Winston Churchill, modern Britain’s greatest leader, had an American mother. Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, is believed by elitist Englishmen to be the real author of the works of William Shakespeare. Along with other American writers, John Steinbeck has been banished from United Kingdom schools. These outcomes have a common origin.

Was the Writer of William Shakespeare’s Works an Earl?

A recent review of the Who-Really-Wrote-the-Plays-of-William-Shakespeare theory prevalent in certain heady quarters of the United Kingdom reveals how members of the House of Lords and other English gentry-folk steadfastly refuse to believe that a country bumpkin from Stratford-upon-Avon could have created the poetry or plays attributed to William Shakespeare. From the House-of-Lords point of view, the genius behind William Shakespeare had to have been one of their own, and the Earl of Oxford is their preferred  suspect.  A busy school of William Shakespeare alternative biography has grown up around this notion, a United Kingdom export that has found favor with literary-minded lawyers who like to write daft books proving the case against Shakespeare’s authorship. To my knowledge, neither Winston Churchill nor John Steinbeck bought the idea. But Churchill was half-American and Steinbeck was half-Irish, both problematic from an English House-of-Lords perspective.

From the House-of-Lords point of view, the genius behind William Shakespeare had to have been one of their own, and the Earl of Oxford is their preferred  suspect.

Fortunately, such House-of Lords thinking is largely confined to England, a green and pleasant land, which—if truth be known—would easily fit into the state of Wisconsin or Washington with room to spare.

The Members-Only Club at the United Kingdom’s Center

England’s small size deserves emphasis because at the crowded center of the once-great United Kingdom rests a nice little Club called London, where the people who own England live and work.  For the most part they comprise a genteel alumni society of graduates from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, neither of which William Shakespeare attended.  At college they spend a considerable portion of their time learning the importance of denying one’s roots (if humble), one’s speech (if less-than-upper class), and one’s parentage (if lower than House-of-Lords).  They have, to quote from a National Geographic article about Oxford University, “attended two years of higher education, and completed one year of preparing a lengthy paper about what they’ve studied, in order to become absolute snobs.”  Upon graduation, they assume the confident air that England—like the United Kingdom in its heyday—is theirs by virtue of right and tradition.

For the most part they comprise a genteel alumni society of graduates from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, neither of which William Shakespeare attended.

Like Winston Churchill, a number of these worthy Club members run successfully for political office. They also manage the nation’s finances, determine her rules and regulations, publish her books and periodicals, run her courts and culture, and decide how folks from the hinterlands like William Shakespeare eat, sleep, read, study, and are entertained. A recent report in London’s Independent newspaper detailed how those in the Club rule English affairs. Like William Shakespeare’s coarser comedies, or like John Steinbeck’s social fiction, little that occupies the attention of the humble multitude matters much to them.  What isn’t in their interest just doesn’t count.

How England Sleeps: Crowding by Design

Take sleeping and driving arrangements in England, for example. Civic planners and urban architects—members of the Club—design housing for the lower orders that, by modern standards, is less than adequate. The schemes for jammed-together homes and flats are transmitted to a well-fed breed of bumpkins called Builders and Developers who, in the interest of higher profits, shrink building plans even further. Cost-cutting measures include the elimination of such non-essentials as spacious bedrooms, fitted bathrooms, insulated windows, proper heating,  sufficient outlets and closets, garages with room for an automobile, and enough private space to entertain more than four guests at a time.

Civic planners and urban architects—members of the Club—design housing for the lower orders that, by modern standards, is less than adequate.

In the 1960s the Club decided that working bumpkins were cluttering the highways and that the number of cars purchased by commoners had to be controlled. Their solution? Restrict allowable garage space to one per five-person house. For new apartments, the B&D people further limited the number: only one garage per seven or eight flats. The result? Urban housing estates now look like car parks, with autos crowded onto sidewalks, lawns (those that are still left), and every inch of available road space. Even the treasured rose bushes and ubiquitous privet hedges that once graced the green heart of the United Kingdom are gone, replaced by gravel, asphalt and stones made from a product called Krazy-Pavement to provide public parking.

It’s easy to imagine what William Shakespeare would make of a “box room” scene of sleep-deprived sibling rivalry on the stage.

The average family’s private arrangements are similarly limited by design: one tiny bathroom fitted with a narrow bathtub but no shower, two modest bedrooms, and a 7′ x 8′ “box room” for the ironing board and the Hoover that doubles as a bedroom for the extra .5 child produced by the median married couple. In its report, the Independent fails to quantify the psychological effects of domestic crowding on English children, but it’s easy to imagine what William Shakespeare would make of a “box room” scene of sleep-deprived sibling rivalry on the stage.

Learning to Speak Like a Member of the House of Lords

The Independent article details the time spent at elocution lessons by upwardly mobile university students born outside the Club. Received Pronunciation—known in the United Kingdom as RP—is a style of pronunciation that, when mastered by ambitious bumpkins for public speech, proves that they were born, if not bred, to lead.  We don’t how William Shakespeare or Edward de Vere sounded when they talked, but the broad vowels and clipped consonants of BBC radio commentators are the norm for today’s ruling class. No one in the United Kingdom believes this sound is God-given, but its acquisition is felt to be a sign of superiority once mastered. No one in the Club really wants to reveal his or her origins in Liverpool, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Bristol, Cornwall, Scots, Wales, Suffolk, Midlands, Newcastle, Birmingham, or London’s East End. As a result, only the standardized speech emanating from London (RP) is heard on the airwaves or in most public speech. Regional stations and local politicians may vary, but the rich linguistic diversity upon which William Shakespeare’s pointed puns depend is disappearing from England’s ear.

We don’t how William Shakespeare or Edward de Vere sounded when they talked, but the broad vowels and clipped consonants of BBC radio commentators are the norm for today’s ruling class.

Winston Churchill was a Club member on his father’s side and overcame personal obstacles to become a forceful public speaker. But two later prime ministers who advanced from Churchill’s Conservative Party to the House of Lords—Margaret Thatcher and John Major—were famous for losing their outsider accents at university to hide traces of their non-Club origins. Thatcher’s parents operated a grocery store in Lincolnshire, far to the north of London; Major’s father puttered around the family’s minor South London residence making  concrete garden gnomes. Commoners by birth, neither was ever totally accepted by the Club, and both were unceremoniously jettisoned after serving the Club’s purpose. Denying that a rustic could have written the plays of William Shakespeare is another way of making the same point.

Closing the Door on American Writers in English Schools

Having swapped Shakespeare for an earl, the Club’s education bureaucracy recently decided to put works by American writers—including John Steinbeck—on the Do-Not-Read list. (The education office order effects England, Wales, and Ireland, but not Scotland or other parts of the United Kingdom.)  So in Great Britain, it’s out with Herman Melville, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Henry and Arthur Miller, and both Sinclairs—Upton and Lewis. Also banished from the classroom—despite their Pulitzer or Nobel status—are Carl Sandburg, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, and Pearl S. Buck—like John Steinbeck, a double awardee.

Also banished from the classroom—despite their Pulitzer or Nobel status—are Carl Sandburg, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, and Pearl S. Buck—like John Steinbeck, a double awardee.

In William Shakespeare’s sceptered isle, where a book selling five thousand copies is considered a best-seller, popular American writers like Edgar Allen Poe, J. D. Salinger, Langston Hughes, Frank L. Baum, and Kurt Vonnegut are now non grata. William Shakespeare’s sonnets are still in because their author (Edward de Vere?) was English, but those by the American poet Emily Dickinson are out.  The literary pub has also closed for such rustic regulars as Jack London—like Steinbeck, a Californian—and Eugene O’Neil—like Steinbeck, half-Irish—as well as my hometown favorite, Thornton Wilder.  It’s even time for T.S. Eliot, the clubbiest of Anglo-American literati since Henry James, to round up his cats and go home to St. Louis.

What Would William Shakespeare Say About the Ban?

We have no way of knowing of course—even if Shakespeare was really the Earl of Oxford—but I have my own ideas about the Club bureaucracy’s decision to drop American writers from the English-school reading list. While living in the rolling green hills of Warwickshire for a long period, I found most Englishmen to be both agreeable and sociable. But a minority viewed anyone not born in England as an intruder—particularly “overpaid, over-sexed, over-here” Americans who had overstayed the temporary welcome extended by Winston Churchill in World War II. Beginning in 1943, the villages of William Shakespeare’s island were stuffed to the scuppers with GIs being readied for the invasion of Normandy. Meanwhile, bombed-out London attracted pro-English American writers, including John Steinbeck, sent by press or government to report on the action and build confidence back home.

Beginning in 1943, the villages of William Shakespeare’s island were stuffed to the scuppers with GIs being readied for the invasion of Normandy.

But that was then. Today human nature—English nature—has returned to the pre-World War II habit of disliking the other guy because he isn’t one of us. Parts of the United Kingdom, such as Scotland, are more populist, but in England this elitist thinking is driven from the top down. Its accumulated force is powerful, supported by heavy taxes paid from the bottom up. At Westminster, the magnificent home of the Houses of Lords and Commons that together make the United Kingdom’s laws, there are 20 members-only bars subsidized by taxpayers—count them: 20—serving healthy pints of ale, generous snifters of brandy and port, and beautiful cut-glass tumblers of Scottish whiskey to insiders. According to the August 10 London Guardian, booze and food for ruling Westminster’s elite cost the British public more that six-million pounds last year, with the House of Lords imbibing the lion’s share of subsidized fare and accounting for an over-sized increase in tax-funded expenditures for lavish clubroom renovations.

The House of Lords: England Reflected in the Bar Mirror

Each of the private bars funded by the people serves one or another social class or political element exclusively. The bars maintained for the House of Lords are closed to members of Commons; those for House of  Commons ministers are off limits to taxpayers.  One bar tolerates visitors, but you have to be invited in by a member of the House of Commons, and it’s called The Strangers. To the House of Lords, all citizens are strangers equally. The House of Lords has 775 members, of whom 774 are white. Two-thirds attended public (in English, private) schools; 660 of them are life peers and 89 are hereditary peers; 635 of them are men, 181 women—a total (816) that doesn’t compute with the official number.

To the House of Lords, all citizens are strangers equally.

All of the private bars funded by taxpayers for the benefit of Westminster politicians allow only one or another class or political element in. Those for the House of Lords are closed to MPs from the House of Commons; those for House of Commons ministers are closed to members of the public who, in fact, pay the bills. There is one bar for visitors, but you have to be invited in by a Member of Parliament, and it’s called The Strangers. To those in the House of Lords, apparently all citizens are strangers, but there you are: that’s England for you—overwhelmingly white, over-educated at exclusive schools, and class-ridden; pampered at the top and neglected at the bottom. As noted, official figures sometimes fail to agree. Poor math or too much free booze? Whatever the cause, the notion that an English earl actually wrote the works of William Shakespeare is wacky enough, but it’s been around for some time. The banishment of American writers—including John Steinbeck—from schools in the United Kingdom is something new, and it’s totally idiotic.  Winston Churchill must be turning in his grave.

The death of the San Francisco freelance writer Curt Gentry on July 10 made me especially sad. An old-school journalist, a loyal fan of John Steinbeck, and a fearless writer about subjects close to Steinbeck’s divided heart (J. Edgar Hoover, San Francisco whorehouses), he helped me greatly when I researched Dogging Steinbeck, my true account of Travels with Charley, Steinbeck’s so-called non-fiction book. Curt Gentry was a gentleman, and one of the nicest guys I ever met.

Helter Skelter, J. Edgar Hoover, and Travels with Charley

As noted in his San Francisco Chronicle obit, Gentry made his fame and fortune co-writing Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders, and a devastating biography of John Steinbeck’s dark nemesis, J. Edgar Hoover. Controversy and power never frightened Curt. Among his 13 books were histories of the downing by the USSR of an American spy plane during the Eisenhower Administration, detested by Steinbeck, and of the legendary madams who made San Francisco famous and, for Steinbeck, appealing.

From the mid-1950s until his death, Gentry lived in San Francisco’s trendy/hip North Beach neighborhood. In late October of 1960, Steinbeck pulled into town with his wife Elaine and their dog Charley on the California leg of the author’s Travels with Charley road trip to rediscover an America he said he no longer understood. Gentry deftly landed an interview with his literary hero and wrote a long piece for the San Francisco Chronicle about what Steinbeck told him.

In late October of 1960, Steinbeck pulled into town with his wife Elaine and their dog Charley on the California leg of the author’s Travels with Charley road trip . . . . Gentry deftly landed an interview with his literary hero and wrote a long piece for the San Francisco Chronicle about what Steinbeck told him.

Fifty years later, Gentry was one of the first people I tracked down when I began my research before I wrote Dogging Steinbeck, a book that reveals how Steinbeck and his editors at Viking padded Travels with Charley with fictions and fibs, then passed it off as a work of nonfiction for half a century. In The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer, Steinbeck’s biographer Jackson Benson mentioned Gentry’s San Francisco Chronicle piece without giving the young journalist’s name.

Thanks to the San Francisco Public Library and the Internet, I found Gentry’s address and phone number and called him from Pittsburgh to ask for his help retracing Travels with Charley for my book. How would the man who exposed Helter Skelter and J. Edgar Hoover but admired Steinbeck react when he heard I was trying to piece together his hero’s actual (as opposed to imagined) Travels with Charley? He replied he’d be happy to meet me for lunch whenever I was in San Francisco. I met with him twice, on two separate trips, during long, memorable lunches at nearly empty North Beach restaurants.

“Steinbeck Meets the Press” During Travels with Charley

Here, in this “Steinbeck meets the press” excerpt from Dogging Steinbeck, is what Curt Gentry told me about his encounter with John Steinbeck at Steinbeck’s San Francisco hotel during Travels with Charley in 1960:

“Headquartered at the St. Francis, Steinbeck hung out with old friends at some of the city’s top bars and restaurants. The local print media instantly discovered his arrival. Herb Caen, the famed city columnist of the San Francisco Chronicle and ‘the uncrowned prince’ of the city, reported in his daily column on Oct. 28 that his friend John Steinbeck had ‘chugged’ into town ‘from New York’ on the evening of Oct. 26.

“The next day local writer Curt Gentry got a tip from a Chronicle staffer. Doing what any hustling freelancer would do, Gentry called the famous visiting author in his hotel room and begged for an interview. Steinbeck was notoriously publicity shy, but he told Gentry to come to the St. Francis the next morning.

Doing what any hustling freelancer would do, Gentry called the famous visiting author in his hotel room and begged for an interview. Steinbeck was notoriously publicity shy, but he told Gentry to come to the St. Francis the next morning.

“Gentry, then 29, would go on to write more than a dozen books, including his biggest one with Vincent Bugliosi, Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders. But in 1960 he was a struggling writer, ex-newspaper reporter and bookstore manager. He lived in North Beach, the super-hip Italian neighborhood in downtown San Francisco. He mixed with jazz musicians, young writers and the Beats, who were headquartered at Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore at the corner of Broadway and Columbus. He knew Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg in passing and novelist/poet Richard Brautigan well, but Gentry was also a serious Steinbeck fan.

“On my research trip in the spring of 2010 Gentry met me at the Washington Square Bar & Grill. In its heyday the dim, aging, wood-lined North Beach landmark was a hangout for writers, politicos, musicians and the city’s in-crowd. But the WashBaG, as Herb Caen had nicknamed it, was almost empty when I was there and in a few months would close forever. Gentry, as well known to the staff as the owner, was easy to spot at the bar, looking dapper in his brown cap. He was the real deal. Helter Skelter made him rich. His 1991 New York Times bestseller J. Edgar Hoover exposed Hoover’s paranoia, his serial abuses of power and how he created the myth of the FBI as invincible and incorruptible.

Gentry, then 29, . . . mixed with jazz musicians, young writers and the Beats, who were headquartered at Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore at the corner of Broadway and Columbus. He knew Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg in passing and novelist/poet Richard Brautigan well, but Gentry was also a serious Steinbeck fan.

“At 79 Gentry was still writing tough books like the one he was working on about the Las Vegas mob. He couldn’t have been nicer, more helpful or more supportive of my Charley-retracing project. Not only did he buy me lunch and ignore our wide political divide. But he told me stories about the 1960 North Beach scene, repeated his favorite Steinbeck gossip and, when I expressed doubt about pulling off a book deal, kindly said, ‘I have faith in you.’

“On top of that moral support, Gentry gave me something else that was priceless – 10 pages of notes he had typed up after his meeting with Steinbeck. An observant record of what Steinbeck was doing and thinking in mid-Charley trip, Gentry’s account depicts a politically partisan 58-year-old at the top of his game, not lonely, not depressed, but full of piss and vinegar.

“When Gentry went to the St. Francis for his 11 a.m. interview, he said, Elaine was still in bed, Charley was in a kennel and John was hung over. ‘It looked like they both had quite a night,’ Gentry told me. A longtime admirer of Steinbeck, Gentry showed up at Steinbeck’s hotel suite with two shopping bags filled with every Steinbeck title he could carry – 21 books.

Gentry showed up at Steinbeck’s hotel suite with two shopping bags filled with every Steinbeck title he could carry – 21 books.

“He asked Steinbeck to sign the books, which he cheerfully did. Steinbeck had just finished sending Adlai Stevenson a telegram containing some silly anti-Nixon jokes and was sewing together the clasp for his walking stick. Later, after Steinbeck finished a rant about what he called the immorality of Americans, Gentry wrote that ‘he tossed the stick across the room in anger.’

“In his notes, Gentry described Steinbeck as friendly, talkative and animated. They discussed, among many subjects, the presidential election, what was wrong with America, why his friend and neighbor Dag Hammarskjold would make a great president and why Hemingway should write about people not bullfighting. Steinbeck told Gentry he was driving across the country in an attempt to find out what the American people thought about politics. ‘Everywhere he has traveled,’ Gentry wrote in his notes, ‘there is fantastic interest. People are not indifferent, or undecided. They just won’t say.’

“Telling Gentry he had lately been seeing signs of a close Kennedy victory, Steinbeck made fun of Eisenhower and bemoaned the fact that for the previous eight years the Republicans had ‘made it fashionable to be stupid.’ Gentry also noted that Steinbeck ‘had much to say on Richard Nixon, a great part of it unprintable.’ According to Gentry, Steinbeck was down on Americans for becoming soft and what he called ‘immoral.’ Previewing what he would express in his recently completed but not yet published novel The Winter of Our Discontent, Steinbeck defined immorality as ‘taking out more than you are willing to put back.’

Telling Gentry he had lately been seeing signs of a close Kennedy victory, Steinbeck made fun of Eisenhower and bemoaned the fact that for the previous eight years the Republicans had ‘made it fashionable to be stupid.’

“Steinbeck, wrote Gentry, ‘went on to note emphatically that “a nation or a group or an individual cannot survive immorality. The individual can’t survive being soft, comforted, content. He only survives well when the press is on him. In Rome when they began taking more out than they put in they began to decay.” And then his voice grew louder, his gestures became more emphatic as he added “If a fuse blew out in the Empire State Building today a million people would trample themselves to death . . .  No one can do anything anymore. Who could slaughter and cut up a cow if they had to? No it has to be carefully cut for them, cellophane wrapped. They have lost the ability to be versatile. When either people or animals lose their versatility they become extinct.”‘

“When Gentry asked if he’d ever come back to live in California, Steinbeck said what he would later write in Travels with Charley after visiting his old haunts in Monterey. Steinbeck, according to Gentry, ‘said, sadly, “The truest words ever written were Thomas Wolfe’s ‘You Can’t Go Home Again.’ I wish it weren’t so but when I come back to California to stay it will be in a box.”‘

“Gentry had another gift for me. He gave me a copy of his original Steinbeck article, before it was edited. The piece ran in the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday, Nov. 6, 1960, under the headline ‘John Steinbeck: “America’s King Arthur is Coming.”‘ (In an eerie presaging of Jackie Kennedy’s post-assassination comment that her husband’s presidency had been ‘an American Camelot,’ Steinbeck had said, apparently in reference to JFK, that all countries have legendary King Arthur-types who show up during times of trouble.)

Gentry had another gift for me. He gave me a copy of his original Steinbeck article, before it was edited.

“In his article Gentry described Steinbeck as ‘big in body, mind, and heart’ and ‘full of humor, vitriol, compassion and strong feeling.’ What Gentry had written was printed in the paper verbatim until it came to his attempts to share some of Steinbeck’s stronger political opinions with the Chronicle’s readers. A 500-word chunk at the end of his article containing all the mean things Steinbeck had said about Nixon and Eisenhower had been simply lopped off. The newspaper, which along with the San Francisco Examiner gave its editorial support to Nixon, wasn’t going to let a famous author trash its Republican hero two days before the election.

“The edits didn’t surprise Gentry. He was very involved in politics in 1960. Like Steinbeck, he was a devout Adlai Stevenson Democrat. During the 1956 presidential year, when he was active in the Young Californians for Stevenson, Gentry was called upon to drive Stevenson around town a couple times. He also was a driver for JFK, who apparently was on his best behavior because Gentry had no sexy story to share.

A 500-word chunk at the end of his article containing all the mean things Steinbeck had said about Nixon and Eisenhower had been simply lopped off. The newspaper, which along with the San Francisco Examiner gave its editorial support to Nixon, wasn’t going to let a famous author trash its Republican hero two days before the election.

“Gentry and Steinbeck kept in touch, exchanging several letters over the next few years. After Steinbeck’s death Gentry wanted to write a book about him and his relationship with his close friend Ed Ricketts, the marine biologist and real-life model for Doc in Cannery Row. Steinbeck’s agent, Elizabeth Otis, liked the idea, Gentry said. But widow Elaine – who controlled Steinbeck’s estate with a firm hand – nixed it. Elaine was, to put it kindly, not Gentry’s favorite Steinbeck. One thing that bothered him, he said, was the closeness of Elaine to Steinbeck’s biographers, Jackson Benson and Jay Parini.

“’They automatically accepted anything she said about his first two wives, Carol or Gwen,’ he said. ‘Everything I’ve read and heard is that Elaine was a real ball-buster and a terrible person, with her ex-husband, Zachary Scott (the movie actor), manipulating her in the background.’ That was a new bit of inside-Steinbeck World gossip/dirt for me. I had no idea if it was true and didn’t care one way or the other, but it sounded like something a guy who wrote an expose of J.E. Hoover might know.

“Since Gentry had lived almost exclusively in North Beach since the mid-1950s, he was a good person to ask about how the neighborhood had changed. The biggest difference, he said, was the proliferation of striptease joints. That was pretty much all the ‘entertainment’ there was in 2010. But in 1960, the clubs and bars spinning around the intersection of Columbus and Broadway were booking stars of the present and incubating stars of the future. Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Art Tatum played in clubs. Johnny Mathis got his start in North Beach in the mid ‘50s right after high school.

“The famous North Beach nightclub the Hungry i, by itself, is said to have launched the careers of Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Bill Cosby, Jonathan Winters and Barbra Streisand. The Hungry i was owned by mad impresario Enrico Banducci, who also opened up Enrico’s Coffee House on Broadway. Upstairs was Finochio’s, the famous nightclub featuring a vaudevillian floorshow of female impersonators. Gentry knew and liked Banducci. As soon as he made enough money, Gentry said, he basically lived in Enrico’s sidewalk cafe, which by day was a Herb Caen watering hole and by night a jazzy de facto after-hours club for cops, prostitutes and scuffling writers like him.

“Enrico’s Café, now closed, still existed in 2010. But its glory days, like North Beach’s, were ancient history. The afternoon I went to check it out it was closed for lunch. Basically unchanged since 1960, its outside tables were jammed inside behind big glass doors. The sidewalk patio was showing its age, its concrete cracked and its booths worn at the corners. The three-story building needed a paint job. The top floor where Finochio’s raunchy floorshow once shocked or entertained the straight world looked vacant.

Since Gentry had lived almost exclusively in North Beach since the mid-1950s, he was a good person to ask about how the neighborhood had changed. The biggest difference, he said, was the proliferation of striptease joints.

“Enrico’s Café’s near neighbors in 2010 were strip clubs like the Hungry I Club (‘The Best Girls in Town’) and Big Al’s adult bookstore. But still on the corner of Columbus and Broadway was City Lights Books, which became world famous in 1956 after its owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti published Allen Ginsberg’s poem ‘Howl.’ The precedent-setting First Amendment test-case that followed ultimately overturned the country’s obscenity laws and allowed banned books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover to be published in the Land of the Free.

“For several days in the fall of 1960 Steinbeck loafed only a few hundred feet from City Lights, yet he had nothing to do with the Beats and their revolutionary scene, and vice versa. Ferlinghetti’s assistant told me Ferlinghetti and Steinbeck – the new literary generation and the old – never met then or any other time. By 2010 City Lights and the Beat Museum – a well-done retail shrine to the lives and works of Kerouac, Ginsberg and other dead Beats – were the only two reasons left for going to what was once one of the coolest, most cutting edge, most culturally important intersections in America.”

Curt Gentry’s Book Blurb for Dogging Steinbeck

“I still believe John Steinbeck is one of America’s greatest writers and I still love Travels with Charley, be it fact or fiction or, as Bill Steigerwald doggedly proved, both. While I disagree with a number of Steigerwald’s conclusions, I don’t dispute his facts. He greatly broadened my understanding of Steinbeck the man and the author, particularly during his last years. And, whether Steigerwald intended it or not, in tracking down the original draft of Travels with Charley he made a significant contribution to Steinbeck’s legacy. Dogging Steinbeck is a good honest book.” – Curt Gentry

Photo of Curt Gentry by Jim Wilson courtesy San Francisco Chronicle. Excerpt from Dogging Steinbeck courtesy Bill Steigerwald.

Alan Brasington is an American actor and writer from New Paltz who trained at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and lives in New York City. This week he begins his latest role as the voice of Steinbeck Now, reading the first of two short stories by Steve Hauk about John Steinbeck.

The road from college at SUNY New Paltz led through training in London to roles in Hollywood and on Broadway, where Alan performed in productions including the celebrated Noel Coward musical Oh Coward! Along the way he sang and danced, recorded and directed, and built a side business providing period props and costumes for major movies, commercial shows, and name-brand retailers. His current writing project is a novel. Like Steinbeck, he loves England and returns often. Like Steinbeck, his short stories and plays reflect universal human experience from an American point of view.

On stage Alan has played Scrooge and Shakespeare, danced and sung Noel Coward, and developed a distinctive Vincent-Price baritone rich in resonance, range, and New Paltz neutrality—an ability to reproduce multiple characters in recorded dialog without a give-away regional accent. John and Elaine Steinbeck’s New York ascendency coincided with Alan’s years in high school and college and at the Royal Academy, so the famous couple never met the aspiring young actor from New Paltz. But if they had, it’s easy to imagine Elaine spotting Alan (shown here performing in Oh Coward!) as a talent to watch.

Thanks to Alan Brasington’s literary leaning and Royal Academy training, Steve Hauk’s California short stories have found their ideal speaking voice. It happens to belong to a New Yorker from New Paltz with an ear for dialog, an eye for design, and a hand for writing imaginative short stories of his own. Ladies and gentlemen—meet Alan Brasington, the versatile voice of Steinbeck Now. Now sit back and enjoy his performance of “John and the River“—the first of Steve Hauk’s short stories about Steinbeck posted at SteinbeckNow.com.