Hear The Grapes of Wrath—Steinbeck Suite for Organ

March 7, 2014 by 2 Comments

Image of Franklin Ashdown and James Welch at Mission Santa ClaraSanta Clara University recently hosted a celebration in sound for the 75th anniversary of The Grapes of Wrath at California’s Mission Santa Clara—the world premiere of Steinbeck Suite for Organ by Franklin D. Ashdown (at left in photo), a prolific composer of popular contemporary organ music. As University Organist at Santa Clara University and a fan of Steinbeck’s fiction, I had the pleasure of performing the world premiere of Frank’s work in the program of American organ music that I played to conclude Santa Clara University’s 2014 Festival of American Music on February 16. Inspired by passages from The Grapes of Wrath and Tortilla Flat, Steinbeck Suite for Organ brought the Mission Santa Clara audience—which included Lothar Bandermann, a distinguished composer of orchestral, choral, and organ music who shares John Steinbeck’s German heritage—to its feet. (Scroll down to play audio.)

Organ Music for The Grapes of Wrath and Randall Ray

Steinbeck’s biographers say that the writer studied piano, sang in choirs, and appreciated organ music, particularly Bach. Since The Grapes of Wrath appeared, the music-minded author’s spirit has inspired almost every kind of music—including Aaron Copland’s musical setting of The Red Pony— except that written for the pipe organ. Thanks to a fan who lives near Santa Clara University and appreciates Frank’s organ music as much as he does Steinbeck’s writing, this condition ended with the commission of Steinbeck Suite for Organ in celebration of The Grapes of Wrath and in memory of Randall Ray, a North Carolinian who admired the novel and visited Steinbeck Country shortly before his untimely death in 2013. Members of the family present for the performance felt that the passages selected by the composer perfectly reflected Randall’s generous spirit and sympathy for the poor.

A World Premiere at California’s Mission Santa Clara

But hearing is worth a hundred words. Listen for yourself by clicking to enjoy each of the five movements of Steinbeck Suite for Organ recorded live on February 16 at Mission Santa Clara—music that reverberates with the pathos and exuberance of Tortilla Flat, The Grapes of Wrath, and John Steinbeck’s humanism. As I explained to the Mission Santa Clara audience, this organ music expresses energy, drama, and transcendence, qualities of Steinbeck’s writing, in colorful cascades of sound that rise and fall with the emotion of the passage being portrayed. Mission Santa Clara was a perfect venue for the world premiere, located on the Santa Clara University campus midway between Steinbeck’s home town of Salinas and San Francisco, the city where he attended opera and concerts as a boy. The program notes excerpted below were provided by the composer in the original organ music score.

I. Preambolo: “The Humanity of John Steinbeck”

In Preambolo, the first movement of this organ suite, Steinbeck’s sympathy for the individual and the common man is represented by the Trumpet stop which sounds a melody similar in character to Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. As the piece develops, a secondary theme builds to full organ, reflecting the immense influence of Steinbeck’s prose in American culture and politics.

 

II. Divertimento: The Grapes of Wrath

The Joad family joins a makeshift camp of fellow migrant pilgrims headed on Route 66 for the verdant valleys of California. They enjoy instant community as they trade stories, sit around the camp fire, sing folk songs and gospel songs, and finally join in a spirited square dance.

 

III. Miserere: The Grapes of Wrath

Ma Joad presents groceries for her large family at the check out counter. The clerk, a man with his own family to feed, cannot extend her credit. But he is sympathetic to her plight and pulls out a dime from his pocket to make up the difference. Miserere creates a somber tone which later brightens in response to the kindness of a stranger.

 

IV. Musica de los Paisanos: Tortilla Flat

Danny and his friends are a mixed Latino and Caucasian band of brothers living above Monterey, paisonos who spend their days adventuring and drinking booze. Musica de los Paisanos begins with a mellow haze and moves through a patchwork of stylized Spanish and Mexican folk tunes.

 

V. Toccata: Tortilla Flat

Danny, the central character of Tortilla Flat, inherited two houses. The smaller one, which he gave for the use of his paisanos, burned to the ground due to their carelessness. In a forgiving gesture, Danny let them move into his main home, where they enjoyed rich and colorful camaraderie, like the Knights of the Round Table. But it all ended when Danny died and his main house was consumed by flames. Toccata is emblematic of both houses burning.

 

Playing the Pipe Organ is a Family Affair

In addition to the world premiere of this piece, my February 16 program at Santa Clara University included organ music by American composers, such as Horatio Parker and Richard Purvis, that Steinbeck might have heard. As noted, the writer took piano lessons as a boy and enjoyed a variety of music, particularly the great American genres of jazz and Broadway, throughout his life. Following Steinbeck Suite for Organ on the Mission Santa Clara program, my son Nicholas, age 15, played the piano part for Clifford Demarest’s Fantasie for Piano and Organ, composed in 1917 when John Steinbeck was the very same age. Nicholas is shown at the far left of the photo with our son Jamison, 14, my wife Deanne, and me. Both boys are high school students in Palo Alto, California, where Steinbeck attended Stanford University. Like the writer John Steinbeck and the composer Frank Ashdown, our sons started piano early, and Nicholas now plays the pipe organ at church, as Frank and I did when we were growing up. Enjoying music was a family affair at the Steinbeck home in Salinas. It is at ours, too.

Image of the pipe organ-playing James Welch family

Recording provided by Santa Clara University with the permission of the composer and the performer. Program notes paraphrased by permission of Franklin D. Ashdown. The Mission Santa Clara pipe organ was built by Schantz Organ Company. Frank Ashdown’s choral and organ music is published by Morningstar, Augsburg Fortress, Alfred, Adoro, Concordia, and others. His distinctive compositions for choirs,  pipe organ, and other instruments have been performed in concert halls, churches, and cathedrals including the Mormon Tabernacle, Notre Dame de Paris, and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. He was born in Utah, grew up in Texas, and lives in New Mexico, where he directs his church choir and composes on an ingenious digital organ, installed in his home, that produces convincing sampled pipe organ sounds.

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Poem: James Dean Kissing Julie Harris in East of Eden

January 3, 2014 by 3 Comments

Now the better future has its say.
Now the lovers open their mouths

of once-only flesh saying: Take this
longing in fair exchange for yours.

Cal, eager to earn his way, shamed
for having an old whore for a mother

then not so much disgraced as reborn
into a world where fortunes rise and

fall with the market value of beans.
The message: God would have to be

a dumbass of some cosmic magnitude
to favor dweeb-son Aron over this guy,

Cal, maybe not the Good Son but a hunk
of scorching lust to succeed, nonetheless.

That the object of Cal’s affection is his
brother Aron’s girl is her call, after all.

Free will means everything is up for grabs.
And maybe he’s dumbstruck by the offer.

But the kiss is in case there’s no heaven,
no God, this appalling existence a single

CinemaScope Paradise Lost upon which
to bestow any sort of hope of redemption.

What’s a boy to do but smooch the girl
and outshine Adam for good measure.

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Contemporary Reviews of New Books by John Steinbeck from Cambridge University Press

September 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment

John Steinbeck: The Contemporary Reviews book coverWord-of-mouth book recommendations by passionate readers have been creating converts to Steinbeck since The Grapes of Wrath. Reviews of new books mattered, and readers were influenced by critiques of new books in daily papers, Sunday supplements, and national magazines. Steinbeck was fortunate in having influential friends who reviewed new books for major dailies in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. He wasn’t lucky everywhere, however, and he came to despise critics of new books as no-talents who couldn’t write their own. What turned Steinbeck against critics? The Cambridge University Press anthology of contemporary reviews of new books by Steinbeck, the majority by journalists, provides a book-by-book record of brilliance, sophistry, sophistication, and stupidity among critics of Steinbeck.

But note four points before you buy the Cambridge University Press anthology of contemporary reviews of new books by one of the 20th century’s most controversial authors:

1. It’s expensive.
2. It’s a collection of journalistic writing, not academic literary criticism.
3. It’s jargon-free and easy to read—a corollary of point #2.
4. It’s well-organized and prefaced by a helpful, well-written introduction.

Point #1 is an economic fact of modern life for publishers like Cambridge University.

Amazon’s paperback price for the volume is $68; $185 for the hardback version. At 2.23 pounds and 562 pages, the book may be a bargain for libraries like those at Cambridge University, but it’s stiff for independent scholars engaged in literary criticism about Steinbeck. Books like this one are now printed on demand: Despite its Cambridge University Press title page, the back-page colophon on my copy reads “Made in San Bernardino, CA, 10 September 2013.”  My guess is that producing a copy like mine costs Cambridge University less than the postage required to mail it to a buyer. As with soaring college tuition fees everywhere, the charge for new books by academic presses seems increasingly self-defeating and disconnected from reality. Caveat emptor.

Point #2 about literary criticism is a distinction with a real difference.

Literary criticism as a subdivision of the humanities (some say social sciences) is a systematic, comprehensive, and objective endeavor, withholding judgments about quality while interpreting, classifying, and illuminating works by authors in the context of history, psychology, and their relationship to other writers. Literary criticism as a euphemism for book-page journalistic reviewing is quite the opposite. Unlike practitioners of academic literary criticism, popular reviewers of new books make subjective judgments of quality based on personal, sometimes peculiar and often unspoken criteria. Like science, literary criticism as a subject depends on evidence, relationship, and analysis, not on the literary equivalent of personal creationism. Contemporary reviews of Steinbeck’s new books provide a dramatic example of this principle at work in journalism from the 1930s to the 1960s. Typically, critics who disapproved of Steinbeck’s language, lifestyle, or opinions described him as a bad writer. No wonder he hated them! I happened to learn literary criticism in college through the works of the Toronto academician Northrop Frye, a former minister who made the inspired observation that aesthetic judgments by critics about new books are more often than not moral judgments in disguise. Steinbeck suffered more than his share.

Point #3 reverses the relative value of professional journalists and practitioners of literary criticism as writers who are required to be readable.

Northop Frye was a facile writer, in part because as a preacher he had a weekly obligation to make himself clear to the voluntary audience in the pews. Journalists face the same challenge: daily deadlines, limits on length and vocabulary, and an obligation to avoid confusing, boring, or losing readers who are free to vote with their feet. Even bad reviewers of Steinbeck’s new books usually wrote well. In contrast, trying to comprehend a work of academic literary criticism published by, say, the Cambridge University Press can be a chore. I think that’s why contemporary reviews of new books by Steinbeck seem so entertaining when read by academic students of Steinbeck today—particularly when (like Mary McCarthy) they made spiteful but memorable comments about his work. As much for perverse enjoyment as for edifying information, the Cambridge University anthology is worth its weight. Carpe diem!

Point #4 reflects an exception to the bad academic writing rule that commends this collection more than most.

Literary criticism about Steinbeck seems—to me, anyway—more readable than contemporary academic writing about other authors. The editors’ introduction to the Cambridge University Press anthology suggests why this may be so. I’m personally familiar with the literary criticism of Susan Shillinglaw—one of the volume’s editors—and I’ve yet to encounter an unintelligible word or an inelegant sentence anywhere in her body of writing about Steinbeck. Her clarity of style matches that of her subject. It is evident in the historical survey of Steinbeck reviews that she and her colleagues provide in their introduction to the Cambridge University Press collection they co-edited.

Susan’s splendid article on Steinbeck’s religious roots—“John Steinbeck’s ‘Spiritual Streak’”—appeared in a journal called Literature and Belief published by Brigham Young University’s Center for the Study of Christian Values in Literature. One of the journal’s editors at BYU was Jesse S. Crisler, Susan’s fellow editor—along with Joseph R. McElrath, Jr.—for the Cambridge University collection. Perhaps the BYU relationship led to this project, perhaps the other way around. In either case, putting Susan Shillinglaw on the editorial team was a good move. Not unlike Northrop Frye, who produced literary criticism with pulpit clarity, Susan writes literary criticism as a journalist, to be understood rather than to obfuscate. Steinbeck’s opinion of his critics in the press notwithstanding, that’s a compliment.

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Why Pipe Dream Failed

September 26, 2013 by 2 Comments

What made Pipe Dream, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical version of Steinbeck’s novel Sweet Thursday, a failure on the stage? The 1955 theatrical production had a great source, a great team, and great prospects. It also had a run of bad luck, closing after six months despite record advance single-ticket sales, respectable group sales, and nine Tony Award nominations. I love Steinbeck and I love Rodgers and Hammerstein, but I’ll admit I never heard of Pipe Dream until I read Bob DeMott’s introduction to the 2008 Penguin edition of Sweet Thursday, the 1954 sequel to Cannery Row written by Steinbeck with Broadway in mind. I ordered the cast-recording CD, played the piano-solo version, and (I think) discovered the problem behind the problem with Pipe Dream.

Rodgers and Hammerstein pictured at the pianoWhy Rodgers and Hammerstein and Not Frank Loesser?

Cy Feuer and Ernie Martin, the show’s producers, wanted Frank Loesser to write the music and lyrics for Steinbeck’s off-key love story about Doc, a deeply melancholy marine biologist based on Ed Ricketts, and Suzy, the whore who steals the heart of Fauna, madam of Cannery Row’s Bear Flag brothel. Loesser was a logical choice. The winner of two Tony Awards for Guys and Dolls, he had been part of Steinbeck’s inner circle. If he wasn’t nervous about glamorizing Damon Runyon’s downtown gangsters and molls, he certainly wouldn’t worry about an off-the-wall romance set in a California whorehouse. Unfortunately, the Loesser of Two Goods was already working on his next hit, Most Happy Fella. But Rodgers and Hammerstein—the Greater of Two Goods, judging by Broadway’s bottom-line standard—were willing, available, and friends of the Steinbecks. Strike one.

Feuer and Martin also wanted Henry Fonda for the role of Doc, the troubled male lead in Pipe Dream. A 1940 Academy Award nominee for his portrayal of Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, Fonda had won a Tony Award in 1948 for his performance in Joshua Logan’s Broadway musical Mister Roberts. Fonda was also Steinbeck’s friend. Unfortunately, his singing voice wasn’t acceptable to Rodgers and Hammerstein and a less experienced performer got the part. Strike two.

For the demanding role of Fauna, Rodgers and Hammerstein were determined to have Helen Traubel, a classical singer whose Metropolitan Opera contract hadn’t been renewed because Rudolph Bing, the Met’s imperious manager, didn’t like her moonlighting as a nightclub singer. Hammerstein heard Traubel perform at the Copacabana club in New York and later in Las Vegas, where he offered her the part of Fauna in Pipe Dream. Honest about her lack of acting experience, Traubel accepted Hammerstein’s offer anyway. Strike three.

The cover of Pipe Dream pictured, showing the story's main charactersOdds in Favor of a Rodgers and Hammerstein Success

Yet the odds in favor of another Rodgers and Hammerstein success were strong. Oklahoma!, the pair’s first Broadway collaboration, ran for 2,212 performances after opening in 1943. Carousel—a tender story that touched the taboo of domestic violence—ran for almost 900 performances starting in 1945. But South Pacific was the Rodgers and Hammerstein home run that played for years, proving the team’s staying power. Co-written with Logan, Hammerstein’s book openly treated racism, also off-limits for Broadway musicals of the time. Rodgers’ timeless tunes were performed by Ezio Pinza, a classical musician who (unlike Helen Traubel) could act as well as sing.

There were modest failures for Rodgers and Hammerstein along the way, but not many. Allegro opened in 1947 and lasted only nine months. A serious work with a heavy moral, it had a Greek chorus, no sets, and direction and choreography by Agnes de Mille. Me and Juliet—the story of a backstage romance involving an assistant stage manager, a chorus girl, and her electrician boyfriend—featured complex machinery and lighting in place of standard sets and props. Though the odds in 1955 favored Pipe Dream, there was precedent for failure with Rodgers and Hammerstein. Allegro and Me and Juliet, shows that took a bet on breaking rules, had good music and short runs. Two of these traits would also characterize Pipe Dream.

Two CD covers pictured representing the cast recording and remake of Pipe DreamWhy Did Hammerstein Sentimentalize Steinbeck’s Story?

Following not breaking Broadway rules proved to be the problem with Pipe Dream when it opened. Steinbeck closely observed the process of production and worried that Hammerstein was making a mistake in fudging the character of Suzy, the female lead. Described by Steinbeck in a letter to Hammerstein as “an ill-tempered little hooker who isn’t even very good at that,” Suzy had to be a whore, Steinbeck said, for Pipe Dream to work as drama. Fauna’s Bear Flag establishment—in Steinbeck’s novel, the best little whorehouse in Monterey—was becoming a Hallmark card in Hammerstein’s timid treatment of Steinbeck’s tough story. Worse yet, Richard Rodgers was hospitalized with cancer during rehearsals for Pipe Dream, leaving Steinbeck alone to lose his argument with Hammerstein about how much reality audiences were ready to accept regarding Suzy’s true vocation and Fauna’s business. Strike four.

Yet from the show’s overture to its reprise, the music for Pipe Dream is Richard Rodgers at his best. “All at Once You Love Her,” “Everybody’s Got a Home But Me,” “Suzy Is a Good Thing,” “The Man I Used To Be,” “Sweet Thursday,” “The Next Time It Happens”—the show’s songs are as good as Carousel or Oklahoma! despite a single, significant exception. Hammerstein’s reluctance to reveal the truth about Suzy and the Bear Flag is evident in the words and music of Fauna’s signature song, “The Happiest House on the Block.”

I’ve played it a dozen times. Is the Bear Flag’s proud proprietress singing about an all-night whorehouse with a heart or a Hallmark household that simply stays up later than the neighbors? Major key or minor key? Comedy or kitsch? Like Hammerstein’s words, Rodgers’ music can’t quite decide which, leaving this listener—and audiences—confused. Steinbeck was right about Suzy. For anyone to care, she had to be a whore, not the virginal vagrant created by Hammerstein and derided by Steinbeck as coming across like a visiting nurse. And the Bear Flag had to be a brothel, not a house party with a happy-you’re-here message.

Broadway Musicals, the story of Stephen Sondheim, pictured with an image of John SteinbeckIf Only Stephen Sondheim Had Staged Pipe Dream Instead

Sometimes serendipity comes in small packages. While I was thinking about what happened to Pipe Dream between Sweet Thursday and opening night, I received a DVD of the TV special, Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy, for contributing to my local PBS affiliate. There I learned the startling reason Hammerstein was so wary about Suzy, Steinbeck’s whore—and why Stephen Sondheim would have been a better choice to stage Steinbeck’s ironic story 60 years ago. I’d always assumed that Hammerstein—like Stephen Sondheim and other social outsiders who created the Broadway I loved more than life—was Jewish. I was wrong.

Although his grandfather was a first-generation impresario on the pre-Broadway Jewish stage, Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was reared as an assimilated, Anglicized Protestant. And though Stephen Sondheim became Hammerstein’s greatest protégé before the composer died, Sondheim remarks on the DVD that he always resented Broadway’s genteel, Gentile habit of avoiding ambivalence by forcing happy endings on unhappy realities. From the Stephen Sondheim point of view (also mine), a Suzy without her profession, a Doc without his darkness, a Monterey without its whorehouse are monochromatic monads devoid of drama: Oklahoma without the Joads— Oklahoma! without The Grapes of Wrath.

Within years of Pipe Dream, Stephen Sondheim liberated Broadway from its remaining taboos: ambiguous sexuality, ambivalent relationships, and fear of 3/4 time sustained without let-up in a show. Too late, too bad, and a bit haunting when you imagine what might have been if Hammerstein had been as brave as his pupil and less attached to his class when writing Pipe Dream. Like Steinbeck, the lyricist of South Pacific and The King and I was a political progressive with a social conscience. Unlike Steinbeck—or Stephen Sondheim—he never abandoned his Middle-American devotion to happy endings and keeping up appearances. Other than not being Jewish, I wonder why he couldn’t make the leap. Perhaps because—unlike John Steinbeck and Stephen Sondheim—Oscar Hammerstein was a better-socialized product of a better-adjusted childhood with less reason to rebel, reject, or revolt.

In his closing interview for Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy, the director-producer Hal Prince reinforced my thoughts about Oscar Hammerstein’s timidity. Prince recalled that when he read Kander and Ebb’s original treatment for Christopher Isherwood’s “Goodbye to Berlin,” he thought their concept was too old-fashioned and added a sexually ambiguous character with the anonymous name Emcee. The show became Cabaret, Joel Grey became famous, and it was 1965—10 years after Pipe Dream and less than a decade before Stephen Sondheim replaced Rodgers and Hammerstein as monarch of the Broadway musical. I hope that John and Elaine Steinbeck saw Cabaret when it opened. I wonder if either imagined what might have been if Pipe Dream had been staged by Hal Prince or Stephen Sondheim.

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Steinbeck’s Home Movies

August 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Still image of John Steinbeck from home movies made by the author whose books became historic films.Do you like historic films as much as I do? Then you’ve probably seen Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and East of Eden, three classic movies made from books by John Steinbeck soon after they were published. If you love reading Steinbeck’s fiction, you may also be familiar with books about John Steinbeck such as Jackson Benson’s biography, The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer. If you want to see everything imaginable about John Steinbeck in one location—DVDs and documents, books about John Steinbeck and artifacts from the author’s life—the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University is worth a trip. I discovered it almost by accident about a year ago. It got me started reading Steinbeck and eventually led me to the author’s home movies.

Where Classic Movies Meet Books About John Steinbeck

I drove to the Martin Luther King, Jr., Library one afternoon last summer out of curiosity. The library is a big, sleek building at a major intersection in downtown San Jose, and I’d heard that it’s the only public library in America operated jointly by city government and a public university. Inside the atrium I noticed a bank of elevators with signs pointing to special collections on the fifth floor. The ride up provided a dramatic view of the mountains near San Jose. The fifth floor had its own kind of drama. The sound of Beethoven poured from a center devoted to his music, and the California Room looked large, light, and welcoming. But my attention was caught by period posters of classic movies made from books by John Steinbeck, visible through the spacious window of the  Martha Heasley Cox Steinbeck Studies Center. I went in and was amazed at what I discovered.

Amidst rows of books about John Steinbeck and objects from the author’s life—including his famous portable typewriter—I encountered Paul Douglass, professor of English at San Jose State University and the director of the Center. He was talking with Peter Van Coutren, the Center’s archivist, but they stopped their conversation to answer my questions. Some academics seem preoccupied or otherworldly. Not Paul and Peter. They’re down to earth, friendly, and available to everyone who walks through the door. Peter pointed out the manuscripts of books by John Steinbeck scrawled in the author’s barely readable writing. Paul commented on several scholarly books about John Steinbeck on display. As I browsed DVDs of Steinbeck’s classic movies and other historic films—including Ken Burns’s documentary on the Dust Bowl—Paul explained how Martha Heasley Cox, a retired English professor, started the Steinbeck collection that now bears her name. Peter and Paul invited me to visit again, and recently I did. But it was the writer’s home movies, not books about John Steinbeck, that brought me back.

Still image from Steinbeck's home movies, propably shot at Doc's lab, the setting of scenes from several historic films.

How Books by John Steinbeck Led Me to His Home Movies

Between visits I read books by John Steinbeck that inspired three of my favorite historic films, plus books about John Steinbeck as a novelist and screenwriter. I’ve always liked how John Ford directed Henry Fonda as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, and I love the way Elia Kazan—the director of On the Waterfront and other classic movies—let James Dean improvise the role of Cal Trask in East of Eden. When I drove to California after high school to break into movies, I had James Dean’s image in my mind. Unfortunately both our careers were brief. I ended up working at a restaurant in Los Angeles; Dean was killed in a car crash on the road to Salinas, the setting of East of Eden. After a year, I went home to Florida, where I became a professional photographer and videographer. But I never forgot the beauty of California pictured in classic movies from those books by John Steinbeck. Returning to California to live was my dream, and not long ago it came true. Visiting the Steinbeck Studies Center motivated me to read Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and East of Eden. From there I moved on to books by John Steinbeck set in nearby Monterey. (Remember Hitchcock’s classic movies made in California? The unforgettable mission scene in Vertigo takes place at San Juan Bautista, between Monterey and San Jose.)

Monterey is where I learned about Steinbeck’s home movies, acquired in the 1980s by Robert DeMott, the Center’s acting director after Martha Heasley Cox retired. I no longer work as a videographer, but I still love historic films. When I heard about Steinbeck’s home movies, I read more about his time in Hollywood and his relationship with the makers of other classic movies, including Alfred Hitchcock, who directed Lifeboat and clashed with Steinbeck. I returned to the Steinbeck Studies Center to see for myself how Steinbeck used a movie camera. The Center’s collection includes home movies made by Steinbeck in Monterey as far back as the 1940s, when movie cameras were clunky and you had to be a technician to make one work. Viewing the Center’s DVD sampler of Steinbeck’s home movies gave me a thrill. The visual imagination behind the camera is apparent in scenes that would go viral today. That segment where a curious mouse confronts a caterpillar, for example—most likely filmed at Doc Ricketts’s legendary lab, where Steinbeck liked to hang out with friends and shoot the breeze.

See Steinbeck’s Home Movies for Yourself at the Center

Think what John Steinbeck could do with a smartphone today! As the Center’s sampler shows, his skill with a movie camera was truly impressive. So, by the way, is the Center’s annual John Steinbeck Award. Past winners include Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp. This year’s awardee is Ken Burns, the maker of historic films on the Civil War, jazz, Prohibition, the Dust Bowl, and World War II, among other subjects of books by John Steinbeck. Burns will receive the John Steinbeck Award on Friday, December 8, at the San Jose State University Student Union Center. Tickets are still available from Ticketmaster. Why not plan your visit so you can attend the event and sample Steinbeck’s home movies, all in one trip? Admission to the Center is free, and the library is only a short walk from the Student Union. See you there!

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The Literary Music of The Grapes of Wrath

August 17, 2013 by 1 Comment

James Welch, organist, photoAs I was writing my book about the life of Richard Purvis—a California contemporary of John Steinbeck who composed literary music for the organ with a colorful, cinematic character—I was reminded how hard the task faced by writers of books really is. It certainly was for Steinbeck, one of my favorite writers of books on any subject. Steinbeck’s language has always sounded like literary music to my ears, but I wasn’t sure why that was before reading about the background of The Grapes of Wrath. I knew Steinbeck wrote the novel in Los Gatos, not far from Palo Alto, where I live. Recently I learned that he listened to Bach’s Art of the Fugue as he wrote. No wonder the literary music of Steinbeck’s masterpiece conveys such convincing counterpoint. He had Bach’s masterpiece in his head as he was wove the literary music of the Joads, California, and Depression-era America into his great verbal fugue.

As a concert organist, I’m used to practicing my art long hours each day. Most writers of books do as well, but Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath at an incredible pace. Two- to three-thousand words at a sitting is extraordinary, a fact I came to appreciate when I was writing my biography of Purvis. I couldn’t help speculating that certain subjects of Purvis’s literary music, particularly his “Night in Monterey” for organ, would have appealed to the author of The Grapes of Wrath. After all, the literary music of Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” inspired Steinbeck’s title and was reproduced on the endpapers when the book was published.  How many other writers of books ever paid similar homage to a specific piece of music?

I read about how Steinbeck liked listening to Bach in Working Days, the collection of daily journal entries Steinbeck made to warm up before resuming work on The Grapes of Wrath. It occurred to me that, for writers of books, this process is like organists running through scales and arpeggios at the piano before beginning daily organ practice. To make music on the organ—or create literary music at a desk—requires limberness, dexterity, and well-developed skill. So I wasn’t surprised to hear from the organist at Steinbeck’s Episcopal church in Salinas that the author of The Grapes of Wrath took piano lessons as a boy and sang in the children’s choir. Though he attended Stanford University 50 years before I did, Steinbeck and I have much in common. We both like science, enjoy travel, and love Bach and the beach. We’re both from California, a state that has produced distinctive literary music, from Richard Purvis to the Beach Boys, over the years. Other writers of books hailed from sunny California, but for me, none was a literary music maker quite like the author of The Grapes of Wrath.

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