Love New Short Stories and Novels? Good Books from Center’s Steinbeck Fellows

Image of Dallas Woodburn, a 2013-14 Steinbeck FellowJohn 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.

Civil War-Dust Bowl Director Ken Burns Receives 2013 John Steinbeck Award

Image of Ken Burns, recipient of the 2013 John Steinbeck AwardKen 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.

When in Salinas, Do as the Locals Do: Have Lunch at John Steinbeck’s House

John Steinbeck House shown in SalinasThe next time you’re in the Bay Area, be sure to visit John Steinbeck’s birthplace in his home town of Salinas. It’s only two hours south of San Francisco, a hour or less from Santa Cruz, and no more than 20 minutes from nearby Monterey. Unlike other literary shrines, it’s also a great restaurant, so come for lunch any Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. (Closed Sundays and Mondays to give the volunteers who staff it a well-earned rest.)

Located a stone’s throw from the National Steinbeck Center, the Steinbeck House is a living, breathing memorial, not a stone-dead monument. Steinbeck was born and raised there, almost died there from an adolescent infection, and wrote his earliest stories in an upstairs room. Other historic buildings line Central Avenue, including the homes of several childhood friends of the author, most dating from the Victorian period. If you’re into old houses, it’s fun to walk off your Steinbeck House lunch with a stroll down the street. (Desserts are to die for.)

The people who run the place—hardworking members of the Valley Guild, a nonprofit organization—gathered together to buy the property 40 years ago and accomplished everything they set out to do. They rescued the house from rack and ruin after decades of abuse and neglect. They retrieved furniture and fixtures from family members, primarily descendants of Steinbeck’s formidable sisters Esther and Elizabeth. They got expert advice from Steinbeck scholars, friends, and enthusiasts on how to make the Steinbeck home place an educational experience for visitors without boring them to death.

Most important to the bottom line, the Valley Guild volunteers who wait tables, lead tours, and serve guests Victorian high tea once a month made the restaurant that occupies the first floor a profit center to support maintenance and operation. If you’ve ever owned an 1897 mansion with three floors and more than a dozen rooms, you know what that means. (Remember the definition of a yacht? A hole in the water you throw money into.) Fortunately for the Steinbeck House, the corner location is spacious and conspicuous—a big plus for access and security—and the California weather is kind. Neither storm nor quake has laid a hand on this lovely Victorian lady!

Designated as a literary landmark by the National Register of Historical Places, the Steinbeck House opened for business as a restaurant on February 27, 1974, the author’s birthday. When we visited recently we got more than a warm welcome, tour, and lunch: a chance to hold examine rare items from the Steinbeck family’s personal book collection, including Steinbeck’s father’s autograph book—dating from his childhood in Massachusetts before his German dad and Yankee mom moved to California—along with the child-sized Episcopal prayer book and psaltery (inscribed “Esther Steinbeck”) belonging to John’s sister.

We arrived at the peak of a busy Friday lunch crowd that included a pack of happy tourists from China, Japan, and Germany—the kind of visitors any town likes, especially one like Salinas, where produce is king and nightlife is modest. Tucked in a sunny corner was a table of local residents. All of them were friendly, and we had time to talk. Why the Steinbeck House, we wondered? Surely Salinas has other places to eat lunch without the . . . um . . . happy tourists? “Why not?” they answered. “It’s the best food in town!”

Also priced right. Our lunch for four was less than $50.

John Steinbeck Celebrated in Old and New Public Art

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

Shades of Partial Truth in Travels with Charley

Long Way Home and Dogging Steinbeck covers, two books about Travels with CharleyWhen I first read Travels with Charley in Search of America—Steinbeck’s nonfiction account of his 1960 road trip from his grandparents’ John-Knox New England to the Salinas Valley of his youth—I was researching the author’s religious roots for an article. Steinbeck’s assertion in Travels with Charley that he attended services one Sunday at a “John Knox church” and liked what he heard didn’t fit what I’d learned about the author’s life or writing. John Knox, the founder of Presbyterianism in Scotland, was a rigid, unyielding Calvinist—a type deeply unloved by Steinbeck, as exemplified in the stiff-necked, self-righteous character of Liza Hamilton in East of Eden. The easygoing Episcopalian religion that permeates The Winter of Our Discontent, written in the same period as Travels with Charley, more accurately reflects Steinbeck’s upbringing. Olive Steinbeck abandoned the Scots-Irish, John Knox atmosphere of the Hamilton ranch for St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Salinas, where her son imbibed the cultured air of candles, flowers, and English church music. What event provoked Steinbeck’s John Knox epiphany in the pages of Travels with Charley? My sources were clueless.

Help with the John Knox Problem in Travels with Charley

Then I read a pair of books by two non-academic writers that suggest why this detail—and others—didn’t seem quite right when I read Travels with Charley. Except for their common subject, the books couldn’t be less alike. Bill Barich, the author of Long Way Home: On the Trail of Steinbeck’s America, is a California native whose earlier book—Big Dreams: Into the Heart of California—helped me acclimate to my adopted state when I arrived in 2007. A part-time Californian with a second home in Ireland, Barich possesses an elegant style, a Marin County manner, and an inborn appreciation for California’s liberal culture and laid-back lifestyle. Bill Steigerwald, the author of Dogging Steinbeck: Discovering America and Exposing the Truth About Travels with Charley, is Barich’s opposite—a tough-minded Middle-American reporter with little love for liberalism or laying back. Barich and Steigerwald’s books retracing Travels with Charley differ dramatically, reflecting their authors’ contrasting temperaments, assumptions, and aims. Both are worth reading, and each helped me adjust to the probability that Travels with Charley is only partially true.

Barich and Steigerwald’s books retracing Steinbeck’s journey differ dramatically, reflecting their authors’ contrasting temperaments, assumptions, and aims.

Barich retraced portions of Steinbeck’s 1960 election-year Travels with Charley tour during the presidential year of 2008, when the Obama-McCain campaign divided Americans generally along Kennedy-Nixon lines. I happen to share Barich’s enthusiasm for Obama and his respect for Steinbeck’s progressive politics. The author was a lifelong FDR Democrat, despite his family’s John Knox, Teddy Roosevelt Republican roots. He wrote speeches for Stevenson’s 1956 campaign against Eisenhower and supported Kennedy against Nixon in 1960. The pages of Travels with Charley are full of liberal-minded sentiments, underdog characters, and conversations about current issues that aren’t always recognizable as the way real people talk. This, of course, is where Bill Steigerwald comes in. He thinks Travels with Charley belongs in the category of fiction. My reasons for partially agreeing with him are quite personal.

Personal Questions About Travels with Charley Characters

When my mother was pregnant, my dad was still in the Army at Fort Hood, Texas. A proud North Carolinian, Mom insisted on returning to Winston-Salem before my birth because, as she later explained, “I wasn’t about to have my first youngin’ born in Texas.” Perhaps that genetic prejudice produced my doubts about Steinbeck’s sincerity in praising the virtues of his Texas hosts—friends of his Texan-born wife, Elaine—on display during Thanksgiving Day dinner in Travels with Charley. As an ex-New Orleanian, I was also challenged by the tidy trio of Louisiana conversationalists encountered by Steinbeck in the climactic episode of Travels with Charley, a horrific hate-fest observed outside a recently desegregated New Orleans school. Steinbeck’s screaming racist mothers belong to a recognizable segregationist type. But none of the individuals he talks with about the issue of integration sounds to my ears like a Southerner, a Louisianian, or a living human being. Other characters present similar problems. These are the few I sensed were phony from my own experience.

None of the individuals Steinbeck talks with about the issue of integration sounds to my ears like a Southerner, a Louisianian, or a living human being.

Politically, Bill Steigerwald is no John Steinbeck, Bill Barich, or Will Ray. A crusty contrarian with a chip on his shoulder about big government of either party, he wrote Dogging Steinbeck during the Tea Party election of 2010, managing a kind word for Sarah Palin while deconstructing Steinbeck’s 50-year-old classic. It seems unlikely that anyone reading this blog isn’t familiar with the controversy created by Steigerwald in his argument from fact to reclassify Travels with Charley as fiction. Unlike Barich, he retraced Steinbeck’s route and schedule as closely as he could. Unlike Barich’s sentimental journey, Steigerwald’s road trip was gritty, gumshoe detective work. Skeptical by nature and by profession, Steigerwald looked for inaccuracies and found them. He couldn’t locate the “John Knox church” Steinbeck claimed to visit, doing the math to prove that Steinbeck’s published schedule made a Sunday morning church service of any kind unlikely the day Steinbeck says he got a dose of his grandmother’s John Knox religion.

Read Steigerwald’s book or visit his website. He’s a John Knox kind of  journalist—hardnosed, relentless, and unfazed by criticism from what he describes as the “West Coast Steinbeck Industrial Complex.” I predict we’ll be hearing more from him about the shades of partial truth he uncovered in Travels with Charley.

Route 66 Features Added to Steinbeck Country App

Cascade Lake, Tahoe, photo, a pre-Grapes of Wrath image on Steinbeck Country appThe Steinbeck Country & Beyond app—published by Windy Hill Publications in collaboration with the National Steinbeck Center—has been updated to include new photographs and additional entries about Route 66, the road followed by the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath.

But the most unusual image added to the app is an historic view of the caretaker’s cabin at Cascade Lake near Lake Tahoe, where Steinbeck completed work on his first novel, Cup of Gold, a decade prior to The Grapes of Wrath. Although the cabin was removed some years ago, the current owners of the property provided the historic black-and-white photograph. Permission to reproduce it in the app was granted by the rights owner, photographer James Hill of Tahoe City, California.

Timed to coincide with the National Steinbeck Center’s upcoming Route 66 road trip along the “mother road and the road of flight” taken by Depression Era migrants to California’s Promised Land, three new entries cover communities along Route 66 described in The Grapes of Wrath. Part I covers Oklahoma; Part II covers Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona; and Part III lists California locations mentioned in The Grapes of Wrath.

A free version of the app describing approximately 200 sites worldwide associated with John Steinbeck’s life and work is distributed by Sutro Media through the iTunes App Store. It is also available for Android systems from Google play. For more information visit the app’s website.

2014 National Steinbeck Center Festival Celebrates The Grapes of Wrath

Starting in October and continuing throughout 2014, the National Steinbeck Center in John Steinbeck’s hometown of Salinas, California—where visitors enjoy daily activities including an interactive exhibit of Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley—sponsors a spectacular celebration of the 1939 publication of The Grapes of Wrath. The National Steinbeck Center is located at One Main Street in Salinas, California.

2014 Festival Logo of National Steinbeck Center, Travels with Charley Exhibit

The Joad Journey West in The Grapes of Wrath

October 4-14, 2013

The National Steinbeck Center retraces the epic journey taken by the Joad family along Route 66 through Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, the odyssey of Dust Bowl desperation that comprises the pre-California chapters of The Grapes of Wrath. The trip re-enactment by artists, writers, musicians, and others explores the human experience of struggle and resilience in new creative work inspired by the journey portrayed in The Grapes of Wrath. Participants will interview people along the route, create expressions of episodes and themes in various media, broadcast results via social media, and invite creative responses from the public.

2014 Steinbeck Festival Focus Book Cover: The Grapes of Wrath

The 34th Annual Steinbeck Festival in Salinas, California

May 2-4, 2014

The National Steinbeck Center hosts three days of intensive festival activities in Salinas, California, and throughout Monterey County, featuring talks, tours, films, food, and visual and performing arts inspired by Travels with Charley, The Grapes of Wrath, and other works by the most famous son of 20th century Salinas, California. This year’s Steinbeck Festival will showcase the struggles of the Joads from Oklahoma to Weedpatch in The Grapes of Wrath using the work of artists and writers and oral histories collected along the October re-enactment of the family’s journey west.

From Salinas, California, to International Cities: 2014 Steinbeck Fringe Fest

The 2014 Steinbeck International Fringe Fest

Throughout 2014

Through partnerships with organizations in Cities of Letters around the world, past Steinbeck Festival events have been held in cities such as Paris, Hanoi, Krakow, Berlin, Amsterdam, Jerusalem, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Fes, Port-au-Prince, Guanajuato, and other locales. Continuing this global initiative, the 2014 Fringe Fest will bring the celebration of The Grapes of Wrath to Steinbeck’s international audience.

Free Friday Concerts: Chamber Music at Steinbeck’s Church

John Steinbeck and St. Paul's, the Writer's Salinas, California ChurchFrom J.S. Bach to New Chamber Music: Free Friday Concerts at Steinbeck’s Church in Salinas, California

St. Paul’s, John Steinbeck’s Episcopal church in Salinas, California, sponsors free Friday chamber music concerts at noon throughout the year. Selections ranging from J.S. Bach to new works are performed by Central California musicians such as violinists Tyler and Nicola Reilly, pianist Karen Denmark, and organists Steven Denmark, Rani Fischer, and William Ray. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church is located at 1071 Pajaro Street in Salinas, California.

Fall 2013 Events at the Steinbeck Studies Center

Father Junipero's Confessor novel by Nick Taylor

Nick Taylor Discusses and Autographs His New Novel Father Junipero’s Confessor

September 30, 2013
7:00 p.m. in Room 225, Martin Luther King, Jr., Library
150 East San Fernando Street
San Jose, CA 95192
Free; refreshments

Carol and John Steinbeck book by Susan Shillinglaw

Susan Shillinglaw Discusses and Autographs Her New Book Carol and John Steinbeck: Portrait of a Marriage

October 9, 2013
6:00 p.m. in Room 590, Martin Luther King, Jr., Library
150 East San Fernando Street
San Jose, CA 95192
Free; refreshments

John Steinbeck and the Big Read

Steinbeck Fellows Read and Discuss Their New Work

December 4, 2013
7:00 p.m. in Room 225, Martin Luther King, Jr., Library
150 East San Fernando Street
San Jose, CA 95192
Free; refreshments

Ken Burns filming documentary

Ken Burns Receives the 2013 John Steinbeck Award and Discusses His Work

December 6, 2013
8:00 p.m. at the Morris Dailey Auditorium, San Jose State University
San Jose State Student Union Center
San Jose, CA 95192
Ticketmaster

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From East of Eden to Silicon Valley and Steinbeck Country

 

The cover of a British edition of East of EdenMy journey from East of Eden to Silicon Valley and Steinbeck Country began in the early 1960s. One summer I worked in a west London warehouse that stored spare parts for a Royal Air Force aircraft maintenance unit, helping the aged custodian move engine parts and other heavy objects during a business slowdown. Not many RAF planes seemed to be  in distress, so I had plenty of time to read on the job. One day my boss picked up a worn paperback novel and tossed it to me: “Here, catch this. It’s got some dirty bits in it. You might like it.”

It Started in England with East of Eden

A semi-clothed maiden on the well-thumbed cover promised the pleasures of a “bodice ripper”—not my usual choice of reading material. But having swept the aisles for the day and with nothing else to do, I dug into my first Steinbeck novel. Yes, there were a few racy bits to be found in To a God Unknown, but the bold writing style and the imagination behind the storytelling captivated me far more. By the end of the summer I’d read every book by John Steinbeck I could find, including East of Eden. I still have the yellowing paperback copy with James Dean and Julie Harris on the cover that set me back three shillings and sixpence from my warehouse wages.

Images of “light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness” and hot, dry afternoons near Jolon in Steinbeck’s Valley of Nuestra Señora proved particularly appealing during that typically cold, damp English summer. I vowed that one day I would travel to California and see Steinbeck Country for myself. It was a promise I would keep in my five-decade odyssey from England to Silicon Valley and Steinbeck Country. I even got an unanticipated boost along the way from the Oprah book club—but that lay far in the future.

The cover of Steinbeck Country: A Souvenir & Guide

Stop #1: Silicon Valley

After graduating from college with a degree in physics, I found employment in England in the booming new business of semiconductor electronics. Within a few years I was working for a European affiliate of Fairchild Semiconductor, the Mountain View company that spawned Intel and other Silicon Valley “Fairchildren” startups. Sensing that the real action in the buoyant computer chip industry was in California, after several years working in England I negotiated a transfer and arrived in San Francisco in 1968. It was the first stop in my Silicon Valley-Steinbeck Country-Oprah book club journey.

Although I only planned to stay in California for a couple of years, I continued to live and work in Silicon Valley until I retired 15 years ago. During that time the Santa Clara “Valley of Heart’s Delight” morphed into Silicon Valley, and the microchip business evolved from maverick entrepreneurial startups run by cowboys with clipboards to strategic assets managed by nation states.The number of transistors on a silicon chip swelled from a dozen or so to more than one billion, and Silicon Valley became an international brand.

I visited Steinbeck Country—the agricultural Salinas Valley, the fishing town of Monterey, and peaceful Pacific Grove—several times during the early years of my Silicon Valley career. I walked the hallowed length of Monterey’s Cannery Row, peered into Steinbeck houses in Monterey, Pacific Grove, and Salinas, and hiked some of the lower trails into the Big Sur country, the setting for Steinbeck’s story “Flight.” I also took classes from the well-known photographer Steve Crouch, inspired by his classic 1973 coffee-table volume, Steinbeck Country.

Back in the days before the National Steinbeck Center, Salinas was a sleepy stop on the road south from Silicon Valley. Cannery Row was showing early signs of recovery as a tourist destination from the collapse of the sardine industry predicted by Steinbeck and his best friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts. But I remained a captive of the Silicon Valley siren call until retiring in 1998. By then much had changed in Steinbeck Country, home turf for the author of East of Eden, since my early trips down Highway 101 from Silicon Valley.

The cover of East of Eden: New and Recent Essays

Stop #2: Steinbeck Country

When I retired I began to submit day-trip features to the travel sections of the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News, including an article on Salinas, where the National Steinbeck Center had recently opened. That event was international news, but travel-section advertisers failed to find the destination compatible with selling big-ticket vacation cruises, and neither paper took my piece on Steinbeck’s hometown. I was beginning to understand how Steinbeck felt before his first book was accepted.

Eventually I sent my effort to Susan Shillinglaw, a professor of English at San Jose State University and at that time the director of the Center for Steinbeck Studies. She published my article—“Something to Do in Salinas”—in the fall 2001 issue of Steinbeck Studies, and she invited me to show slides of places in Steinbeck Country related to Steinbeck’s fiction at the Steinbeck Centenary Conference, held on Long Island at Hofstra University in 2002. Steinbeck wrote much of East of Eden in his Manhattan apartment; eventually he also bought a house in Sag Harbor, the Monterey-like fishing village on Long Island that provided the setting for The Winter of Our Discontent.

Following my presentation at Hofstra several attendees asked for copies of the images I’d shown. I used an early-generation digital camera with a state-of-the art two-megapixel sensor to take my pictures, and copies could only be printed at postcard size. Naturally I was eager to find a way to satisfy Steinbeck lovers who wanted permanent images of Steinbeck locations, and eventually I settled on a format that allowed several small photos to be printed per page in the book I produced.

Published in 2003 as a low-cost souvenir and travel guide, Steinbeck Country: Exploring the Settings for the Stories sold steadily at the National Steinbeck Center, online, and through other outlets. After Susan included a page about the book on the website she edited for the Oprah book club selection of East of Eden later that year, sales spiked.

Silicon Valley app for Steinbeck Country & Beyond

Stop #3: The Oprah Book Club

Exposure on the Oprah book club website generated invitations from community book clubs and libraries for presentations about Steinbeck Country. It ultimately led to new Steinbeck Country travel-writing and photography opportunities as well, along with requests to provide images for academic publications such as East of Eden: New and Recent Essays, a recent collection of scholarly articles edited by Henry Veggian and the late Michael J. Meyer.

But the market for printed travel titles has changed dramatically since I published my guide book 10 years ago. Today digital versions are preferred over print because of their portability, flexibility, and ease of updating. To serve the growing market for mobile-device apps, I partnered with the National Steinbeck Center to transfer the book’s content to digital format.

Introduced at the Steinbeck Festival in May of 2013, the Steinbeck Country & Beyond app contains over 200 pages and almost 1,000 images, compared with only 32 pages and 100 or so photos in the printed book. An easy-to-use mobile reference and travel guide to Steinbeck’s works and the people and places that inspired them, the app is available from Apple’s iTunes App Store and on Google’s play for Android platforms. There is also a website version for readers who do not have access to a smartphone or a tablet.

Only a writer as creative as Steinbeck could have predicted 50 years ago where my path would lead. From reading East of Eden in England to a career in Silicon Valley and retirement in Steinbeck Country—with an unanticipated boost from the Oprah book club along the way—my story continues to surprise even me.