Did John Steinbeck Work as A Citizen Spy for the CIA?

October 4, 2013 by 8 Comments

Redacted CIA memo mentioning John Steinbeck shownMy discovery of John Steinbeck’s connection to the CIA could be described as payback for a youthful indiscretion—my own, not the author’s. While reading The Grapes of Wrath in high school, I skipped the “turtle” and other chapters that seemed to me superfluous to the plot line of the Joads’ journey west. The punishment for my teenage sin of omission came years later, when it first occurred to me that John Steinbeck was a CIA spy. The insane-sounding proposition grew from incongruities in Steinbeck’s life that—unlike Tom Joads’ turtle—I found I couldn’t ignore.

Steinbeck: Citizen Spy book cover shown with subtitle: The Untold Story of John Steinbeck and the CIA

FOIA to the CIA: What Do You Have on John Steinbeck?

Why was Steinbeck never called before the House Select Committee on Un-American Activities, despite his alleged ties to Communist organizations? Why did the CIA admit to the Church Committee in 1975 that Steinbeck had been a subject of the illegal CIA mail-opening program known as HTLINGUAL? Did Steinbeck’s connections to known CIA front organizations, such as the Congress of Cultural Freedom and the Ford Foundation, amount to more than mere coincidence? Did the synchronicity continue when Steinbeck did freelance writing for the Louisville Courier-Journal and New York Herald Tribune? Both newspapers were linked to MOCKINGBIRD, another CIA operation, in Carl Bernstein’s 1977 Rolling Stone article “The CIA and the Media.” Why did the CIA redact portions of Steinbeck’s FBI files before they were released under the 1966 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the law that permits full or partial disclosure by government agencies of previously classified documents on request?

Why was Steinbeck never called before the House Select Committee on Un-American Activities, despite his alleged ties to Communist organizations?

There was only one source—the CIA itself—that could definitively answer my questions and confirm or disprove my developing conclusions. I submitted my FOIA request to the CIA in January 2012. With characteristic bureaucratic speed, the CIA responded after eight months, in August 2012, sending me copies of two letters written in 1952. In the first, penned on personal stationery in his own handwriting, Steinbeck offers to work for the CIA. In the second, then-CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith accepts Steinbeck’s offer. The text of these letters and others can be found in my book, Steinbeck: Citizen Spy, at my website or in the FOIA Electronic Reading Room.

The CIA Director Accepts the Author’s Offer of Help

Jan 28, 1952

Dear General Smith:

Toward the end of February I am going to the Mediterranean area and afterwards to all of the countries of Europe not out of bounds. I am commissioned by Collier’s Magazine to do a series of articles—subjects and areas to be chosen by myself. I shall move slowly going only where interest draws. The trip will take six to eight months.

If during this period I can be of any service whatever to yourself or to the Agency you direct, I shall be only too glad.

I saw Herbert Bayard Swope recently and he told me that your health had improved. I hope this is so.

Also I wear the “Lou for 52” button concealed under the lapel as that shy candidate suggests.

Again—I shall be pleased to be of service. The pace and method of my junket together with my intention of talking with great numbers of people of all classes may offer peculiar advantages.

Yours sincerely,
John Steinbeck

‘If during this period I can be of any service whatever to yourself or to the Agency you direct, I shall be only too glad.’

ER 2-5603
6 February 1952
Mr. John Steinbeck
206 East 72nd Street
New York 21, New York

Dear Mr. Steinbeck:

I greatly appreciate the offer of assistance made in your note of January 28th.

You can, indeed, be of help to us by keeping your eyes and ears open on any political developments in the areas through which you travel, and, in addition, on any other matters which seem to you of significance, particularly those which might be overlooked in routine reports.

It would be helpful, too, if you could come down to Washington for a talk with us before you leave. We might then discuss any special matters on which you may feel that you can assist us.

Since I am certain that you will have some very interesting things to say, I trust, also, that you will be able to reserve some time for us on your return.

Sincerely,
Walter B. Smith
Director

O/DCI:REL:leb
Rewritten: LEBecker:mlk
Distribution:
Orig – Addressee
2 – DCI (Reading Official) [“w/Basic” has been handwritten beside this line and scratched out]
1 – DD/P [a check mark and w/Basic handwritten in]
1 – Admin [This has been scratched out] handwritten is “w/Basic”

‘You can, indeed, be of help to us by keeping your eyes and ears open on any political developments in the areas through which you travel.’

Did Steinbeck’s CIA Connection Start in Russia?

Reread A Russian Journal  with the possibility that Steinbeck was working for the CIA prior to 1952 in mind. When Steinbeck traveled to the USSR with Robert Capa in 1947—the second of three trips the author made to the Communist state during his lifetime—Walter Bedell Smith happened to be the U.S. Ambassador to Russia. Steinbeck notes in his account of his and Capa’s Russian journey that they dined with Smith during their stay.

This experience helps explain the personal tone of familiarity expressed in Steinbeck’s 1952 letter to Smith offering to help the CIA. It also suggests the possibility that Steinbeck used his access while in the USSR to gather intelligence for the U.S. government from the Russian interior. While visiting a factory in Stalingrad, Steinbeck observes that the Russians are still melting down hulls from German tanks to make tractors fully two years after the end of World War II, lamenting his frustration at not being able to get current production figures for the facility. Such information would have been particularly important to the U.S. government in 1947, as the Cold War became hotter and American travel behind the Iron Curtain more difficult.

While visiting a factory in Stalingrad, Steinbeck observes that the Russians are still melting down hulls from German tanks to make tractors fully two years after the end of World War II, lamenting his frustration at not being able to get current production figures for the facility.

The 1952 exchange between the author of The Grapes of Wrath and the Director of the CIA provides a new set of parameters for understanding John Steinbeck’s life. In my book I carefully examine each of the letters resulting from my FOIA request to the CIA, the writer’s heavily CIA-redacted FBI files, Thomas Steinbeck’s thoughts on the matter, and likely avenues through which the elder Steinbeck could have served his government covertly both before and after 1952. Viewing the author’s life in terms of possible links to the CIA opens vistas for better comprehending certain works, such as The Short Reign of Pippin IV, that his literary agent, editor, and others discouraged him from writing. In recommending my book to a Steinbeck blogger, a noted Steinbeck scholar described the possible CIA-Steinbeck connection detailed in Steinbeck: Citizen Spy as “a potential game-changer.”

Time will tell.

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Steinbeck in Scotland

September 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment

1919 street crowds pictured in Glasgow, ScotlandI live in Glasgow, Scotland, where I “discovered” John Steinbeck relatively late in life. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I sat down and actually read one of his books, my introduction being—as for generations of readers before me—The Grapes of Wrath. From then on I was hooked on Steinbeck, a writer with Scots-Irish roots that I believe are evident throughout his life and work.

Workers’ Rights in Glasgow, Scotland, and in Steinbeck

After moving from The Grapes of Wrath to other works by Steinbeck, I was struck by the parallels between Steinbeck’s themes and the Scottish nature, as well as by hints of Scotland’s strong radical working class tradition in Steinbeck characters who display distinctly Scottish traits. Among the most memorable are Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, Jim Nolan—the protagonist of In Dubious Battle—and the young labour organizer who takes a beating in “The Raid.” In their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the good of their social cause, these protagonists clearly reflect the qualities of John Maclean and the Red Clydesiders of early 20th century Glasgow, Scotland.

The accompanying photographs illustrate my point. Two were taken in 1919 at a rally attended by an estimated 90,000 men and women in Glasgow, Scotland, demonstrating their support of the campaign for a shorter working week and better conditions for workers. Unfortunately the police panicked and officials sent in tanks and soldiers to the city centre, fearing that the protests would lead to revolution and resulting in the Battle for George Square. The first image shows crowd members raising the red flag, the second Government tanks on the streets. The third records the trial of the Red Clydesiders.

Battle for George Square pictured in Glasgow, ScotlandKeeping The Grapes of Wrath Fresh Beyond School

As far as I am aware, no in-depth study exists of the Scottish links that became so apparent to me in my reading of Steinbeck. One thing that I think prevents many young people from appreciating Steinbeck’s work in Scotland is that he is required reading in many schools. Being forced to read something in the school environment is not, in my opinion, conducive to personal enjoyment.

I speak from experience. Almost 25 years after leaving school, I am still reluctant to get better acquainted with the works of Shakespeare! Not that Steinbeck or Shakespeare shouldn’t be taught in schools. To the contrary, I think both writers ought to be required reading. The question is whether the teacher’s enthusiasm becomes contagious, inspiring students to continue reading beyond the required introduction and the boundaries of the classroom.

Lessons from a Glasgow, Scotland, Bookstore

I am not alone in this belief. While browsing in a bookshop for Steinbeck titles after finishing The Grapes of Wrath, I got to speaking to with a store assistant. She had been put off from delving further into Steinbeck by being forced to read Of Mice and Men in school. Reversing the usual customer-advisor role relationship, I spent the next few minutes convincing her of Steinbeck’s artistic merit and persuading her to give him another chance! I bought The Winter of Our Discontent that day but haven’t been back to the bookstore to ask if she did. Meanwhile I’ve almost persuaded myself to give Shakespeare a second try.

Shakespeare may be English, but Steinbeck was Northern Irish on his mother’s side. Her family name of Hamilton is Scottish in origin, and seems likely that her ancestors arrived in Northern Ireland from Scotland sometime during the 18th century. Less certain is whether the spirit of John Maclean and the Red Clydesiders—or earlier Scottish movements like the Radicals of the 1820s—directly influenced Steinbeck’s fiction. What is undeniable, however, is the writer’s interest in Scottish affairs.

Trial of the Red Clydesiders pictured in Glasgow, ScotlandFrom Robert Burns to The Grapes of Wrath

Steinbeck’s February 1964 letter to Jacqueline Kennedy suggests the author’s sense of attachment to the homeland of his Hamilton ancestors and his familiarity with its history: “You talked of Scotland as a lost cause and that is not true. Scotland is an unwon cause.” Speaking in the spirit of Steinbeck’s statement, Alex Salmond, the First Minister of Scotland, noted that “every society is an unwon cause – the struggle for fairness, equality, tolerance, rights of free speech and thought – these are struggles which are never won – they require constant vigilance and courage.”

But Steinbeck’s books also show Scottish influence. His appropriation of the Scottish poet Robert Burns for the title of his novel Of Mice and Men conveys Steinbeck’s theme, along with a connection to Scottish populism. Like Steinbeck’s novel, Burns’ short poem “To A Mouse” reflects both compassion for humanity and uncertainty about the future. Ma Joad, the strong maternal figure in The Grapes of Wrath, is a recognizably Scottish type. Such women became a feature of the working class during the 1920s and 30s, particularly in the mining communities around Glasgow, Scotland, where large numbers of working men were flung onto the unemployment scrapheap, requiring wives and mothers to hold households together through the crisis that followed.

Support for My Steinbeck Journey in Search of Scotland

In the coming months, I would like to explore the similarities between the thinking of John Steinbeck and what I see as the Scots experience, building the case for the influence of Scottish history and values in the writer’s fiction. If I can find the necessary financial support, I will also gauge the mood of modern Scotland as the Scots people decide whether to reclaim their national independence. In September 2014, a general referendum will determine whether Scotland will become an independent nation or remain part of the United Kingdom. (Perhaps not coincidentally, Glasgow, Scotland, will host Britain’s Commonwealth Olympics in 2014.)

In 1960, Steinbeck set out across the United States to learn more about his country at the beginning of a the last decade of his life. For my part, I would like to learn more about my country as we approach a crucial point in the evolution of our identity, and to discover whether the Scottish traits I recognise in Steinbeck’s characters survive in the land of my birth. Are the Scots people up to the challenge of creating a fairer society? Are Tom Joad, Jim Casy, and Jim Nolan still to be found among the two-million-person population of Greater Glasgow, Scotland, and other parts of my country? It’s an ambitious but timely project—one that I look forward to beginning once I’ve identified private sponsorship or public financial support for my Steinbeck-Scotland journey.

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Why Did George Orwell Call Steinbeck a Communist?

September 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Steinbeck's Cold War Russian Journal Made Orwell Suspect He Was a CommunistWhy did George Orwell put John Steinbeck’s name on the list of “crypto-communists” he kept in his  notebook while writing 1984, his Cold War classic about totalitarian England under a Stalinesque Big Brother? As the troubled alliance between the USSR and the Free World collapsed following World War II, confirming Orwell’s deepest doubts and deadliest anxieties about Stalinist dictatorship, Steinbeck was living alone in California, dealing with personal depression, divorce,  and the death of Ed Ricketts, while Orwell worked frantically to finish 1984  on a remote island in Scotland, filling his notebook with the names of public figures he considered potential collaborators in the Stalinist invasion he feared. Why was the author of The Grapes of Wrath, Bombs Away, and The Moon Is Down among those suspected by Orwell of being fifth-columnists for the communist cause in England and the United States?

Parallel Lives for Two World War Writers

In their personal lives and political views Orwell and Steinbeck weren’t so different, despite Orwell’s distinct Englishness and Steinbeck’s individualistic Americanism. Born too late to fight in World War I, their paths could have converged in London during the darkest days of World War II, though a meeting was unlikely for reasons that will become clear. As adults who came to age following World War I, each writer defied family expectations, rejected their Anglican faith, and dropped out of school to gain real-life experience for their writing among working class people during the turbulent period between 1919 and 1939. Both became pro-labor leftists in the 1930s and attempted, without success, to enlist in active service when World War II began. Both did their part in the world war against fascism using their best weapon—words.

Like George Orwell, John Steinbeck was an urban liberal activist with small-town conservative roots.

Like George Orwell, John Steinbeck was an urban liberal activist with small-town conservative roots. As a Stanford student following World War I, he witnessed America’s Big Red Scare, when hysteria about Bolsheviks, blacks, and labor unions created what Frederick Lewis Allen called a “reign of terror” by the federal government and local vigilante groups. When Red-Scare tactics were employed against Steinbeck following The Grapes of Wrath, the writer complained to the Roosevelt administration, incurring the wrath of J. Edgar Hoover, director of Roosevelt’s newly named Federal Bureau of Investigation. In post-World War II America, Steinbeck’s celebrated liberalism remained part of the public image of California’s famous pro-democracy writer. Yet George Orwell—a communist-inspired socialist with political views left of Steinbeck’s—accused Steinbeck of being the communist when the Cold War began. What change caused this charge?

Dangerous Developments in Post-World War II Events

George Orwell certainly understood the potential consequences of his Cold War list of “crypo-communists.” Wounded in 1937 while fighting with English volunteers against Franco’s fascists, Orwell was better educated and more experienced in European politics than Steinbeck, an American democrat who denied ever being a socialist or an –ist of any kind. Betrayed by Stalinist spies embedded in the anti-Franco coalition, Orwell barely escaped from Spain with his life. Who new better than Orwell the cost of being secretly accused by former comrades of taking the wrong side in an internecine struggle for partisan dominance? If Orwell’s list of suspected communists became public when the Cold War turned hot, as Orwell anticipated, those he named —including Steinbeck—could be expected to pay a price.

If Orwell’s list of suspected communists became public when the Cold War turned hot, as Orwell anticipated, those he named —including Steinbeck—could be expected to pay a price.

Why did George Orwell accuse John Steinbeck of sympathizing with Cold War Stalinism despite his own experience 10 years earlier? Part of the answer can be explained by certain elements of Orwell’s peculiar personality—extreme partisanship, English parochialism, and literary pique. As a professional book reviewer, Orwell disparaged American writing, including Steinbeck’s. His English pride was hurt by America’s rising dominance following World War I and Roosevelt’s treatment of Churchill in the closing days of World War II. His political partisanship led to paranoid illusions about the motives of opponents, particularly those within his own party. But there were more likely American writers for George Orwell accuse of being fifth-columnists for communism in the United States. What did he chose Steinbeck, whom he probably never met? Armchair psychology and what-if history aren’t always helpful, but a bit of both is required to answer this under-asked question.

Pre-World War I Babies; Pre-World War II Adults

George Orwell and John Steinbeck were born within a year of one another, middle-class children of dominant mothers and distant fathers who displayed an early aptitude to act out for the benefit of family and friends. As a boys both were bright, independent, and inventive—indulged by doting mothers and by sisters with whom they remained close. Like Orwell, Steinbeck grew up in domestic security, surrounded by hills and fields and the animals he loved. A restless college dropout, Steinbeck bummed his way to New York to haul cement and work as a reporter after digging ditches and picking crops back home. Like Steinbeck, Orwell was restless in school. Bored by life at Eton, his failure to study nixed his chances for the scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge his parents expected him to win. Enlisting at 18 in England’s Imperial Police, he was keeping an uneasy post-World War I peace in colonial Burma during the years Steinbeck dropped in and out of Stanford and worked as a day laborer with the Salinas Valley’s multicultural farm workers.

George Orwell and John Steinbeck were born within a year of one another, middle-class children of dominant mothers and distant fathers who displayed an early aptitude to act out for the benefit of family and friends.

By the late 1920s, Steinbeck was a jobless writer living in San Francisco with an unsuccessful first novel. During the same period, Orwell was washing dishes in Paris and harvesting hops in England, collecting material for Down and Out in Paris and London, his first book. Meanwhile Steinbeck married a freethinking leftist who introduced her husband to local labor organizers agitating for better conditions for field workers and Orwell married a brave socialist who joined him on the fighting front in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell’s wife died in 1945 during a botched hysterectomy. George Orwell wasn’t at her side. John Steinbeck and his wife divorced in 1943. She survived the marriage, but probably had a similar procedure at her husband’s insistence before it ended. Orwell remarried in 1949, shortly before his death. Steinbeck in 1950, the year Orwell died.

Why George Orwell and John Steinbeck Failed to Meet

Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath shortly before World War II erupted in Europe. It was his eighth book and became a bestseller at home and abroad. George Orwell published Coming Up for Air, his seventh, later the same year. It sold badly, both in England and in America. Ill and unfit for duty when England declared war against Germany in 1939, Orwell joined the Home Guard and worked as a writer, producer, and broadcaster for the BBC in London through 1943. When Hoover’s files on Steinbeck prevented him from getting a commission after America entered World War II, Steinbeck—like Orwell—put his writing in his nation’s service producing literary propaganda until he was cleared by his government to report on the war in 1943.

If the gods meant for George Orwell and John Steinbeck to meet, 1943 was their moment.

If the gods meant for George Orwell and John Steinbeck to meet, 1943 was their moment. Both writers were living in London during the early months of the year, socializing with foreign figures and writing for domestic consumption. But the 41-year-old American and the 40-year-old Englishman moved in alien worlds, distanced not by language or belief but by literary and cultural politics across the deepening Anglo-American divide. Orwell was an internationalist, a journalist who insisted that all prose—including fiction—is political. He disliked Huxley, Auden, and Isherwood, English writers of his generation who moved to America in the decade before World War I, and he considered American writers like Lewis, Anderson, and Steinbeck reactionary because their subjects were regional in focus. Chauvinistic to his core, Orwelll never traveled to America, criticized American consumerism, and publicly disparaged the decadent culture of the country he refused to visit. He also kept literary grudges, and The Grapes of Wrath had been a sensation.

Like ships passing in a storm, Orwell and Steinbeck were in London at a crucial moment without leaving a record of ever meeting. Both men were permanently changed by their World War II experience, and both went on to write books of continuing popularity that reflected the transformation produced by hot and cold world war in their political thinking. But the story behind Orwell’s accusation that Steinbeck was a communist didn’t end with World War II.

Read more in Animal Farm, 1984, and Steinbeck’s Russian Journey.

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Animal Farm, 1984, and Steinbeck’s Russian Journey

September 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Orwell's Animal Farm, 1984, and Diary Selection Book CoversThree books published between 1945 and 1949—George Orwell’s twin tales of totalitarian tyranny, Animal Farm and 1984, and John Steinbeck’s collaboration with Robert Capa, A Russian Journal—help explain why Orwell accused Steinbeck of being a “crypto-communist” in 1948.  Orwell’s caustic critique of Stalinist state communism made Animal Farm and 1984 instant classics.  Steinbeck’s friendly focus on individual Russians in his text for the photos of Robert Capa humanized the USSR. The close chronology and contrasting content of Animal Farm, A Russian Journal, and 1984 suggest that Orwell singled out Steinbeck for reasons more troubling than literary pique or anti-American resentment.

Animal Farm Anxiety

With characteristic irony Orwell subtitled his 1945 novel Animal Farm a “fairy story.” As a result Orwell’s manuscript was turned down by the Dial Press on the grounds that Americans weren’t buying children’s books. Editors in England were equally obstinate, but for political, not literary, reasons. Their motives were mixed, to put it mildly.  Orwell’s London publisher Victor Gollancz—an unrepentant pro-Stalinist—deeply disliked Orwell’s depiction of politburo pigs exploiting sheep-like proletarians. T.S. Eliot—the Anglo-American editor at Faber & Faber who turned down Orwell’s first novel as pro-proletarian propaganda—rejected Animal Farm because it appeared to praise Trotsky.

In an act of semi-official censorship, a senior official in the British Ministry of Information (later exposed as a Soviet spy) warned London publishers not to accept Animal Farm because Stalin was England’s ally and publication could harm the war effort. As Russell Baker notes in his preface to the edition of Animal Farm published in America, the year Orwell wrote Animal Farm, “even conservatives were pro-Soviet” within England’s ruling class. Orwell neither forgave nor forgot, and 1943—the year he might have met Steinbeck but didn’t—marked the beginning of his obsession with writers, politicians, and snobs he found guilty of defending Stalin beyond the dictator’s past-due date.

Orwell neither forgave nor forgot, and 1943—the year he might have met Steinbeck but didn’t—marked the beginning of his obsession with writers, politicians, and snobs he found guilty of defending Stalin beyond the dictator’s past-due date.

Initially released in 1945 in a short print run by a small English press, Animal Farm was a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. Regular readers got the point missed by Eliot and Dial’s editors, and the allegory of Stalinist pigs and proletarian sheep made Orwell famous wherever it appeared. A group of exiles from Ukraine, the agricultural Russian heartland ravaged by a decade of famine and war, were among the book’s earliest fans. Understanding  Orwell’s anti-Stalinist message from painful personal experience, they contacted the writer, who allowed them to publish Animal Farm without charge and wrote an introduction to the Ukrainian edition.

Animal Farm was Orwell’s first bestseller, and his advance amounted to $2,000 in today’s currency. Cannery Row, published at virtually the same time, was Steinbeck’s fifth or sixth bestseller, as Orwell was painfully aware. Described by one critic as a lighthearted confection with a poison center, Cannery Row is the antithesis of Animal Farm in purpose, point, and politics. Although both books are parodies meant to make readers laugh, Steinbeck wrote Cannery Row as an entertaining diversion for war-weary Americans. Beneath its sardonic surface, Animal Farm delivers a dire warning about conditions in Europe under fascism and communism: Contemporary life is like a farm. Totalitarians are pigs and you sheep are fools to follow them.

Steinbeck’s Russian Journey with Robert Capa

Orwell  turned down invitations to visit the United States and never traveled to the Soviet Union, the subject of Animal Farm and 1984 and the cause of division among socialists following Stalin’s show trials and pact with Nazi Germany. When John Steinbeck visited Russian with his first wife in 1937, Orwell was fighting alongside his wife as an anti-Franco volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. In London six years later, Steinbeck became friends with Robert Capa, the photographer who accompanied him when he returned to Russia (without his second wife) in 1947. A Hungarian emigrant to France, Robert Capa—like Orwell—was on the scene during the savage civil war in Spain, photographing scenes that made him famous.  Like Steinbeck, Robert Capa was self-invented, sponataneous, and unconstrained by social boundaries or orthodoxy—a better match for Steinbeck than Orwell had the writers met. The Eton-educated Orwell, born Eric Blair, was an intellectual, a partisan, and a bit of a prig.

The Eton-educated Orwell, born Eric Blair, was an intellectual, a partisan, and a bit of a prig.

A Russian Journal was published in 1948—text by John Steinbeck, images by Robert Capa—as Orwell was completing the first draft of 1984. To Orwell’s likely dismay, Steinbeck and Capa chose to focus on personal portraiture rather than group context in a Russian snapshot where politics are kept (mostly) out of the frame and individuals dominate the picture. Like the Joads, the Ukrainian farmers who extend hospitality to Steinbeck and Capa are fully-realized fellow beings, not proletarian symbols displayed against an Orwellian landscape. State-planned famine, Soviet show trials, and Stalinist treachery in Spain soured Orwell on the Soviet experiment earlier than other English socialists. Steinbeck’s characteristically American failure to denounce Stalin’s sins while praising Russian virtue must have seemed unforgivable, given what Orwell knew and when he knew it.

1984 and Beyond

The political allegory of Animal Farm morphed into futuristic nightmare in 1984, Orwell’s last and greatest book. Originally titled “The Last Man in Europe,” his story began to take shape in 1946 as the Iron Curtain fell across Europe and the Cold War ended Stalin’s temporary alliance with England and the United States. Using his royalties from Animal Farm, Orwell rented a remote house on an island off the northwest coast of Scotland, where he completed the final version of 1984 in 1948. Following a course strikingly parallel and opposite to Orwell career almost to the end, Steinbeck was living in self-imposed isolation in California, depressed by divorce from his second wife, the death of his best friend, and disparagement by New York’s literary elite. Whether Steinbeck read Animal Farm or 1984 during this period is unclear. But Orwell still practiced literary criticism, and it seems certain he was reading Steinbeck.

Steinbeck recovered and remarried in 1950, the year that Orwell—also remarried—died from tuberculosis. Diagnosed in 1948, Orwell’s disease was successfully treated with streptomycin, a still-scarce wonder drug invented in America and procured for Orwell by David Astor, the wealthy English son of American-born parents. Another friend named Richard Rees was at Orwell’s side when the drug and the author’s health failed in 1949, checking Orwell into a private sanitorium where they talked together about life, politics, and the list of communist sympathizers the writer was keeping in his notebook. According to Rees, his friend was “very weak, though mentally as active as ever.” In other words, Orwell knew what he was doing when he wrote  Steinbeck’s name in the list of communist sympathizers the authorities should be watching.

Orwell knew what he was doing when he wrote Steinbeck’s name in the list of communist sympathizers the authorities should be watching.

According to Orwell biographer Michael Shelden, it was “a random list which mixes very famous personalities with obscure writers, and much of it is based on pure speculation.” Included with Steinbeck are two American artists of comparable celebrity: the expatriate singer-actor Paul Robeson and Orson Welles, creator of Citizen Cain and (like Steinbeck) outspoken critic of William Randolph Hearst and other demagogues of the Cold War American right. But most of Orwell’s suspects were English. Among them: Nancy Cunard, the socialist shipping heiress; C. Day Lewis, the future Poet Laureate and father-to-be of Daniel Day Lewis; Michael Redgrave, the knighted actor who founded a flourishing dramatic dynasty; and Britain’s perennial socialist playwright and journalist, George Bernard Shaw. Good company for a writer like Steinbeck, who enjoyed interesting associates, even when imaginary.

Orwell almost took his private list of suspected communists with him—but  not quite—to his grave. The story of its survival begs an important question for Steinbeck lovers today: Was there anything more to Orwell’s accusation against Steinbeck than anti-Stalinist partisanship, anti-American parochialism, and professional pique? Seeking a higher authority, I turned to my late friend Christopher Hitchens, Orwell’s fellow socialist, disciple, and ardent defender.

Read more in Author Christopher Hitchens Defends Orwell’s Accusation.

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Author Christopher Hitchens Defends Orwell’s Accusation

September 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Why Orwell Matters, a Book by Christopher Hitchens, This Blog Writer's FriendWhen Winston Churchill described the Soviet Union as dropping an Iron Curtain across Central Europe his speech to an American audience in 1946, George Orwell was living in London and imagining a future England under a Stalinist dictator. From Orwell’s paranoia about the Soviet Union came his masterpiece 1984. A less fortunate outcome was a set of accusatory, argumentative letters, diaries, and notebooks produced during the four years of Orwell’s remaining life, including a list of 100 or more suspected “crypto-communists” such as John Steinbeck. The late author Christopher Hitchens, Orwell’s intellectual heir and ardent defender, provided insights into the writer’s mindset in Why Orwell Matters, a convincing argument for Orwell’s continued relevance, despite lapses of judgment like the paranoid list. My friend Christopher Hitchens died in 2011. I regret now that I never asked him about Orwell’s list while he was alive.

Why Christopher Hitchens Matters

I met Christopher Hitchens while moderating a debate about socialism during the dying days of the old Soviet Union. The Iron Curtain was falling throughout Europe, and the debate organizer explained that the challenging case for socialism would be made by Christopher Hitchens, an English-born journalist whose name was new to me. Trained in political debate at Cambridge, Christopher Hitchens rarely lost an argument on any subject that engaged his interest, including democracy movements behind the Iron Curtain, post-Soviet Union U.S. politics, and the questionable existence of God. I learned this in the course of a friendship that lasted until his much too early death.

Like Orwell, Christopher Hitchens was a master of irony, irreverence, and oxymoron. A loyal friend, he was relentless in print but respectful in person. Like Orwell, he remained faithful to his early socialist ideals while criticizing communism as it developed in the Soviet Union and its Iron Curtain satellites. He shared a tough, pared-down liberalism with Orwell and (I believe) with Steinbeck as well. Its basic principles (in my own words) are relevant to the case of Orwell vs. Steinbeck:

The Seven Laws of Liberalism

* Freedom is precious.
* Truth is objective.
* Reason is essential.
* Every individual has value.
* No authority is infallible.
* God is debatable.
* History happened.

Ten Questions for Christopher Hitchens

Liberal ideals inform everything Christopher Hitchens wrote, including his short book about Orwell. I find the same values in Steinbeck, a writer of fiction less partisan or politically sophisticated than either Englishman. Orwell accused Steinbeck of favoring the Soviet Union over democracy, and neither Hitchens nor Orwell acknowledged Steinbeck’s characteristically American liberalism. In compensation for their failure, here are the questions I would ask Christopher Hitchens, Orwell’s finest defender, if I still had the chance :

1. Like Steinbeck, Orwell was a religious skeptic who clung to the King James Bible and echoed liturgical language in the cadence of his prose. Like Steinbeck, Orwell requested and received a Church of England funeral. What should we make of this paradox in the behavior of these profoundly lapsed Anglicans?
2. Like Steinbeck, Orwell was an empiricist who preferred evidence over theory and was once described as having too much common sense to be  interested in philosophy. Yet Steinbeck’s thinking about teleology and group behavior reflect similar ideas in Orwell’s social writing. What meaning can we take from this coincidence in the thinking of these covert philosophers?

Orwell was an empiricist who preferred evidence over theory and was once described as having too much common sense to be  interested in philosophy.

3. Like Steinbeck, Orwell was an anti-imperialist democrat who distrusted centralized power. This position was well-established in both writers by 1943, when each was in London. Yet I find no record that they met when they had the opportunity. What conclusion can be drawn from Orwell and Steinbeck’s failure to connect?
4. In your book you describe Orwell as “a natural Tory.” Like Steinbeck, he held old-fashioned ideas about private ownership, self-sufficiency, and family loyalty absorbed from his upbringing in a small rural town. Yet both writers remained pro-labor, small-d democrats throughout their lives. What can be inferred from this inconsistency of liberal and conservative values?

Like Steinbeck, Orwell was an anti-imperialist democrat who distrusted centralized power.

5. Unlike Steinbeck, Orwell never visited the Soviet Union. In your book you explain that Orwell “never went through a phase of Russophilia or Stalin-worship or fellow-travelling.” What conclusions can we draw from Orwell’s distant opposition to the Soviet Union and his reaction to Steinbeck’s journey behind the Iron Curtain?
6. Like Steinbeck in Vietnam, you supported America’s invasion of a foreign country, and you became an American citizen in an act of solidarity with the administration of George Bush. Unlike you, Orwell disliked America and Americans, including Steinbeck. Yet he never visited the America. What motivated Orwell’s animosity-from-a-distance toward the United States?

Orwell never went through a phase of Russophilia or Stalin-worship or fellow-travelling.

7. Unlike Orwell, Steinbeck resisted criticizing other writers in print. Orwell publicly denigrated American regionalists like Steinbeck as reactionaries by definition, and he disparaged Steinbeck’s work in his private writing. What motivated Orwell’s public criticism and private doubts about John Steinbeck?
8. Orwell’s Cold War list of “crypto-communists” included pro-Soviet Union American politicians such as Henry A. Wallace and Claude Pepper, despite their anti-imperialist, pro-labor domestic positions (also Steinbeck’s). Was there more to Orwell’s suspicions about these politicians than their support for the Soviet Union?

Unlike Orwell, Steinbeck resisted criticizing other writers in print.

9. Besides Steinbeck, Wallace, and Pepper, Orwell’s list included Charlie Chaplin, Paul Robeson, and Orson Welles. Yet each shared Orwell’s distrust of reactionary media moguls like Citizen Cain—William Randolph Hearst. Why did Orwell single out Steinbeck, Robeson, and Welles in his list of Iron Curtain sympathizers wihtin the United States?
10. Like Steinbeck, Orwell was deeply attracted to the ficton of Jack London, whose 1906 novel The Iron Heel—like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World—clearly influenced the writing of 1984. Yet Steinbeck’s 1942 anti-fascist piece, The Moon Is Down, apparently lacked similar appeal for Orwell. In your book you note that Orwell lashed out at other writers—including Huxley—but apologized after the fact. Did Orwell have similar second thoughts about Steinbeck before he died?

How the Soviet Union Became Orwell’s Obsession

Christopher Hitchens notes that while working for the BBC, Orwell included “the grittier work of James T. Farrell, John Steinbeck, and Archibald MacLeish” in a radio program about new writers. Orwell’s scripts were scrutinized by BBC censors to avoid offending listeners, and his on-air words didn’t always reflect his real opinion. This was clearly the case with his views on Steinbeck, who is described in Orwell’s diary as a “spurious writer” and “pseudo-naif.” Unfortunately, Steinbeck is only one example of Orwell’s muddled opinions about literary quality. In a notorious case of poor judgment, he publicly criticized W.H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939” for lack of authenticity, credibility, or accuracy in its description of the Spanish Civil War. Today Auden’s anti-fascist masterpiece is considered by many his greatest poem.

Steinbeck is described in Orwell’s diary as a spurious writer and pseudo-naif.

Orwell’s public muttering about Auden provides another clue to his disapproval of Steinbeck. Like Aldous Huxley before him (and Christopher Hitchens years later), Auden emigrated to the United States, arriving in 1939 with the English writer Christopher Isherwood. Like Huxley and Hitchens, Auden and Isherwood were attracted by certain American freedoms—including sex—not found in England. Unlike Christopher Hitchens and George Orwell, both Auden and Isherwood were gay—card-carrying members of the “pansy left” publicly disparaged by Orwell. Orwell’s anti-American bias and anti-gay prejudice combined in his attack on Auden. In the case of Steinbeck, “anti-Soviet Union anti-Americanism” appears to have been sufficient cause for censure.

Why Christopher Hitchens’ Defense of Orwell Falls Short

In Why Orwell Matters, Christopher Hitchens defends Orwell’s list of “crypto-communists” as a harmless intellectual exercise, a game of “guessing which public figures would, or would not, sell out in the event of an invasion or a dictatorship.” He surmises that Orwell’s conservatism about sex in general and gay sex in particular was the result of Orwell’s boyhood experience as a student at St. Cyprian’s, a Dickensian hellhole where bullying, beating, and buggery were routine. But Orwell went on to Eton, where he perfected his French under Aldous Huxley and began his lifelong friendship Cyril Connolly, an openly ambisextrous editor who proved helpful to his career.

Christopher Hitchens defends Orwell’s list of crypto-communists as a harmless intellectual exercise, a game of guessing which public figures would, or would not, sell out in the event of an invasion of a dictatorship.

In the end, Christopher Hitchens’ argument fails to exculpate Orwell. Of  Orwell’s “crypto-communists,” he explains that “while a few on ‘the list’ were known personally to Orwell, most were not,” concluding that Orwell’s charge against people he didn’t know didn’t make him a “snitch.” Illiberal, inconsistent, and unconvincing. The world of 1984 is crawling with snitches whose testimony leads to torture and death at the hands of Big Brother. Every individual has value, truth is objective, and history happens. Orwell showed his list naming Steinbeck to influential friends, one of whom worked for an agency of government with the Orwellian name “Information Research Department.”

I agree with Christopher Hitchens that George Orwell still matters. But not always for the right reason. Unlike my late friend, Orwell was prejudiced against gays, Americans, and anyone he suspected of sympathy with the Soviet Union. Though if he hadn’t attacked Steinbeck, even that might not matter.

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The Edward Snowden-John Steinbeck Connection

August 17, 2013 by 1 Comment

John Steinbeck, fiction writer, and Edward Snowden with truth image superimposed

Edward Snowden, former national security technocrat turned NSA whistleblower. John Steinbeck, 1962 Nobel laureate fiction writer and the subject of FBI files published in 2002. Two famous figures—separated by time, talent, and the tools they used to expose the abuse of political power in their era. Books from John Steinbeck mobilized public opinion on behalf of migrant workers. Emails from Edward Snowden exposed electronic surveillance on a global scale. Both the fiction writer and the NSA leaker risked their safety and traveled to Russia. As the Edward Snowden saga plays out, the story behind the FBI files on John Steinbeck is suddenly relevant again. Two respected books about Hoover and the FBI files show why.

Although the controversy over books from John Steinbeck took longer to reach Washington than reaction to Snowden, public response to the fiction writer in 1939 set off tensions in the White House, with Eleanor Roosevelt and J. Edgar Hoover on opposing sides. As Richard Powers points out in The Life of J. Edgar Hoover: Secrecy and Power (Free Press, 1987), FBI files on liberals like Steinbeck had been used to discredit opponents of the administration as early as 1935. But the systematic surveillance of American citizens actually began in 1914 under Woodward Wilson—like Roosevelt, a progressive Democratic president. Notes Powers: “Hoover vigorously represented throughout his life that population of traditional Americans, largely middle-class, Protestant, and Anglo-Saxon, who were frightened by the changes they felt were depriving them of their privileged position in an ever more pluralistic society.” Hoover was a perfect choice when the time to prosecute pluralists arrived.

How Books from John Steinbeck
Ended Up in Hoover’s FBI Files

John Steinbeck was a California schoolboy with German relatives when Wilson laid the groundwork for the American security state. Hoover, an ambitious young Washington insider, was working at an entry-level job cataloging books for the Library of Congress in 1914. Seven years older than the future fiction writer, he was Steinbeck’s mirror opposite. Like Snowden, he was comfortable with data. Unlike Steinbeck, he was a prim, proper puritan, intolerant of dissent and distrustful of non-whites. A born communist-hunter, he sharpened his skills on suspected German sympathizers as a draft-exempt employee of the United States government.

Days after America declared war on Germany in 1917, Wilson authorized the investigation of German aliens suspected of anti-American sentiment. According to Powers, 4.5 million Americans of German or Austro-Hungarian descent ended up on government lists by the time the war ended. Hoover, a budding bureaucrat with friends in high places, was hired to collect data on potential deportees. As America’s first Red Scare reached its peak following the war, he rose rapidly, becoming acting director of the agency in charge of domestic spying on suspected communists in 1924. When the modern FBI was created in 1935, Hoover was put in charge.

Hoover vigorously represented throughout his life that population of traditional Americans, largely middle-class, Protestant, and Anglo-Saxon, who were frightened by the changes they felt were depriving them of their privileged position in an ever more pluralistic society.

By 1939, with another world war looming, books from John Steinbeck included In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath, the three greatest labor novels by any American fiction writer. The Grapes of Wrath provoked animosity from interests with ties to Washington; neither Steinbeck’s growing celebrity nor Eleanor Roosevelt’s public support was enough to protect the fiction writer from Hoover’s FBI. A first-class flatterer, Hoover provided a daily flow of information to President Roosevelt about his political enemies. Political friends like John Steinbeck frequently got caught in the stream.

Lessons from Hoover’s Secret War
On America’s Famous Fiction Writer

How did Hoover win his fight for Roosevelt’s heart? A personal note to the president, penned by Hoover in 1940 at the height of the smear campaign against John Steinbeck, reads like a love letter to the head of a modern totalitarian state. It isn’t hard to imagine how a fiction writer with Steinbeck’s spirit would have reacted if he’d read Hoover’s ass-kissing words to Roosevelt: “In noting the vast contrast between the Leader of our Nation and those of less fortunate nations, I feel deeply thankful that we have at the head of our Government one who possesses such sterling, sincere, and altogether human qualities.” (It’s chilling to consider that Edward Snowden’s present safety depends on a Russian leader surrounded by flatterers like Hoover.)

John Steinbeck and Franklin Roosevelt met for the first time in the fall of 1939. Hoover vetted important visitors for the president, so the FBI files on John Steinbeck  probably began as preparation for that meeting—though Hoover denied their existence until the day he died. Yet nothing before 1942 appears in FBI files on the fiction writer. Did Hoover destroy documents to protect Roosevelt? That’s the inference of Top Secret: The FBI Files on John Steinbeck, edited by Thomas Fensch (New Century Books, 2002). What survives from the FBI files on Steinbeck is revealing nonetheless, obsessing about the author’s habits, friends, and beliefs. Books from John Steinbeck were scoured for clues to the writer’s character. Except for references to FBI training in the plot of Steinbeck’s last novel, the FBI files on John Steinbeck say nothing meaningful about the content of  his fiction. They attack his motives but ignore his message.

In noting the vast contrast between the Leader of our Nation and those of less fortunate nations, I feel deeply thankful that we have at the head of our Government one who possesses such sterling, sincere, and altogether human qualities.

Those who make Edward Snowden’s motivation the issue rather than the abuses he revealed are following the same playbook today—distraction. That’s why it’s important to examine the FBI files assembled on John Steinbeck under five American presidents for parallels to the present. Roosevelt was no Putin. Nor was Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, or Johnson. Ironically, only Richard Nixon managed to reduce Hoover’s power, perhaps because Nixon understood Hoover better than his predecessors in the White House. Remember: Deep Throat—the source of information that helped bring down Nixon’s presidency in 1974,—was a disaffected employee of Hoover’s FBI. Hoover died in 1972, and Deep Throat started talking.

Like John Steinbeck and Edward Snowden, Hoover embodied a personality type found in every era. Steinbecks and Snowdens value liberty over security and elevate the individual above the state. The Hoovers of the world are born authoritarians, gravitating instinctively to power and jealously guarding the status quo. Hoover achieved unprecedented control  by collecting secret information, using it to hurt the natural enemies of his peculiar species, including Steinbeck. This conflict for dominance continues in our time, connecting Steinbeck’s story with Snowden’s and Hoover’s FBI with the NSA.

Read more in What the FBI FIles Reveal about Hoover’s War on Steinbeck.

 

 

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What FBI Files Reveal about Hoover’s War on Steinbeck

August 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

John Steinbeck, fiction writer, photo

As books from John Steinbeck became popular in the 1930s, Europe armed for war. Like Woodrow Wilson in 1914, Franklin Roosevelt was secretly preparing for America’s entry into international conflict by authorizing domestic surveillance in the name of national security. J. Edgar Hoover was only a foot soldier in Wilson’s campaign against German sympathizers in 1917. By the time Roosevelt issued his secret surveillance authorization order in 1936, Hoover was a veteran of the hunt for German sympathizers and the campaign against suspected communists following the end of the war. By 1935, when he was appointed director of the FBI, Hoover had developed a delicate nose for Americans with German or leftist associations. John Steinbeck had both.

As Roosevelt’s chief domestic spy, Hoover believed in fishing with a big net. He understood the benefits of secrecy, data, and dragnet tactics, and Roosevelt’s executive order authorizing secret domestic surveillance allowed him to exercise his talents in all three areas.  As Richard Powers explains the situation in The Life of J. Edgar Hoover: Secrecy and Power, “the domestic intelligence apparatus Hoover assembled for Roosevelt [was] part of the president’s covert preparation against the possibility of war, a secrecy made necessary because of the public’s resistance to any attempt to make it realize the true danger of the international situation.”  According to Powers, Hoover became “Roosevelt’s effective, loyal, and indispensable agent.” Steinbeck was devoted to the progressive policies of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Hoover was loyal to the pragmatic president in a more personal and practical way.

Fiction Writer vs. Spy in Chief

The FBI files on John Steinbeck—a fiction writer who upset people without really trying—reflect the differences already noted between Hoover and Steinbeck. Hoover equated patriotism with morality and always wore a suit. Steinbeck dressed and lived casually. Hoover never married. Steinbeck had three wives during his lifetime, and according to FBI files the first registered as a communist in 1937.  Steinbeck was pro-labor and always sympathized with the underdog. Hoover was anti-union and gravitated to authority. If Hoover read The Grapes of Wrath when Steinbeck’s novel was published in 1939, he probably didn’t like it. The FBI files document his disapproval of the author’s lifestyle.

Do you suppose you could ask Edgar’s boys to stop stepping on my heels? They think I’m an enemy alien. It’s getting tiresome.

In 1942 Steinbeck wrote the letter that made Hoover an enemy for life. Four years earlier California elected the liberal Cuthbert Olson as governor—the state’s first Democratic chief executive since 1895—and Olson named progressive activists like Steinbeck’s ally Carey McWilliams, author of Factories in the Field, to his new administration. Steinbeck’s sense of political progress in California and America, along with his growing reputation as a fiction writer, helps explain the tone of the note Steinbeck sent to Livingston Biddle, Roosevelt’s attorney general and Hoover’s nominal boss, shortly after Pearl Harbor. Steinbeck wanted an Army commission and someone was getting in his way.

Steinbeck’s note to Biddle named Hoover: “Do you suppose you could ask Edgar’s boys to stop stepping on my heels? They think I’m an enemy alien. It’s getting tiresome.” Like Steinbeck, Hoover was a celebrity, and Steinbeck had visited the White House. As a fiction writer with an eye for character and an ear for speech, he might have predicted Hoover’s response to the attorney general: “I wish to advise that Steinbeck is not being and has never been investigated by this Bureau. His letter is returned to you herewith.” Like James Clapper’s public denial of massive electronic surveillance by the NSA, Hoover’s private answer to Biddle was a lie.

The FBI Files Exposed

Hoover interacted at the highest level with military intelligence and never forgot an insult. His hand in keeping Steinbeck out of the Army is revealed in the FBI files on the author. Although the field agent who investigated Steinbeck concluded that the fiction writer was qualified for a commission, this judgment was overridden by the head of military intelligence. Coincidentally, that secretive group had the James Bondian title G-2—one digit away from the name of the intergovernmental economic group meeting soon in Russia. The Obama White House says that Vladimir Putin’s refusal to extradite Edward Snowden won’t prevent the president from attending G-20. John Steinbeck’s reputation as a fiction writer failed to prevent Hoover’s involvement in the verdict of G-2.

Hoover’s retaliation didn’t stop end in 1942. As the FBI files show, books from John Steinbeck and reviews by unfriendly critics were scoured for signs of disloyalty, beginning with The Grapes of Wrath and ending with the author’s last novel, The Winter of Our Discontent..  Agency-inspired citizen-complaint letters contained in FBI files cited Steinbeck’s visits to Russia—both before and after World War II—in impugning the author’s patriotism. Anything remotely connected to Steinbeck’s past went into the FBI files, including fictitious findings by the American Legion Radical Research Bureau, a right wing organization founded during the Red Scare following World War I. Steinbeck was one fiction writer who avoided the reach of McCarthy’s paranoid committee on un-American activities, but he never dropped off the radar screen of Hoover’s FBI.

I wish to advise that Steinbeck is not being and has never been investigated by this Bureau. His letter is returned to you herewith.

J. Edgar Hoover’s private war on America’s foremost fiction writer—a paper war fought with letters, memos, and clippings—was eventually exposed in Top Secret: The FBI Files on John Steinbeck, edited by Thomas Fensch and published in 2002. Hoover died without achieving anything more damaging to Steinbeck than keeping the author out of the Army. In its 75th year, The Grapes of Wrath remains an international icon. Forty years after his death, Hoover has congealed as a symbol of government secrecy and non-judicial overreach detestable to generations of dissenting Americans, beginning with John Steinbeck and continuing in Edward Snowden.

To paraphrase Disraeli on Darwin, Steinbeck was on the side of the whistle-blowers, both as a fiction writer and as a citizen. How Steinbeck would envision the ending of Snowden’s saga is of course unknowable. Given the author’s distrust of Russian dictators, however, it’s safe to assume he wouldn’t like the middle part of the story as it’s unfolding. How we participate in Snowden’s narrative—to paraphrase the fiction writer—is entirely up to us.

Read more in Steinbeck, Snowden, and the Future of America.

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Steinbeck, Snowden, and the Future of America

August 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Adbusters magazine coverSinclair Lewis, a Nobel Prize-winning fiction writer admired by John Steinbeck for his dissection of contemporary American life, envisioned a future fascistic America in a novel published the same year J. Edgar Hoover became director of the FBI. Released in 1935, It Can’t Happen Here is a more realistic if less convincing depiction of dictatorial government than George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949. Books from John Steinbeck about totalitarianism during this turbulent period consist of a slender play-novelette, The Moon Is Down—and it involves enemy invasion, not domestic dictatorship. But based on FBI files and recent events, I believe government surveillance on an Orwellian scale would attract Steinbeck as a subject if he were writing today. His story might start with Hoover.

Fiction Writer Question: What Would Steinbeck Say?

Also created in 1935, Hoover’s FBI left a blueprint for the kind of American police state imagined by Lewis in It Can’t Happen Here. By blending secrecy, efficiency, and independence from oversight, Hoover built a hidden system of government surveillance years before digital data mining and other tools of the NSA. Hoover’s first speech to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, delivered in 1925, reads like the mission statement for a future NSA security state: “The mighty, irresistible current of world-wide, cosmic forces, have created the necessity and impetus for the inception and growth of an organization which will serve to centralize and crystallize the efforts of those who would meet the exigencies of our changing times by a pooling of all of the wisdom and power of the guardians of civilization, the protectors of Society.”

The differences between Steinbeck and Hoover—in personality, politics, and lifestyle—have already been covered. Richard Powers’ biography, The Life of J. Edgar Hoover: Secrecy and Power, documents Hoover’s deep attachment to moralistic beliefs and dictatorial behavior. Top Secret: The FBI Files on John Steinbeck, edited by Thomas Fensch, demonstrates how easily personal conflicts became public crusades in Hoover’s FBI. If Hoover were still in charge today, Edward Snowden would be caught between deadly opposing forces with identifiably authoritarian faces. Putin or Hoover? Which would be worse for a fugitive like Snowden? Only Richard Nixon rivaled Hoover at creating fear in diissenters, and by 1974 both men had left the stage. Of their odious personality type, only Putin and North Korea’s little caesar remain as players on the international stage.

The mighty, irresistible current of world-wide, cosmic forces, have created the necessity and impetus for the inception and growth of an organization which will serve to centralize and crystallize the efforts of those who would meet the exigencies of our changing times by a pooling of all of the wisdom and power of the guardians of civilization, the protectors of Society.

As noted in Top Secret: The FBI Files on John Steinbeck, America’s foremost fiction writer blew the whistle on Hoover in a private letter to Roosevelt’s attorney general. The immediate consequences to Steinbeck were personal, but they passed. Edward Snowden exposed the NSA’s Orwellian overreach in public, on a global scale, and his consequences are ongoing. Congress is making noise, President Obama says he’ll investigate, and mainstream journalists in America persist in challenging Snowden’s character. To readers of the FBI files on John Steinbeck this all sounds too familiar. It wouldn’t surprise the fiction writer. His experience was similar.

Steinbeck would certainly fear for Snowden’s safety going forward. While he liked Russians, America’s foremost fiction writer hated Stalinism and disliked authoritarians, at home or abroad. He was passionate about democracy but thought the cold war was a political power game threatening human survival. He supported his government in periods of real war but opposed its excesses in times of uneasy peace. Like William Faulkner—another American fiction writer who exalted individual freedom—he gave a Nobel acceptance speech that’s as relevant today as it was it was it was delivered .

For the Answer, Check the FBI Files on the Author

Steinbeck’s speech in 1962 presents an individualist’s answer to authoritarians like Hoover. Steinbeck’s words in his acceptance speech constitute a plausible opening for the anti-totalitarian novel he never wrote: “Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life and death of the whole world of all living things. The danger and the glory and the choice rest finally in man. The test of his perfectibility is at hand.”

In the half-century since Steinbeck delivered his speech, technology and terrorism have intervened in ways that would have horrified the fiction writer. Today the consequences of poking Big Brother in the eye are more serious—and the dimensions of surveillance greater—than he could ever imagine. It required a fiction writer with George Orwell’s direct experience in colonial law enforcement to envision a system of state surveillance anything like today’s NSA. Orwell was supervising an extensive system of domestic surveillance in the British colony of Burma in 1924, the year Hoover became acting director of investigation for the U.S. Department of Justice.

An article in a recent issue of Adbusters magazine speculates that the Orwellian NSA data mining program disclosed by Edward Snowden is only the tip of an iceberg—one that threatens to sink democracy as definitively as the ghastly surveillance system imagined in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Employing the same pastoral image used by Orwell and Steinbeck to portray evil despoiling innocence in fiction, the magazine warns Americans to wake up before escapist slumber becomes actual, existential hell: “America has truly become a nation of sheep . . . . Trust the shepherd. He’ll lead us to pasture.” Overstatement? Only if you think nightmares never come true. If that’s a challenge, try this for size:

Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator denounced by John Steinbeck, was an ex-church seminarian who murdered millions of his people. Vladimir Putin, Snowden’s ominous host, formerly ran the KGB, the bloody successor to Stalin’s secret police. Steinbeck’s political hero Roosevelt cooperated with Stalin during World War II. Barack Obama, Snowden’s chief critic and a progressive like Roosevelt, visibly dislikes Putin—but plans to attend Russia’s G-20 conference anyway. Where all this is going is anybody’s guess. John Steinbeck became a hero for exposing economic inequality and injustice in his day. Edward Snowden may become a martyr for revealing massive surveillance in ours. However uncertain the outcome, the connections are clear. Steinbeck’s story suggests history will take Snowden’s side.

William Ray, the editor of five books and former editorial director at New Wedding Planet, is the author of articles on John Steinbeck and the founder of SteinbeckNow.com.

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The Snowden – Steinbeck Connection

August 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment

An eye-opening feature article discussing the Edward Snowden / John Steinbeck connection is coming soon. Stay tuned!

Planet earth globe with Edward Snowden and John Steinbeck

Feature Article Coming Soon…

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