Essays on John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Co-Edited by the University of North Carolina’s Henry Veggian

November 16, 2013 by 1 Comment

The cover of East of Eden: New and Recent Essays shownThe University of North Carolina’s English department always had a great reputation. I should know. I attended in the 1960s, when American literature was thought to have ended with William Faulkner and John Steinbeck was politely ignored. The distinguished Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw wrote her doctoral dissertation on James Fenimore Cooper there several years after I finished mine on Blake and Yeats. British literature since Joyce and Woolf was still considered too recent for serious study, despite the presence on campus of Anthony Burgess, author of the wildly subversive novel A Clockwork Orange, published 10 years after Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Both books became successful movies, but were a world apart. So was Tar Heel and Steinbeck Country. At Chapel Hill, “east of Eden” meant the North Carolina backwater between Raleigh and the coast. Statesville may have looked like Salinas; Wilmington was no Monterey.

But I suspect that both Salinas brothers in East of Eden would have felt right at home as University of North Carolina undergraduates during my time—Cal in the go-getting young business school, Aron under the protective Anglo-Catholic wing of English department traditionalists who genuflected every Sunday during mass at the Chapel of the Cross before chatting over sherry about the Anglo-American Empire that might have been if the South had won the war. A countercultural English professor named O.B. Hardison—later director of Washington’s famed Folger Shakespeare Library, a post held by a succession of University of North Carolina legends—brought his dog to the SRO classes I took under him, pulled on a pipe that he rarely lit, and taught me most of what I remember about Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, and how to write a sentence.

So it was a sentimental journey for me to read East of Eden: New and Recent Essays, the collection recently published by Rodopi Editions and co-edited by Henry Veggian, a current English professor at the University of North Carolina. Plus a pleasant surprise: John Steinbeck has finally made it onto the  literary canon at Chapel Hill; David Laws, a  SteinbeckNow.com guest blogger, provided the image of Steinbeck Country used for the cover of the book.

Henry’s introduction to the dozen essays written by various academics provides important  insights into East of Eden that he expertly organizes around appropriate musical analogies. These took me back to my days in the music building at the University of North Carolina, where I confess I spent more time hanging around musicians than I did in the English department.

John Steinbeck played the piano, loved church music, and adored jazz. So did I. I was privileged to hear Dave Brubeck premiere his jazz cantata Light in the Wildnerness in the Hill Hall auditorium where I took weekly organ lessons, and I played on Sundays at the Lutheran Church across Franklin Street from the Anglo-Catholic Chapel of the Cross. Steinbeck admired the English who lived in Somerset, where he spent his happiest year with his wife Elaine in 1959. I loved my University of North Carolina Lutherans, who had no trouble singing Bach’s German when we performed a different cantata each year during Holy Week, a lively event Bach-loving Steinbeck himself would likely have enjoyed.

It was not the historical chapters that troubled them but rather the autobiographical interjections of Steinbeck’s narrator. As a result, critics argued that they might have held East of Eden in a higher esteem if John Steinbeck had not disrupted the historical-romantic narration of the Trask family with repeated autobiographical references.

But John Steinbeck never enjoyed the task of revising his writing, frequently annoyed by the suggestions emanating from agents, editors, and publishers. Most critics of his published books he considered picky parasites. East of Eden was no exception, as Henry helpfully notes in his introduction: “It was not the historical chapters that troubled them but rather the autobiographical interjections of Steinbeck’s narrator. As a result, critics argued that they might have held East of Eden in a higher esteem if John Steinbeck had not disrupted the historical-romantic narration of the Trask family with repeated autobiographical references.”

At the risk of disloyalty to the University of North Carolina, which had the sense to hire a teacher of Henry’s obvious stature to inspire students to Steinbeck as I was once inspired to Spenser,  the ghost of the late O.B. Hardison compels me to point out two problems with East of Eden: New and Recent Essays—neither the fault of the book’s co-editor, who inherited the project following the death of Michael Meyer: (1) At 67.00 euro dollars, the book is too expensive for independent scholars, limiting its readership to institutional academics with stable library budgets; (2) the essays on East of Eden vary wildly in quality, type, and readability. Several are illuminating, written in clear English that rewards careful reading. Others defy comprehension, obscured by critical jargon, teutonic sentences, and usage errors that suggest translation from a language other than English.

John Steinbeck’s only specific criticism of a new novel not his own can be found in the comments he wrote about The Sergeant, a successful first novel by Dennis Murphy, the son of Steinbeck’s childhood friend and identified by some Salinians as the model for Cal Trask in East of Eden. Steinbeck’s critique of Murphy’s ending for the novel was constructive, and Murphy said he understood it. I know I’m no John Steinbeck, but my lingering loyalty to the University of North Carolina and my newly discovered respect for Henry Veggian compel me to share advice from my own experience as an editor and writer with writers, editors, and publishers of future books about John Steinbeck:

1. Writers of Articles
Find a “text buddy” in another department—someone you can trust for candid feedback—and share your final draft for close reading by friendly eyes before you release it to your book editor. Every writer needs a editor close at hand with the writer’s individual interest at heart. You don’t have to bed or marry yours, as Steinbeck did Carol Henning, but if your obsessive-compulsive colleague in physics doesn’t understand what you’re trying to say, chances are other non-specialists won’t either, and your work will disappear in the echo chamber of contemporary academic criticism.

2. Editors of Collections
Take a day off from teaching and read every line of every submission—including footnotes and bibliographies—at one uninterrupted sitting before you consign your contributors’ essays on with your introduction to your publisher. Look for errors of diction and syntax, listen for sentence length and rhythm, and focus like a lunatic on consistent capitalization, abbreviation, and punctuation. If you miss distracting variances in the use and spacing of dash marks, for example, don’t assume that readers and reviewers will be less than unforgiving.

3. Publishers of Academic Books
Hire an experienced copy editor. At 67  euros you can afford it. The book editor back at the University of North Carolina is already busy with other duties—teaching, research, the next publication project—but you have one overriding responsibility before you go to press: Find and fix every error overlooked in haste by the editor on campus. I’ve saved my wagging finger for you as I head out the door because I think you deserve it. As I read East of Eden: Essays New and Recent and walked down memory lane to the pre-digital publishing dawn of time, the ghost of O.B. Hardison kept whispering: “What were they thinking?” I’m pretty sure he meant you.

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

October 12, 2013 by 16 Comments

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

carol-john-steinbeck-susan-shillinglaw

From Jazz Age Joy to Great Depression Decline

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

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

A Life of Steinbeck Story Told by the Perfect Narrator

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

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

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

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

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Father Junipero’s Confessor

October 4, 2013 by 2 Comments

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

San Francisco de Asis, Junipero Serra, and God Almighty

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

Nick Taylor shown reading from his novel about Junipero Serra

Nick Taylor: Born to Bring California Missions to Life

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

Nick Taylor's first novel cover, The Disagreement

In the End, a Stunning Secret That Survives Junipero Serra

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

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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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Shades of Partial Truth in Travels with Charley

September 26, 2013 by 1 Comment

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.

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The Philosophy of Our Discontent

September 13, 2013 by 7 Comments

Image of title page from The Winter of Our DiscontentNovels by Steinbeck communicate differently to different eras, and The Winter of Our Discontent is no exception. Among all the books by Steinbeck that I have read, it is arguably the most philosophical and the least appreciated. Many critics wrote it off as the weakest of all the mature novels by Steinbeck when it was published, yet Steinbeck quotes Shakespeare in the book’s title—a sign of his seriousness and a key to his meaning—and the novel sold well despite doubtful reviews. Later readers have faulted the lack of social relevance on the scale of The Grapes of Wrath and other serious books by Steinbeck—from In Dubious Battle (where Steinbeck quotes Milton) through Sea of Cortez, the most obviously  philosophical of all the books by Steinbeck that survived his habit of aborting projects he felt were becoming shaky, stale, or redundant. Among my favorite books by Steinbeck written after East of Eden, The Winter of Our Discontent most rewards rereading as a philosophical text for our times—a monument of modern existentialism as impressive today as when it was written.

Shakespeare and Steinbeck on the Human Condition

As numerous books by Steinbeck explain, man’s moral problems never really change. Like other novels by Steinbeck—especially East of Eden—The Winter of Our Discontent is most meaningful when read as a contemporary restatement of this well-worn theme. Steinbeck’s story of greed, delusion, and dishonesty in Eisenhower’s America presents issues that precisely parallel current conditions: The payouts and game-show scandals of the 1950s and 60s are today’s privacy invasion and reality television. The hatred of foreigners by American nativists then is our fear of terrorists and illegal immigrants now. The easy resort to plagiarism depicted in The Winter of Our Discontent continues among students today, facilitated by Google and Facebook. Steinbeck quotes Shakespeare in his title for a reason. Ethan Hawley is Hamlet (yes, wrong play), his dilatory self-doubt deepened by the corruption, darkness, and betrayal growing like a Danish cancer.

The easy resort to plagiarism depicted in ‘The Winter of Our Discontent’ continues among students today, facilitated by Google and Facebook.

Three features of The Winter of Our Discontent—after East of Eden, the most autobiographical of all the surviving novels by Steinbeck—advance the book’s philosophy of existential discontent. These include (1) the externalization of the primary character’s internal process, (2) the prevalence of symbolic contrasts and dualities in other characters, and (3) the necessity of self-understanding and personal sacrifice to end cycles of social failure like that experienced by Ethan Hawley before the novel begins. Through skillful use of these materials Steinbeck captures the universal human condition in an unmistakably contemporary setting, communicating his personal anxieties about himself and the culture of his time and creating a screen upon which each of us can project our own feelings of personal failure, ambivalence, and remorse.

Three features of ‘The Winter of Our Discontent’—after ‘East of Eden,’ the most autobiographical of all the surviving novels by Steinbeck—advance the book’s philosophy of existential discontent.

As he recounts his daily thoughts and experiences in real time, Ethan interprets himself and the people around him, both living and dead. His memories of Aunt Deborah and Captain Hawley in particular serve as vehicles for his developing self-critique and his ongoing argument with contemporary culture.  Remember, Steinbeck quotes Shakespeare in the title for a reason. In doubt, dilation, and despair, Ethan is is more Hamlet than Richard. Although neither of Ethan’s dead ancestors is a Polonius, the imagined voices of his grandfather and aunt help Ethan understand both himself and his world as modes of being neither absolutely right nor absolutely wrong—a post-Polonius principle of existential ethics. Unlike Hamlet, Ethan listens, understands, and appears to think his way out of his crisis before it’s too late.

Externalizing the Inner Drama in Ethan Hawley’s Daily Life

Steinbeck externalizes Ethan’s internal drama through soliloquy, dialog, and place symbols for Ethan’s internal spaces. Ethan’s hiding place under the pier, for example, represents the secrecy of his mind, the mulling-place for his anxieties, and a means of escape from the moral pressure he experiences in his closest relationships. The grocery store where he works provides an interior stage peopled by imaginary players before he opens the door for daily business and buyers reality intrude. Of all the books by Steinbeck in which humor serves irony, The Winter of Our Discontent achieves this difficult effect the most subtly in minor scenes where Ethan is in fact but doesn’t act as if alone.  Using liturgical language, Ethan exercises imagined power over the commercial products lined up like acolytes on his shelves in a self-revealing rite of compensation for his family’s lost ownership of the store where he now clerks.

Of all the books by Steinbeck in which humor serves irony, ‘The Winter of Our Discontent’ achieves this difficult effect the most subtly in minor scenes where Ethan is in fact but doesn’t act as if alone.

Ethan’s friend Danny has his own hiding place—the old cellar where he recalls his happy childhood with Ethan before falling from grace as the town drunk. Margie Young-Hunt, too, has her symbol of escape from the boredom of daily life in Baytown, Long Island. The mirror she uses to apply her morning makeup provides time and means for self-reflection on her meaningless life and the men in it, including Ethan,  her best friend husband. Significantly, only Mary Hawley needs no hiding place. Other-directed and uncomplicated, she is a domestic type not found (by me, anyway) in the other novels by Steinbeck I’ve read.

Interpreting Dualities and Sacrifice in Novels by Steinbeck

The contrasts and dualities in novels by Steinbeck are often quite obvious. Here, too, The Winter of Discontent is no exception. Ethan’s attributes as a semi-responsible family man and quasi-productive citizen contrast with Danny’s habitual vagrancy and alcoholism. Mary’s loyalty and innocence are juxtaposed with Marjorie’s sexuality and deceit. Ethan and Mary’s children, Allen and Ellen, are polar opposites. Even Red the dog and the cat living behind the store enact a polarity of type and temperament.

But the most significant duality is represented by Captain Hawley and Aunt Deborah in relation to Ethan’s unfolding process of self-awareness. The ghost of the Captain is a pragmatic mentor figure who comes to Ethan’s aid with practical advice. Aunt Deborah is emotional, almost mystical, and encourages Ethan to seek his own answers inwardly by recalling moments of lost joy from the past. In philosophical terms, Ethan’s antithetical ancestors represent materialism and idealism, praxis and pathos, action and feeling, in forms not found in other books by Steinbeck with characters who are dead, or like the story’s dog and cat, animals.

Ethan’s antithetical ancestors represent materialism and idealism, praxis and pathos, action and feeling, in forms not found in other books by Steinbeck with characters who are dead, or like the story’s dog and cat, animals.

As with Shakespeare, Steinbeck quotes the Bible for a reason and usually a symbol. In the context of its numerous biblical references, The Winter of Our Discontent can be read as a symbolic story about man’s fall from innocence in which the warring halves of Ethan’s psyche are projected as both Adam and Eve. Are their sins visited on the Hawley children, as in the biblical account? In my reading of other novels in which Steinbeck quotes Genesis, the answer is usually yes.

When Ethan determines to accomplish his goal of reversing the decline in the Hawley family’s fortunef through will and effort—the method advised and exemplified by Captain Hawley—he avoids the irreversible corruption of spirit represented by betrayal, robbery, and suicide. But while passing Ethan by, the killing spirit touches his son Allen, a child of his decade who cheats on his essay without feeling remorse. Like other autobiographical novels by Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent may also reflect the struggles of Steinbeck’s immediate family across the eternal father-son divide.

Like other autobiographical novels by Steinbeck, ‘The Winter of Our Discontent’ may also reflect the struggles of Steinbeck’s immediate family across the eternal father-son divide.

This moral chain reaction can only be broken by an act of sacrifice, another motif found in books by Steinbeck in which Steinbeck quotes the Bible to suit his purpose. Ethan’s decline began before the novel with his father’s reckless spending and his own bad investments. Caught in a crisis by bad luck and bad behavior, he struggles from the first page with growing economic insecurity—a cycle that can’t be broken until Danny becomes the living sacrifice, leaving his land to Ethan  in an act of self-expiation and self-sacrifice (Danny characters occur in earlier novels by Steinbeck, but never as an existentially convincing as in The Winter of Our Discontent.)

Why Steinbeck Quotes Shakespeare in His Titles

When Steinbeck quotes Shakespeare’s Richard III in the novel’s title, what does he want us to consider as we read? Ethan’s bad behavior, obviously—although as suggested, Ethan more resembles Hamlet than Shakespeare’s malevolent monarch. But Steinbeck’s title for The Winter of Our Discontent reminds us of the separate dilemmas faced by Danny and Mary and Margie (note the biblical names) as well as by Ethan in his Hamlet-like anguish. The evil usurper who reveals his inner thoughts in Richard III opens uses our to denote his status as king. Steinbeck’s characters are contemporary Americans, and their thoughts—like ours—are much more about me than we.

The evil usurper who reveals his inner thoughts in ‘Richard III’  uses ‘our’ to denote his status as king. Steinbeck’s characters are contemporary Americans, and their thoughts—like ours—are much more about ‘me’ than ‘we.’

The our of Richard’s discontent in the play Steinbeck quotes is isolated, the political and psychological paranoia of a one-man murder ring. In The Winter of Our Discontent, the attitude of discontent is philosophical—an existential anxiety embodied in the protagonist, his spouse, his best friend, his would-be mistress, and in the personal life of the author as well. Discontent in the play Steinbeck quotes for a reason is individual. In The Winter of Our Discontent it is dramatized as  a condition of existence for everyone involved—including us.

 

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Robert DeMott’s Typewriter

August 23, 2013 by 4 Comments

John Steinbeck books typewriter.Among the great novels, John Steinbeck books, and artifacts on view at the Center for Steinbeck Studies sits the elegant Hermes typewriter Steinbeck used in Travels with Charley, its surface etched by Steinbeck with the enigmatic phrase: “THE BEAST WITHIN.”  It’s there thanks to Robert DeMott, the author of numerous John Steinbeck books and articles and arguably the most original writer about the great novels of John Steinbeck alive today. As the 75th anniversary of the The Grapes of Wrath approaches, Bob is the ideal guide for readers of John Steinbeck books who have lost their emotional connection with the great novels, including The Grapes of Wrath. To recover your lost chord with Steinbeck, go to Steinbeck’s Typewriter by Bob DeMott. This superb collection of essays on The Grapes of Wrath and other John Steinbeck books, first published in 1996, was recently reissued in paperback as An Authors Guild Backinprint.com Edition. Take your time when you read it. Even the footnotes are fascinating.

The Story Behind a Trio of John Steinbeck Books

In his introduction Bob notes that Steinbeck’s Typewriter completes the trilogy of John Steinbeck books he began with Steinbeck’s Reading (out of print but available on the Steinbeck Studies Center website) and Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1989 and in print ever since. In a joyful anecdote, Bob explains how he acquired Steinbeck’s typewriter for the Steinbeck Studies Center—along with rare editions of John Steinbeck books, manuscripts, and family memorabilia—while serving as acting director and visiting professor of English at San Jose State University, almost 30 years ago. He tells the story as if it happened  yesterday, and its impact still feels fresh. “In my moment of obsessive identification,” he says, “the diminutive machine came alive as a cumulative metaphor for the entire complex of Steinbeck’s working life. . . .”

In my moment of obsessive identification, the diminutive machine came alive as a cumulative metaphor for the entire complex of Steinbeck’s working life.

As this episode suggests, Bob’s approach to the great novels of John Steinbeck is direct, existential, and engaged. Propelled by passion and supported by research, the essays in Steinbeck’s Typewriter are academic in only narrowest sense the word. Instead, as Bob admits, they are “intensely personal, by which I mean they either echo thematic resonances in my own life”—a level of participation in John Steinbeck books that the author of The Grapes of Wrath invited his readers to discover when his books were first read. With astonishing depth and prodigious detail, Bob maps the structure, philosophy, and language of each of the great novels—The Grapes of Wrath, To a God Unknown, East of Eden, and The Winter of Our Discontent—discussed in Steinbeck’s Typewriter. His side excursions are equally compelling—into Steinbeck’s poetry, Steinbeck criticism, and the manuscript mysteries behind The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and The Winter of Our Discontent.

Language and Politics in the Great Novels

An examination of the second draft of The Winter of Our Discontent, for example, “shows that the final thirteen pages of the novel were not in the autograph manuscript but were added by Steinbeck . . . .” A Steinbeck ledger, also studied by Bob at the Pierpont Morgan Library, reveals that Steinbeck planned to write a play-novel on the Cain-Abel theme used in East of Eden as early as 1946, the year his second son was born. The first draft of The Grapes of Wrath helps explain how the greatest of the great novels by Steinbeck was finished so quickly:  “When he was hot,” as he was with The Grapes of Wrath, “Steinbeck wrote fast, paying little or no attention to proper spelling, punctuation, or paragraphing.” The typescript of the novel submitted to Steinbeck’s editor reveals that the four-letter words the writer was forced to remove before publication were the usual suspects—with the exception of a six-letter epithet still applied to unpleasant overweight cops.

When he was hot, Steinbeck wrote fast, paying little or no attention to proper spelling, punctuation, or paragraphing.

But Steinbeck’s Typewriter is more than a detective story about manuscripts or a bibliography of John Steinbeck books. In nine substantial essays it explores aspects of background, language, character, and thought encountered in the great novels from To a God Unknown to The Winter of Our Discontent. The echoes of Robinson Jeffers heard in the language of To a God Unknown are amplified by scanning lines from the novel as poetry. The “gruesome experiences, including rape and murder” of Steinbeck’s paternal grandparents in 19th century Palestine “throw some starling new light on East of Eden’s characters.”  The Grapes of Wrath is analyzed as a “huge symphony of language,” written while Steinbeck actually listened to Bach, Tchaikovsky, and Stravinsky—with a note that Steinbeck claimed “Edgar Varese the modern composer wants to do [a work] based on one of my books. I wrote him that I thought Grapes might be a theme for a symphony. . . .” The continued relevance of Steinbeck’s protest against “tyranny of surveillance, arrogance of power, and willful destruction of people and resources” in The Grapes of Wrath is underscored by a reminder that Steinbeck’s title was subversive when it was chosen, despite the veneer of patriotism applied after the fact.

A Guide to Greater Participation in John Steinbeck Books

Since 1969 Bob has taught the great novels of John Steinbeck and other American writers at Ohio University, where he is Edwin and Ruth Kennedy Distinguished Professor of English. It’s a remarkable record of achievement and stability. But as a student in the 1960s Bob says he was lost—until reading John Steinbeck books for the first time changed his life for good. “I had almost no direction at all,” he explains. “My life took a marked turn after my first exposure to Steinbeck’s writing. I gained a second chance, which is one way of defining a writer’s gifted appeal and power. . . .” In Steinbeck’s Typewriter Bob suggests how participating in the great novels of Steinbeck is still possible for readers who feel lost in their lives. True, Bob was prepared by circumstance to enter the world of John Steinbeck books with more ease than some. He was born to Italian-American parents and, until he was 8, lived on the estate of Arthur Szyk, a celebrated Polish-American artist with Jewish roots and outspoken views. Today Bob writes poetry, fly fishes with expertise, and lists the monumental Library of America edition of John Steinbeck books among his academic accomplishments. Not everyone has such a resume.

My life took a marked turn after my first exposure to Steinbeck’s writing. I gained a second chance, which is one way of defining a writer’s gifted appeal and power.

Like the great novels of Steinbeck, however, Steinbeck’s Typewriter displays few signs of distance from the experience of ordinary readers. Quite the opposite. Each essay conveys an aspect of Bob’s palpable affection—for John Steinbeck books, for fellow Steinbeck critics, for the class of Steinbeck students who comprise his imagined audience. Most of all he loves Steinbeck’s characters, empathizing with their struggles and understanding them, as the author intended, in every element of their condition. Here is what he dares to write about the notorious ending of The Grapes of Wrath: “This prophetic final tableau scene—often condemned and misunderstood, but for that no less subversively erotic, mysteriously indeterminate—refuses to fade from view; before the apocalypse occurs, before everything is lost in forgetfulness, Steinbeck suggests, all gestures must pass from self to world, from thought to word, from desperateness to acceptance, from participation to communion.” Bob DeMott’s typewriter, like Steinbeck’s, is an instrument of grace—a means of understanding, a mode of deliverance, a way to participate more fully in life through reading. Use it.

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Why John Steinbeck, Novel Writer, Still Rocks

August 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

James Ci, artist, self-portraitThe famous writers of romantic novels still believe in love at first sight. As a visual artist, I have a different perspective from the authors of books of like these. It usually takes at least a second date for me to fall in love with anything, even a novel writer. John Steinbeck was no exception. Three years ago I encountered him for the first time since high school on the shelf of a Goodwill store near my college campus. There it was, a dog-eared copy of East of Eden, waiting for me among castoffs from the authors of books about dating, dieting, and how to use a computer. I remembered reading the novel writer back in high school, so I thought I’d reintroduce myself to the author whose distinctive face presents little challenge for artists who like to  paint the famous writers in their particular line of work. I prefer to paint from life, as my self-portrait shown here shows. That’s probably why I fell in love with East of Eden.

The famous  writers of autobiographical works like East of Eden really open themselves up for inspection. Even a novel writer like Steinbeck, who disliked public exposure, seems to invite readers into his soul when he writes about his own life. Authors of books like Steinbeck’s The Pearl, the entry point into Steinbeck Land for middle school students, seem like easy enough reading when you’re only 14. Of Mice and Men, where the novel writer is less obvious, was a bit harder to understand when I read it in senior high. My reaction to East of Eden in my twenties was a much better experience. The current college crowd favors Fitzgerald and Palahniuk, authors of books worth reading I agree, but the famous writers of Fight Club and The Great Gatsby just don’t have Steinbeck’s depth. As a novel writer for unconventional readers like me, John Steinbeck still rocks where other authors just roll.

East of Eden grabbed me by the hair and shook me from page one. The story of Adam Trask is true fiction—specific to a man who never existed in history, yet symbolic of every sensitive person’s journey through the realities of life. Steinbeck’s unflinching portrayal of Adam’s loneliness and pain is, to me, a portrait of the artist as young man who grows old before my eyes. Adam may not be a hero in the classical sense, but he comes as close as a real human being can. Other authors of books about loss and sacrifice like Adam’s just aren’t as convincing. Real people struggle with daily failure, and Adam fails repeatedly, up until his final utterance—“timshel”—to his surviving son Caleb. After becoming so attached to East of Eden, I picked other books by the novel writer I’d now learned to love. To a God Unknown is probably my favorite, displacing placing Dostoyevsky’s The Devils as an existential portrayal of man at his most spiritual core. Joseph Wayne dies on a rock. Dostoyevsky’s Devils just roll.

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