Since 1938, The Grapes of Wrath has been translated into more than 25 languages. In February, San Jose State University kicked off the novel’s 75th anniversary with an exhibit of 15 colorful covers selected from foreign editions of The Grapes of Wrath housed at San Jose State University’s Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies. Each cover is featured on a different poster designed specifically for the exhibit; each poster includes a quotation from The Grapes of Wrath or from Working Days, Steinbeck scholar Robert DeMott’s edition of journal entries made by Steinbeck during the writing and controversial aftermath of the novel and movie starring Jane Darwell and Henry Fonda (shown here). Unfortunately for collectors, the posters are one-of-a-kind items destined for the Center’s extensive archive of Grapes of Wrath manuscripts and memorabilia. Fortunately, the 75th anniversary Grapes of Wrath exhibit is free and open to the public on the fifth floor of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Library, a joint venture of San Jose State University and the City of San Jose, California.

John Steinbeck books abound at San Jose State University, home of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies. But not all of the good books found there are about John Steinbeck. Thanks to the Center’s generous founder, Martha Heasley Cox, San Jose State University supports the creation of good books by young writers at a rate far beyond its size. Short stories, novels, memoirs, articles and essays, anthologies: good books of every variety blossom like spring flowers from the Steinbeck Fellows program, an important incubator of up-and-coming writers mentored by San Jose State University’s top creative writing faculty.

San Jose State University Nurtures Writers in Many Forms

The University’s busy Steinbeck Center—the most concentrated collection of John Steinbeck books and manuscripts available to readers and researchers anywhere—initiated the Steinbeck Fellows program in 2001 with a generous gift from San Jose State University Professor of English Martha Heasley Cox, a beloved Steinbeck scholar with vision, energy, and means. To date more than a baker’s dozen of new novels, numerous prize-winning short stories, and a variety of good books about Ed Ricketts, outdoor survival, life in Iran, and other compelling topics have issued from writers who apprenticed in San Jose as Steinbeck Fellows. Charles McLeod, one of 15 fellows in the program’s brief history, won a 2009 Pushcart Prize, had his first novel published by Random House UK within two years, and appeared in an anthology of best new short stories published by Norton in 2012. Sarah Houghteling, a Fellow in 2006, published Pictures at an Exhibition (Knopf, 2009), reviewed in The New York Times. Peter Nathaniel Malae, a 2008 Fellow, has published What We Are (Grove, 2010)—also reviewed in The New York Times—and Our Frail Blood (Grove, 2013).

Public Events Celebrate Spirit of John Steinbeck Books

Good books by the best young writers continue to germinate in the rich Steinbeck soil of San Jose State University, where three current Steinbeck Fellows read from their work recently for a group of eager students, fellow writers, and admiring fans. The talented trio—Vanessa Hua, Tommy Mouton, and Dallas Woodburn (shown here)—were introduced by Paul Douglass, professor of English at San Jose State University and interim director of the Steinbeck Center, where John Steinbeck books, values, and ideas are celebrated year-round in appearances by authors and artists such as Ken Burns, the boyish filmmaker who received the 2013 John Steinbeck Award for creative work embodying the progressive spirit of Steinbeck’s novels, short stories, and nonfiction. The Steinbeck Fellows reading and Ken Burns event occurred within a single week, ample evidence of San Jose State University’s extraordinary commitment to public programming. An energetic official named Ted Cady is the University’s secret weapon in the competition for marquee-event audiences from an ethnically diverse, sensory-overloaded metropolitan market of more than 2 million residents.

Short Stories and Novels in Progress Captivate Audiences

Two of the three Steinbeck Fellows read from new novels nearing completion: Vanessa, a globe-trotting journalist published in major papers including The New York Times, and Tommy, a Louisiana native with an uncanny ear for regional speech. Dallas read from one of her recent short stories, a character study of individual isolation called “Living Alone.”  Each writer’s voice—pitch-perfect, in character, unmistakably original—fit like a glove. Taken together, they exemplified an essential feature of John Steinbeck books at a similar stage of development: good books are best judged at their birth, not by lines in manuscript, but by the writer’s voice, reading aloud to a group of friends like those who gathered at San Jose State University to hear the current crop of Steinbeck Fellows share their recent work. Interested? Read Dallas Woodburn’s “Living Alone,” published in its entirety for the first time online. An upcoming audio blog of Dallas reading her story is—as print publishers say of good books by promising authors—in progress. Watch this space for it early in 2014.

Ken Burns, America’s greatest living documentary filmmaker, discussed his Civil War and Dust Bowl classics and previewed his new film, The Roosevelts, during San Jose State University’s December 6 event honoring him with the 2013 John Steinbeck Award. Burns joins a pantheon of progressive American artists—Bruce Springsteen, Arthur Miller, Sean Penn, Studs Terkel, John Sayles, Joan Baez, Michael Moore, Garrison Keillor, Rachel Maddow, John Mellancamp—previously honored by SJSU’s Martha Heasley Cox Steinbeck Studies Center for inspiring hope “in the souls of the people” through their creative work. Steinbeck’s timeless phrase—also the name of the award—appears in Chapter 25 of The Grapes of Wrath.

From the Civil War to the Dust Bowl and the Roosevelts

During an onstage conversation with public TV-radio host Michael Krasny of San Francisco’s KQED, co-sponsor of the John Steinbeck Award event, Ken Burns described his four-decade directorial career as a voyage of self-discovery among subjects  selected after months of planning from a diversity of tempting topics. Rather than teaching viewers didactically, he noted, “We say, ‘Watch what we just discovered.’” He admitted that he interviewed Arthur Miller for his first film, on the Brooklyn Bridge, without reading Miller’s play A View from the Bridge before driving to the reclusive author’s Connecticut getaway, where the 6-foot, 6-inch Miller refused to let him inside the house. The small, slim filmmaker, in his 20s  and lugging a heavy camera in the dying rural light, recovered fast, using Miller’s entire interview to conclude the documentary. It was the first and last time he included a complete interview with anyone in a film on any subject.

Ken Burns described his four-decade directorial career as a voyage of self-discovery among subjects selected after months of planning from a diversity of tempting topics.

Ken Burns’ Civil War and Dust Bowl documentaries have become classics—along with films on Lewis & Clark, World War II, Vietnam, country music, jazz, and baseball—running frequently on PBS and used regularly in classrooms across America. He noted that several series, including the Civil War and Dust Bowl, have been viewed by schools more than 2,000 times. He said he collected 25,000 still images for his new series on the Roosevelts and used only 2,300 in the final film, describing the intimacy of “hearing the photograph” when holding it in your hand. Comparing John Steinbeck and Mark Twain, he added that the stage-setting “White Town Drowsing” section of his film on Twain, inspired by Twain’s lyrical sketch about his Missouri home town, ended up on the cutting room floor, a casualty of too much footage and too little time. Asked to name America’s greatest president, he replied, “I’m a Lincoln man.”

Ken Burns on the Roosevelts—TR, FDR, and Eleanor

Why the new series on the Roosevelts, scheduled for broadcast on PBS in 2014 with the voice of Meryl Streep as Eleanor? Noting John Steinbeck’s deep connection with FDR, Ken Burns replied that both Roosevelt presidents died early looking much older than their age: TR at 60, FDR at 63. He characterized the Roosevelts as “incandescent light bulbs that burned very brightly”—a phrase some future biographer is certain to appropriate to describe John Steinbeck, who also died in his 60s. Defining his art as “emotional archeology,” Burns added that professional historians aren’t always the best faces or voices for his films. “Experts can get in the way,” particularly in films about war. In his Vietnam documentary, for example, he used only men and women who had fought, resisted, or were directly effected—including Vietnamese soldiers and civilians who survived Vietnam’s civil war.

He characterized the Roosevelts as ‘incandescent light bulbs that burned very brightly’—a phrase some future biographer is certain to appropriate to describe John Steinbeck . . . .

The riveting segment from “The Roosevelts” screened for Ken Burns’ audience showed rare footage of FDR speaking off-the-record from his automobile at the unveiling of Thomas Jefferson’s face on Mount Rushmore in 1936. Cigarette holder in hand, FDR voices his vibrant optimism for America “10,000 years from now,” displaying the survivor’s spirit that, according to Ken Burns, made him our second greatest president. “Lincoln got us through our greatest crisis, the Civil War. Roosevelt saw us through the Great Depression and World War II, the worst crises, after the Civil War, in our history.” Noting that books on both the Roosevelts who became president, fifth cousins from different parties, continue to be produced today, Burns added that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt—TR’s favorite niece and FDR’s sixth cousin—never received the attention she deserved as the essential link in the Roosevelts’ enchanted family chain. “She was the linchpin” in the Roosevelts’ dynastic life, Burns concluded. “Her story carries the film for the final 45 minutes.”

John Steinbeck and Eleanor Roosevelt: Allies and Friends

For Paul Douglass, professor of English and interim director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies, the Ken Burns event was a personal moment. Visibly moved while giving the John Steinbeck Award, Douglass attended Amherst College as an undergraduate; Ken Burns—a friend of the popular John Steinbeck biographer, Middlebury College writer-professor Jay Parini—was at nearby Hampshire College at the same time. Under Douglass and his predecessors, the Steinbeck Studies Center collection has acquired numerous items related to Eleanor Roosevelt, who defended John Steinbeck during the bitter controversy surrounding The Grapes of Wrath. She praised The Forgotten Village in her My Day newspaper column in 1941 and interviewed the author for her radio program in 1950. A video clip recorded Mrs. Roosevelt chatting with John Steinbeck and his wife Elaine in a New York restaurant circa 1952. All three supported Adlai Stevenson for president that year. Each would applaud Ken Burns—the Adlai Stevenson of socially progressive filmmaking—today. Like Stevenson in his letters to John Steinbeck, Burns was gracious in crediting “we,” not “I” in accepting the John Steinbeck Award, a tribute to the behind-the-scenes team he says he depends on, and to the unpresidential modesty that he obviously shares with John Steinbeck.