless, and of a complete sameness.

During this analysis Steinbeck acknowledges that he has to use his foot to keep Charley awake. Unlike my own unimpressed canine companion, I eagerly take in Steinbeck’s every word and observation:

“In the bathroom two water tumblers were sealed in cellophane sacks with the words: ‘These glasses are sterilized for your protection.’ Across the toilet seat a strip of paper bore the message: “This seat has been sterilized with ultraviolet light for your protection.” Everyone was protecting me and it was horrible.”

“It is possible, even probable, to be told a truth about a place, to accept it, to know it and at the same time not to know anything about it.”

“They refused seconds and I insisted. And the division of thirds was put on the basis that there wasn’t enough to save. And with the few divided drops of that third there came into Rocinante a triumphant human magic that can bless a house, or a truck for that matter– nine people gathered in complete silence and the nine parts making a whole as surely as my arms and legs are a part of me, separate and inseparable.”

It is possible, even probable, to be told a truth about a place, to accept it, to know it and at the same time not to know anything about it.

At the risk of revealing my bias for the author and his book, I am not surprised that Travels with Charley was and remains a commercial publishing success. Nor am I overly concerned with recent reports that Steinbeck took liberties with fact in a book categorized as non-fiction. As Steinbeck biographer Jay Parini noted in Steinbeck’s defense, “I have always assumed that to some degree it’s a work of fiction. Steinbeck was a fiction writer, and here he’s shaping events, massaging them. He probably wasn’t using a tape recorder. But I still feel there’s an authenticity there. Does this shake my faith in the book? Quite the opposite. I would say hooray for Steinbeck. If you want to get at the spirit of something, sometimes it’s important to use the techniques of a fiction writer.”

Be it resolved, therefore, that Steinbeck never claimed to be recreating the Congressional Record: his is just one man’s astute perceptions of his country, and his country-to-be.

Holly, Joseph McKenna's beagle, shown before reliving Travels with CharleyFor this scribbler, Travels with Charley has been a lucky charm and a writing model. In 1989, a Penton Publishing executive who was handling the final phase of my job interview process at Industry Week magazine asked me to tell him about my favorite book. Within a week I was passing my fellow Steinbeckian on the corporate floor. Two years ago Travels with Charley was my inspiration for an article I wrote about regular turnpike shuttles between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. The hook of this human-interest feature was our family’s loud and loveable Beagle, Holly, aka The Duchess of Hollingsworth.

Upon her arrival on Route 22 in Pennsylvania, Holly prepares for days of adulation lavished upon her by family and strangers alike. As Steinbeck relates in his tales,“many conversations en route began with ‘What degree of a dog is that?” In 2011 America, the Duchess of Hollingsworth cocks her head at all she meets and elicits,‘”My, what a sweet dog! Do you live around here?”

“No, we’re just visiting from Cleveland,” Carol explains. “We’re here to visit family. Aren’t we, Holly?”

The typical response goes something like this: “So you’re part of the Browns’ Dawg Pound, eh? You’re a real cutie. Enjoy your visit, Holly.”

And the ancient animosity between Cleveland and Pittsburgh is momentarily forgotten.

Many conversations en route began with ‘What degree of a dog is that?’

For readers everywhere, Travels with Charley is a keystone of what another Steinbeck biographer, Jackson Benson, has called the moral trilogy comprised by Travels with Charley, The Winter of Our Discontent, and America and Americans. From his three-book literary bully pulpit in the 1960s, Steinbeck warned that “it is historically true that a nation whose people take out more than they put in will collapse and disappear.” Steinbeck could have written that just this morning.

It is historically true that a nation whose people take out more than they put in will collapse and disappear.

Here’s a final, timely observation shared by Charley’s owner with this reader in the early autumn of 2013:

“In the beginning of this record I tried to explore the nature of journeys, how they are things in themselves. . . .  I speculated with a kind of wonder on the strength of the individuality of journeys and stopped on the postulate that people don’t take trips—trips take people. That discussion, however, did not go into the life span of journeys. This seems to be variable and unpredictable. Who has not known a journey to be over and dead before the traveler returns? The reverse is also true: many a trip continues long after movement in time and space has ceased.”

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The Seeds of Death

September 26, 2013 by 1 Comment

genetically-modified-food

Wherever he lived, John Steinbeck kept a garden. He believed that being close to nature and living in harmony with the earth’s ecology was an essential part of being human. What I learned about industrial agriculture on my recent trip through Steinbeck Country would make the author of The Grapes of Wrath spin in his grave.

How My Genetically Modified Food Education Began

Steinbeck—not genetically modified food—was on my mind when we set out for King City, Paso Robles, and San Luis Obispo—our ultimate destination—recently. There, on busy Monterey Street, a used bookstore beckoned with roomfuls of books on every imaginable subject. In the fiction area, high above the ‘S’ authors, hung huge photos of John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts. A good sign! On the shelf below, between Gertrude Stein and Thomas Steinbeck—nothing. As the store’s manager explained, San Luis Obispo is an ecology-minded, Steinbeck-loving college town. Used copies of anything by Steinbeck are snapped up quickly. An even better sign for our Steinbeck Country weekend!

Monsanto, EPA, FDA, and Global GMO Food Disaster

The store next door had an intriguing name: HumanKind Fair Trade. A handwritten sign by the door described the inventory and promoted the virtues of purchasing Fair Trade certified products. Inside, among colorful fabrics and hand-woven garments, a stack of For A Better World magazines caught my attention. With nothing by Steinbeck to occupy the rest of the trip, I decided to take a copy of the magazine’s special GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) issues for bedtime reading. I didn’t sleep well. I kept thinking about the helicopters overhead on Highway 101 as we made our way south through the lettuce fields surrounding Soledad, Greenfield, and King City. They were spraying pesticides.

How Monsanto, the EPA, and the FDA Collude to Control

At home I watch the news and keep up with current events. I’d heard about the controversy over genetically modified food crops and genetically modified farm animals. But until I read my copy of For A Better World that night in San Luis Obispo, I had no idea that industrial agriculture and Monsanto have colluded successfully to control the world food supply with EPA, FDA, and USDA approval. I began to wonder why the terrifying genetically modified food story isn’t on the news every night. This GMO monster is a menace to global survival, and the battle against Monsanto may be the most important call to action the world faces today. So why are so-called consumer-protection agencies like the EPA, FDA, and USDA staying on the sidelines?

EPA +  FDA + USDA = Former Monsanto Executives, Monsanto Lobbyists, and Monsanto Board Members

Over the past 10 years, seven or more former Monsanto employees have held high-level positions at the FDA. Michael R. Taylor, currently the Deputy Commissioner of the FDA’s Office of Foods, was also Deputy Commissioner for Policy within the FDA in the mid 1990s. Between his last FDA job and his current one, Taylor was Monsanto’s Vice President of Public Policy. As an attorney for Monsanto, he advised the company on the legal implications of using the rBGH hormone on cattle. However, when Taylor left Monsanto for the FDA, he helped write the FDA’s rBGH labeling guidelines—guidelines which promote profits at the expense of public safety. Giant international chemical companies like Monsanto, Dupont, and Dow now effectively control the EPA, FDA, and USDA, helping push patented products—genetically modified food products, herbicides, pesticides, and hormones—past compliant legislators, regulators, and government agencies.

GMO and Roundup–Glyphosate–Are a Time Bomb

Remember Agent Orange, the Monsanto-made defoliant used in Viet Nam to kill nature and people? The company’s latest gift to ecology is glyphosate, the toxin used as a herbicide, which is now marketed worldwide under Monsanto’s friendly brand name Roundup. Here’s how Roundup works: As weeds become resistant to herbicides, genetically modified food crops require the application of more and more chemicals, including glyphosate. Glyphosate has the ability to disrupt soil ecology, effectively killing the earth where it is used. Glyphosate also binds-up soil nutrients, dramatically reducing the nutritional value of crops. Exposure to Roundup in animals has been linked to brain and immune disorders, reproductive problems, cancer, birth defects, diabetes, and more. Independent scientists warn that Roundup toxicity has been grossly underestimated by industry-friendly regulators at the EPA, FDA, and USDA. Instead of protecting the public from the threat of glyphosate toxicity, the EPA recently raised the allowable trace percentage of Roundup in farm-grown foods. You can read about it here.

GMO Food and Glyphosate: Threats to Global Health

Because the EPA, FDA, and USDA have failed to protect us, we have to do it ourselves—starting at the shelves of our local supermarket. Until the fight for mandatory GMO food labeling is finally won, anti-GMO activists advise consumers to buy only organic foods, avoid processed products, and—because you can’t tell from the label—assume that glyphosate is present unless goods are certified as organic. But glyphosate ingestion is only part of the problem with GMO foods. In independent lab tests, rats have developed horrible cancer tumors after being fed Monsanto genetically modified food products. Damage occurs at the molecular level, as the RNA from the GMO product being consumed binds with the RNA in the cells of the animal consuming the GMO. This process permanently changes the DNA of beneficial bacteria in the gut—another danger to bodily health. If you didn’t know better, you’d be right to ask why the EPA, FDA, and USDA haven’t intervened to stop this deadly cycle.

Same Old Story! Genetically Modified Food = Big Money

The United States Patent Office now allows Monsanto to patent organisms, issuing entire portfolios of patents to the company for the GMO seeds and glyphosate herbicide products Monsanto wants to see all over the world. When the company applies for a new patent, Monstanto’s attorneys claim that every GMO innovation is absolutely unique. Yet Monsanto lobbyists take the opposite position when the company petitions the FDA not to impose the GMO food labeling that is mandatory in most countries. With stunning illogic, Monstanto denies that GMO foods are any different from naturally grown products when the issue is labeling, while at the same time claiming that it has the right to patent GMO seeds as proprietary inventions.

Is Genetically Modified Food the Beginning of the End?

Once farmers convert fields to biotech crops like Monsanto’s, there is no turning back. Soil ecology is damaged by the increased application of Roundup. Genetically engineered plants are frequently sterile, so farmers must go back to the company to purchase the seeds and herbicides needed for next year’s crop. Monsanto prohibits farmers from replanting or cultivating their own seeds from patented GMO stock. Meanwhile, genetically modified pollen and seeds are spreading like a virus, carried by the wind to organically farmed fields miles away. The result? GMO pollen and seeds are now polluting organic food crops on neighboring farms, silently and without the affected farmer’s knowledge or approval. The process of contamination doesn’t end there. Glyphosate poison saturates the soil, enters streams, and may ultimately make its way into rivers and oceans. Our ecosystem is in peril today because GMO profiteers are kept in business by the compliance and collusion of EPA, FDA, and USDA officials in bed with Industrial Agriculture. It’s The Grapes of Wrath on steroids.

Act Now! Avoid GMO Foods and Glyphosate Products

Do three things today to help protect yourself from the global menace of genetically modified food and herbicide products:

  1. Google the words GMO, genetically modified foods, Monsanto, Roundup, glyphosate, Michael R. Taylor, EPA, FDA, and USDA.
  2. Pick up a copy of For a Better World and visit websites like Non GMO Project.
  3. Join the upcoming march against Monsanto.

To get a closer look at what ecocide by genetic modification means to you, check out this compelling video. It’s as dramatic as The Grapes of Wrath, except that its subject is the Seeds of Death being sown by Industrial Agriculture on an apocalyptic scale:

Filed Under: Ecology, Featured, Politics & Religion Tagged With:

Steinbeck in Scotland

September 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment

1919 street crowds pictured in Glasgow, ScotlandI live in Glasgow, Scotland, where I “discovered” John Steinbeck relatively late in life. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I sat down and actually read one of his books, my introduction being—as for generations of readers before me—The Grapes of Wrath. From then on I was hooked on Steinbeck, a writer with Scots-Irish roots that I believe are evident throughout his life and work.

Workers’ Rights in Glasgow, Scotland, and in Steinbeck

After moving from The Grapes of Wrath to other works by Steinbeck, I was struck by the parallels between Steinbeck’s themes and the Scottish nature, as well as by hints of Scotland’s strong radical working class tradition in Steinbeck characters who display distinctly Scottish traits. Among the most memorable are Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, Jim Nolan—the protagonist of In Dubious Battle—and the young labour organizer who takes a beating in “The Raid.” In their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the good of their social cause, these protagonists clearly reflect the qualities of John Maclean and the Red Clydesiders of early 20th century Glasgow, Scotland.

The accompanying photographs illustrate my point. Two were taken in 1919 at a rally attended by an estimated 90,000 men and women in Glasgow, Scotland, demonstrating their support of the campaign for a shorter working week and better conditions for workers. Unfortunately the police panicked and officials sent in tanks and soldiers to the city centre, fearing that the protests would lead to revolution and resulting in the Battle for George Square. The first image shows crowd members raising the red flag, the second Government tanks on the streets. The third records the trial of the Red Clydesiders.

Battle for George Square pictured in Glasgow, ScotlandKeeping The Grapes of Wrath Fresh Beyond School

As far as I am aware, no in-depth study exists of the Scottish links that became so apparent to me in my reading of Steinbeck. One thing that I think prevents many young people from appreciating Steinbeck’s work in Scotland is that he is required reading in many schools. Being forced to read something in the school environment is not, in my opinion, conducive to personal enjoyment.

I speak from experience. Almost 25 years after leaving school, I am still reluctant to get better acquainted with the works of Shakespeare! Not that Steinbeck or Shakespeare shouldn’t be taught in schools. To the contrary, I think both writers ought to be required reading. The question is whether the teacher’s enthusiasm becomes contagious, inspiring students to continue reading beyond the required introduction and the boundaries of the classroom.

Lessons from a Glasgow, Scotland, Bookstore

I am not alone in this belief. While browsing in a bookshop for Steinbeck titles after finishing The Grapes of Wrath, I got to speaking to with a store assistant. She had been put off from delving further into Steinbeck by being forced to read Of Mice and Men in school. Reversing the usual customer-advisor role relationship, I spent the next few minutes convincing her of Steinbeck’s artistic merit and persuading her to give him another chance! I bought The Winter of Our Discontent that day but haven’t been back to the bookstore to ask if she did. Meanwhile I’ve almost persuaded myself to give Shakespeare a second try.

Shakespeare may be English, but Steinbeck was Northern Irish on his mother’s side. Her family name of Hamilton is Scottish in origin, and seems likely that her ancestors arrived in Northern Ireland from Scotland sometime during the 18th century. Less certain is whether the spirit of John Maclean and the Red Clydesiders—or earlier Scottish movements like the Radicals of the 1820s—directly influenced Steinbeck’s fiction. What is undeniable, however, is the writer’s interest in Scottish affairs.

Trial of the Red Clydesiders pictured in Glasgow, ScotlandFrom Robert Burns to The Grapes of Wrath

Steinbeck’s February 1964 letter to Jacqueline Kennedy suggests the author’s sense of attachment to the homeland of his Hamilton ancestors and his familiarity with its history: “You talked of Scotland as a lost cause and that is not true. Scotland is an unwon cause.” Speaking in the spirit of Steinbeck’s statement, Alex Salmond, the First Minister of Scotland, noted that “every society is an unwon cause – the struggle for fairness, equality, tolerance, rights of free speech and thought – these are struggles which are never won – they require constant vigilance and courage.”

But Steinbeck’s books also show Scottish influence. His appropriation of the Scottish poet Robert Burns for the title of his novel Of Mice and Men conveys Steinbeck’s theme, along with a connection to Scottish populism. Like Steinbeck’s novel, Burns’ short poem “To A Mouse” reflects both compassion for humanity and uncertainty about the future. Ma Joad, the strong maternal figure in The Grapes of Wrath, is a recognizably Scottish type. Such women became a feature of the working class during the 1920s and 30s, particularly in the mining communities around Glasgow, Scotland, where large numbers of working men were flung onto the unemployment scrapheap, requiring wives and mothers to hold households together through the crisis that followed.

Support for My Steinbeck Journey in Search of Scotland

In the coming months, I would like to explore the similarities between the thinking of John Steinbeck and what I see as the Scots experience, building the case for the influence of Scottish history and values in the writer’s fiction. If I can find the necessary financial support, I will also gauge the mood of modern Scotland as the Scots people decide whether to reclaim their national independence. In September 2014, a general referendum will determine whether Scotland will become an independent nation or remain part of the United Kingdom. (Perhaps not coincidentally, Glasgow, Scotland, will host Britain’s Commonwealth Olympics in 2014.)

In 1960, Steinbeck set out across the United States to learn more about his country at the beginning of a the last decade of his life. For my part, I would like to learn more about my country as we approach a crucial point in the evolution of our identity, and to discover whether the Scottish traits I recognise in Steinbeck’s characters survive in the land of my birth. Are the Scots people up to the challenge of creating a fairer society? Are Tom Joad, Jim Casy, and Jim Nolan still to be found among the two-million-person population of Greater Glasgow, Scotland, and other parts of my country? It’s an ambitious but timely project—one that I look forward to beginning once I’ve identified private sponsorship or public financial support for my Steinbeck-Scotland journey.

Filed Under: Featured, Justice, Politics & Religion Tagged With:
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