The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck

The author is out of his element

Ethan Hawley, the protagonist and sometimes narrator of The Winter of Our Discontent, lives with his wife and two kids in New Baytown, a small town on Long Island, New York. Although Ethan is the descendant of glorious whalers, pilgrims, and pirates who founded New Baytown centuries ago, he has since descended from the distinguished heights of his ancestors. Due to the failure of some family business ventures, Ethan finds himself working as a clerk in a grocery store owned by an Italian immigrant and struggling to make ends meet for his family. With such a lowly position comes a fair amount of shame, and everyone in town seems to want Ethan to pick himself up by his bootstraps, aim for higher prospects, and live up to the aristocratic status of his ancestry.

Published in 1961, The Winter of Our Discontent is John Steinbeck’s last novel (not counting a book of King Arthur legends that was published after his death). This book is a bit of an oddball entry in Steinbeck’s oeuvre, for a number of reasons. Like many late-career artists, it seems that Steinbeck wanted to try something different in order to break out of his pigeonholes, but, also like many late-career artists, this effort is nowhere near as good as most of his earlier works.

Steinbeck is one of the great novelists, if not THE greatest, of Western America. Almost all of his stories take place in California or Mexico, and usually contain some notable level of appreciation for the natural landscape of those regions. The Winter of Our Discontent, however, is set on the Northeastern Atlantic Coast. Although technically not New England, the characters in this novel have a sort of stereotypical New England attitude of Anglo-Saxon arrogance. The characters take pride in the fact that their ancestors came over on the Mayflower, and they fret over whether they are upholding their blue-blooded Puritan pioneer heritage. I find it hard to believe that everyone in the Northeast brags about how long their family lineage has resided in the U.S., but this novel gives you the idea that that’s a constant preoccupation, at least for the whitest of the whites, who look down on more recent immigrants, such as the Italian businessman in this story.

Another irritating aspect of the book is that the dialogue is loaded with 1950s slang, which makes for slow and awkward reading. This problem is heightened by the fact that Ethan fancies himself a comedian, so his speech and interior narrative often resemble the rapid-fire string of extemporary non-sequiturs from an old Robin Williams stand-up routine. The plot of the book hints at film noir and dips its toe into crime fiction, but never goes far enough in either of those directions. Nobody really does much of anything until about 240 pages into the book. Prior to that, it’s all get-acquainted time. Then, when things finally start moving, albeit slowly, we’re led to believe that certain potentially exciting actions are going to take place. For the most part, however, they don’t. The purpose of this novel is to exhibit Ethan and his fellow townspeople as examples of moral decline, a fall from the greatness of America’s forefathers to the looser morals of the mid-20th century. In this fall, however, the fall is not great enough—barely a stumble.

TFor most of his career, Steinbeck wrote in a predominantly naturalistic form of realism. Compared to earlier California writers like Jack London and Frank Norris, Steinbeck was more of a proto-modernist, but still he generally opted for good old-fashioned naturalistic storytelling and social realism over narrative ambiguity and existentialist angst. Albert Camus he ain’t. Here in 1961, however, every novelist wanted to prove himself a cracker-jack psychoanalyst, and Steinbeck is likewise guilty of that conceit, so the bulk of this novel takes place inside Ethan’s head and beats his neuroses like a dead horse. The Winter of Our Discontent has little in common with the rest of Steinbeck’s literature, so even if you’re a fan of the author, don’t feel like you’re missing much if you skip this one.

To a God Unknown by John Steinbeck

Young writer tries too hard

I have read quite a few of John Steinbeck’s novels and thought I had heard of all of them until I recently stumbled upon To a God Unknown. Published in 1933 when Steinbeck was in his early thirties, this was his second novel, after Cup of Gold. I was intrigued by To a God Unknown for the simple fact that any mention of it had somehow eluded me for fifty-plus years of my life. After having read the book, however, I can say with some certainty that the reason you’ve probably never heard of this novel is because it isn’t very good.

The time period of the novel is not specified, but it feels like the late 19th century. (I don’t recall any motorized vehicles.) Joseph Wayne is the third of four sons in a Vermont farming family. In bygone days of a century or more ago, the eldest son typically inherited the family farm after the father’s death, so Joseph decides to build his own future by striking out on his own and heading West to California. He finds some beautiful untouched land and establishes a homestead there. From Steinbeck’s descriptions of the surrounding countryside, it sounds like this would be located in what is now Monterrey County near the city of Soledad. 

Soon after Joseph establishes himself in California, his father dies back home. Hard times befall the Wayne family in Vermont, so Joseph’s three brothers and their families move out to California to join him. They build houses in close proximity to one another and work the surrounding land. The eldest brother, Thomas, is a rugged and likable common-sense farmer. The second brother, Burton, moonlights as a Protestant preacher and bears the judgmental attitude that comes with Christian fundamentalism. The youngest brother Benjy is the black sheep of the family, a heavy drinker and ladies’ man with a knack for inciting trouble. Joseph is the serious and moody member of the family. Being the pioneer in this California venture, he assumes the role of family patriarch.

The problem with To a God Unknown is that Steinbeck goes out of his way to load the story with religious imagery every chance he gets, often in a very heavy-handed and obtrusive manner. Joseph develops a love for the land that amounts to a form of pagan worship. He believes a certain tree on his land, for example, bears his father’s reincarnated soul. Burton, the Protestant preacher, naturally has a problem with this. Meanwhile, the family is surrounded by Mexican workers who are devout Catholics, though not without a few of their own pagan traditions. All of these religious cultures mix and clash. I like what I think is the book’s message: that we could learn a thing or two from the ancient pagans about how to respect and care for the land. I didn’t much care for, however, the way that message was delivered. In his early-career eagerness, Steinbeck seems hell-bent on convincing you that this family farming story is an epic of biblical proportions, to the point where he departs too much from realism. Contrast this with Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, an authentic realist novel about family farmers that rises to the level of an epic, but manages to do so in a seemingly effortless manner.

All of this ostentatious symbolism might be forgivable if you actually cared about any of the characters, but that’s hard to do when they all speak in very stilted, stage-play dialogue that doesn’t resemble real human speech. Joseph and his wife sound more like professors of philosophy than farmers, and Steinbeck belabors words like “sacred” and “holy” in order to hammer home his religious imagery. To a God Unknown is not up to the level of quality one expects from Steinbeck. It reads like the work of a young author trying too hard to prove he’s profound.

The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck

A memorable road trip

John Steinbeck, winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, is one of America’s all-time literary greats, known for such highly acclaimed novels as The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, and Cannery Row. In any list of his major works or ranking of this top ten books, one title you are unlikely to see is his 1947 novel The Wayward Bus. Nevertheless, Steinbeck is one of those writers who is so good that even his minor works shine. The Wayward Bus may be an obscure and forgotten entry in his body of work, but I enjoyed it very much.

In the small crossroads town of Rebel Corners in the Salinas Valley of California, Juan Chicoy, a Mexican-American, and his wife Alice run a service station and diner for travelers. Juan also drives a passenger bus from Rebel Corners to San Juan de la Cruz, a connecting line between two Greyhound routes. As the story opens, Juan’s bus has broken down, and a handful of passengers have been stranded at Rebel Corners. Juan and Alice and their two employees, who all live at the site, have given up their bedrooms to these delayed travelers. As the sun rises, Juan and his young mechanic, Pimples Carson, repair the bus in order to get their fare-paying passengers back on the road. The weather reports are not good, with speculation that the San Ysidro River might flood, which would put everyone in an even more inconvenient or even dangerous situation. The passengers are itching to go, however, and Juan is tired of listening to their complaints, so he decides to risk it and get the journey underway.

What this book does really well is bring to life the gas-food-lodging culture and atmosphere of 1940s travel. Of course, I wouldn’t know what it was like to ride a long-distance bus in the ’40s, but I made my share of Greyhound trips in the ’80s and ’90s. This book vividly brings to mind that atmosphere of wanderlust and fatigue, the collection of characters you meet on such trips, and the seemingly random locations where the bus makes its periodic stops. Before the installment of the interstate highway system, road travel had a more rustic, anything-can-happen feel to it, which this book captures really well. Also, as one would expect from Steinbeck gives the landscape of California much consideration and describes it in vivid, loving detail.

The bus and highways and diner pie, however, merely serve as the backdrop for a story that is really about an assortment of human beings momentarily thrown together by their intersecting itineraries. It is the realism of the characters, their thoughts and behaviors, that really makes this a captivating read. The drama is heightened by the fact that in this bygone pre-internet age, an adventurous traveler could change his or her entire life by simply turning a different corner, not looking back, and deciding to be someone else. These are people the reader will recognize from their own lives, and Steinbeck is very insightful about what’s going on in their heads: what men want from women, what women want from men, how men see themselves through their work, how different personalities conflict with and influence one another. When a beautiful blonde woman, traveling alone, walks into the diner, the reactions of the other characters, man and woman alike, are realistic variations of lust, envy, hostility, and bumbling foolishness. A successful business man, traveling with his wife and daughter, brings a touch of the capitalist criticism of Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt. Steinbeck is also to be commended for treating Hispanic characters as real human beings rather than the common stereotypes of the time.

The Wayward Bus isn’t the kind of book that wins prizes or inspires critical plaudits. It’s not about starving farmers fighting for survival; it’s about middle-class Americans with prosaic problems, hopes, and desires that to them (and us) often feel like romantic, monumental crises. Steinbeck does a beautiful job of illustrating the crucial dramas in everyday lives, in a way that is as real as life itself yet as compelling as literature should be.

The Grapes of Wrath and Other Writings, 1936–1941 by John Steinbeck (Library of America)

A watershed period in his career

Likely nine out of ten books that I read are on the Kindle, but when I want to buy a print book, and the author happens to be American, I find that no one puts together better volumes of classic literature than the Library of America. This nonprofit publisher puts great care and attention into the editing and production of their books, and their list of titles is like a comprehensive museum of American literary history. Take John Steinbeck, winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, for example. The LOA has published four volumes of Steinbeck’s writings that encompass all of his major works. Chronologically, The Grapes of Wrath and Other Writings is the second of these four volumes. This collection was first published in 1996.

Obviously, the main attraction here is Steinbeck’s 1939 masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath, one of the greatest novels in American literature. Even if you’ve already read that book, however, the remaining selections in the volume are worth the purchase price. The Grapes of Wrath is the fictional saga of the Joad family, farmers from Oklahoma who, having been displaced by the Dust Bowl, migrate to California to look for work. Prior to the publication of the novel, Steinbeck published a series of articles in The San Francisco Sun on the lives of California’s migrant farm laborers. These articles, grouped under the heading of The Harvest Gypsies, are include in this volume. This series of essays serves as a valuable historical document of the times and provides an interesting view into the journalistic research Steinbeck conducted as the basis for The Grapes of Wrath.

Another nonfiction work included in the volume is The Log from the Sea of Cortez, Steinbeck’s account of a nautical expedition to Mexico with marine biologist Ed Ricketts. Given that Ricketts served as the model for the character Doc in the novels Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday, it would have made more sense to group those three works in one volume. The labor novel In Dubious Battle would have made a better fit for this Grapes of Wrath volume, but the Library of America has divided Steinbeck’s career chronologically, which explains the choice of contents. Like a more modern, aquatic version of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, The Log from the Sea of Cortez is a scientific travelog in which Steinbeck digresses into numerous philosophical asides. As a mix of exploration narrative and literary license, it is good at both but great at neither.

The remaining book included in this volume is Steinbeck’s 1938 collection of short stories The Long Valley, a truly exceptional collection of short fiction that combines the naturalism of Jack London or Frank Norris with a sort of modern California gothic or noir atmosphere reminiscent of William Faulkner’s darker visions of the American South. Among the selections included here are the stories that would eventually make up Steinbeck’s novella The Red Pony.

Like all Library of America books, this volume includes a chronology of the author’s life, information on the original publication of the texts, and copious notes. The chronology provides a surprisingly detailed overview of Steinbeck’s life that makes me want to learn more. The LOA has done their usual bang-up job on this volume. Anyone looking for a quality hardbound compendium of some of Steinbeck’s best work can’t go wrong with this book.

Works in this collection

The Long Valley 

The Grapes of Wrath 

The Log from the Sea of Cortez 

The Harvest Gypsies 

If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R9D2TY5Q54CPZ/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Compassionate saga of American refugees

I was one of those kids who didn’t want to read The Grapes of Wrath in high school because it was too long, so instead I wrote my book report on Cannery Row. Over three decades later I finally realize what a bad choice I made by depriving myself of one of the greatest books in American literature. Published in 1939, John Steinbeck’s masterpiece tells the story of the Joads, Midwestern farmers rendered destitute by the Dust Bowl, who head for California in hopes of finding work to start a new life. Steinbeck had previously done research amid the migrant workers in California, resulting in several newspaper articles published in 1936 under the heading of The Harvest Gypsies. The living conditions he observed in the migrant laborers’ camps are vividly reflected in his depiction of the plight of the Joads and their fellow migrants. More than just a poverty sob story, however, the novel is a stirring call for compassion and an affirmation of the resilience of the human spirit.

The Grapes of Wrath is a modernist novel that doesn’t ostentatiously wear its modernism on its sleeve. Stylistically, Steinbeck bridges the gap between earlier workingman’s epics like Frank Norris’s The Octopus and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and the comparatively more avant garde writings of Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. On the surface, the saga of the Joads is a naturalist peasant epic in the mold of Emile Zola or Jack London’s socially conscious works. Steinbeck portrays the extraordinary drama of ordinary people’s lives with a frank and vividly detailed realism. The story of the Joad clan only occupies roughly every other chapter of the book, however. In between the extensive chapters on the family, Steinbeck inserts brief iconic vignettes of America in the 1930s, focusing on typical experiences of poor, working-class, and migrant laborers, such as the purchasing of a used car or a stop at a roadside diner. These glimpses into American life call to mind the nonfiction interludes John Dos Passos inserted into his U.S.A. trilogy. At times, however, Steinbeck’s vignettes are written in a style almost resembling beat poetry. These digressions from the Joad narrative cleverly broaden the book’s scope to a wider segment of humanity and greatly enhance the visceral experience of the story by reinforcing Steinbeck’s depiction of greed and inequality in America.

One thing that surprised me about the book is that on top of everything else oppressing the Joads, the Dust Bowl isn’t the only natural disaster that Steinbeck introduces into the plot. That seemed a bit unnecessary considering the family already faced plenty of socioeconomic perils, from starvation to class violence. To focus too much on the latter, however, might have resulted in a rehash of In Dubious Battle, which this book is not. The Grapes of Wrath does depict class conflict, but it bears a heavier load of compassion and pathos that elevates it to a more universal and profound tragedy of the human condition.

Though it was written in 1939, the social issues brought forth in The Grapes of Wrath are still relevant today. The Dust Bowl may be a distant memory, but American still has its share of migrant workers, wage slaves, and rampant income inequality. The global economy also ensures that most of us in the developed world exploit the equivalent of Joads in other nations around the world without even being aware of it. Over 80 years later, nothing about Steinbeck’s novel is so dated that it fails to accurately reflect human nature or the brutal socioeconomic reality. This is really a book that every American should read. Even those who can’t sympathize with its “red” message ought to appreciate its superb literary merit. In the search for the “Great American Novel,” I personally would still give the edge to Norris’s The Octopus, but I wouldn’t look askance at anyone who would choose to bestow that hallowed title upon The Grapes of Wrath.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R2RQYZIEV0IASC/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm

The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck

Scientific expedition with Walden-esque philosophizing

When John Steinbeck was beginning his career as a writer, he befriended a marine biologist named Ed Ricketts who had established a laboratory in Monterey, California. Ricketts was the basis for the character of Doc in Steinbeck’s novels Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday. In 1940, Steinbeck accompanied Ricketts and a small crew of workers on a specimen-collecting expedition to the Sea of Cortez (also known as the Gulf of California, between Baja California and mainland Mexico). Steinbeck wrote up a narrative account of this journey, which was first published in 1941, accompanied by Ricketts’s scientific data. In 1951, a few years after the death of Ricketts, Steinbeck’s account was separated from the scientific findings and published as The Log from the Sea of Cortez. This later edition opens with an extended eulogy/biographical sketch of Ricketts, written by Steinbeck, followed by Steinbeck’s record of the expedition.

Due to frequent references to Charles Darwin and The Voyage of the Beagle, one gets the impression that Steinbeck modelled his account after that earlier expedition narrative. The Log is written in the first-person by Steinbeck, usually employing the collective “we.” One very odd aspect of The Log is that Steinbeck never mentions Ricketts, as if he weren’t even on the boat. A few of the crew members are named—Tiny, Tony, Tex, and Sparky—but none of them ever really rises to the level of an individual character. Steinbeck has no qualms about taking some literary license with the narrative, inserting his personal reflections and emotional impressions, but the lack of any substantial characters renders The Log oddly impersonal, as opposed to the biographical chapter on Ricketts, which is entirely personal.

Steinbeck was not attempting a strictly scientific narrative here. The official catalogue of species was up to Ricketts. Nevertheless, most of the content of Steinbeck’s account is scientific in nature, though written for more of a general audience like the readers of National Geographic rather than the readers of, say, The Journal of Marine Biology. Steinbeck describes each of the stops made by their boat, named the Western Flyer, to collect specimens among the tidal pools along the gulf shore. He also lists the species of marine animals found there, explains some of their distinct characteristics, and describes the crew’s methods of collection. Beyond the zoological content, Steinbeck provides a nautical travel narrative detailing weather activity, ports of call, and coastal terrain, as well as scenes of shipboard life, drinking bouts, and the crew’s adventures on shore. He also adds a great deal of interesting detail about the Mexican peoples they encountered along the way.

From a literary standpoint, the most valuable passages in the book are what might be called Steinbeck’s philosophical digressions, which in some sense resemble those of Henry David Thoreau in his nature memoir Walden. While observing the fishes and marine invertebrates of the Sea of Cortez, Steinbeck frequently extrapolates theories about human nature and society through the lens of Darwinian evolutionary biology. One extended digression in particular, on teleological thinking, is largely the philosophy of Ricketts, the mentor, as distilled through the literary voice of Steinbeck, his mentee. As in Walden, such lofty asides really elevate The Log from a simple wilderness memoir to an inspirational literary work. The adventurous reader will envy the crew of the Western Flyer for their freedom of wanderlust and the intellectual excitement of their discoveries, but it is Steinbeck’s thought-provoking musings on the universe at large that will compel the reader to return to the book for future perusals.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R1XJK08TZF4D13/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm

In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck

Powder keg with a slow-burning fuse
Prior to his better-known rural epics The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck wrote another novel about California farm workers. In Dubious Battle, published in 1936, focuses on a strike by apple pickers in the (fictional) Torgas Valley. The story opens with a young man named Jim Nolan being interviewed for employment with the Party (assumed to be the Communist Party, but never stated outright). After he’s accepted for the job, a Party veteran named “Mac” McLeod takes Jim under his mentorial wing. Soon the pair are headed to Torgas, where they go undercover as fruit pickers in order to organize their fellow laborers to strike against the local Growers’ Association.

For a novel about labor unrest, this book proceeds in a surprisingly calm and deliberate manner. Don’t expect the fiery rhetoric, revolutionary call to arms, or romantic idealism of pro-socialist novels like Jack London’s The Iron Heel or Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Steinbeck’s approach here is decidedly more sensitive and even pastoral. The bulk of the novel is occupied with depicting the working life of the fruit pickers and their daily activities in the strikers’ camp. Like Of Mice and Men, the largely dialogue-driven narrative often reads more like a play than a novel. The reader listens as Mac educates Jim on the values and methods of the Party, while Jim undergoes a coming-of-age epiphany in the development of his political ideals. Very little that could be considered action occurs until about four-fifths of the way through the book. As a result, the story feels far more drawn-out than it needs to be. In his 1938 collection The Long Valley, Steinbeck published a short story about party workers entitled “The Raid” that, in roughly twelve pages, creates a more powerful and moving statement on the class struggle than this entire novel.

Steinbeck’s biggest mistake was focusing too much on the Party activists at the expense of the workers themselves. Very few of the actual fruit pickers even have names in this book, and of those that do only a few amount to full-fledged characters. By inviting readers to identify with the strike organizers—Mac and Jim—rather than the strikers themselves, the reader never really gets invested in the workers’ plight. One doesn’t sympathize with these laborers the way one does in other novels of labor strife like Steinbeck’s own The Grapes of Wrath, Sinclair’s The Jungle, Frank Norris’s The Octopus, or Emile Zola’s Germinal. Even Steinbeck acknowledges that the workers here are often just pawns in Mac and Jim’s game. While the two Party men are primarily portrayed in a positive light, Steinbeck also points out how they use manipulative tactics to goad the workers into striking and violence, even though they know that innocent lives will be destroyed.

In the final fifty pages or so, Steinbeck finally turns up the tempo and cranks up the heat. In Dubious Battle never really stirs the soul to the same degree as any of the aforementioned novels, but in the end there’s just enough brutality and tragedy to inspire sympathy for these characters and indignation against social injustice. Oddly enough, this strangely picturesque and ambivalent depiction of Depression-era labor troubles is ultimately redeemed by sacrificial blood.

As the first book in Steinbeck’s unofficial Dustbowl trilogy, In Dubious Battle is not in the same league with the two masterpieces that followed, Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. Those interested in social realist novels of the early 20th century, however, while find it a worthwhile, if somewhat underwhelming, read.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R2EPCLNOHJGI08/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm

The Harvest Gypsies by John Steinbeck

Factual basis for The Grapes of Wrath
The Harvest Gypsies is a series of seven nonfiction articles that John Steinbeck wrote about migrant farm workers in California. They were originally published in October 1936 editions of The San Francisco News. These articles were eventually reprinted, along with an eighth piece entitled “Starvation Under the Orange Trees,” in a pamphlet entitled Their Blood Is Strong, published by the nonprofit Simon J. Lubin Society, a group dedicated to helping migrant workers. Like many journalistic writings produced by literary authors, The Harvest Gypsies would likely have faded quietly into obscurity were it not for the fact that these articles serve as the factual basis for Steinbeck’s 1939 magnum opus The Grapes of Wrath.

In The Harvest Gypsies, Steinbeck articulately explains how California agriculture has always relied on migrant workers for temporary low-cost labor, with successive waves of Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, and Filipino immigrants filling the role over the course of the state’s history. During the Great Depression, however, the ranks of migrant workers harvesting California-grown produce were swelled by American farmers displaced by the Dust Bowl in Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas. Steinbeck describes from firsthand observation the squalid living conditions of migrant families. He also reveals ways in which these workers are exploited by landowners or neglected by state, local, and federal governments. Steinbeck then offers suggestions for reform by outlining a plan to set aside state and federal lands as subsistence farms for migrant workers and encouraging workers to organize and fight for their rights.

Throughout The Harvest Gypsies, Steinbeck’s prose alternates between pathos-inducing on-the-ground depictions of migrant poverty and a more rationally detached focus on statistics and economics. The writing calls to mind Jack London’s book-length work of 1903, The People of the Abyss, an exposé of working-class living conditions in the East End of London during the Industrial Revolution. Steinbeck is less of a blatant propagandist than London, however, and his motivations seem more humanitarian in nature than London’s strident pushing of a political agenda. Steinbeck’s articles remain vital and important today because some of the problems he describes still persist among California’s migrant workers, though those hardships are now faced mostly by immigrants rather than Dust Bowl refugees. Steinbeck does acknowledge and sympathize with laborers of other races, but since these articles were written before the civil rights movement The Harvest Gypsies primarily focuses on white labor with the intention of drawing sympathy from white landowners, politicians, and taxpayers.

Just as The Grapes of Wrath is a brilliant encapsulation of the social order of its time, The Harvest Gypsies is likewise a valuable historical document of the Great Depression in America. These brief but eloquent articles provide historical context that deepens the reader’s understanding of Steinbeck’s greatest novel.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R3MWEMO1POTQER/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

High on atmosphere, low on plot
John Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row was originally published in 1945. The title refers to a waterfront neighborhood in Monterey, California known for its sardine canneries. In this district the reader finds the local grocery store run by a Chinese immigrant, a bordello operated by friendly prostitutes, and a vacant lot and unused building inhabited by bums and squatters. In a neighborhood populated by quirky characters, the Row’s most unusual inhabitant is Doc, a marine biologist who runs a laboratory that sells sea creatures and other animals for scientific and educational use. Doc is beloved by his neighbors for his generosity and wisdom, so much so that the bums decide to throw him a party. Though set during the Great Depression, Cannery Row is predominantly a lighthearted novel focusing on the camaraderie among the denizens of the district.

In the second half of the 19th century, San Francisco established itself as America’s primary literary center west of the East Coast, due in large part to author Bret Harte and his literary journal The Overland Monthly. Born in Salinas, Steinbeck is the culmination of a distinguished tradition of Northern California literature that includes eminent authors Jack London and Frank Norris. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Cannery Row. The quirky characters, comic situations, and depictions of merriment amid squalor call to mind the mining town tales of Harte and London, while Norris’s genius for naturalistic description, as seen in novels like McTeague and The Octopus, is reflected in Steinbeck’s vivid depictions of urban life and the California landscape.

The best thing about Cannery Row is its setting. Steinbeck does a great job creating an inviting atmosphere and involving the reader in the lives of the district’s inhabitants. As great a writer as Steinbeck is, however, there is no denying that as far as plot goes this is mostly just a comedic story about a bunch of bums throwing a party for a friend. Occasionally Steinbeck will inject a more poetic interlude to remind you that you’re reading a work of literature, but often this strategy backfires as one style clashes with another, like when a poetry reading interrupts a wild party (literally in one instance). One chapter, apropos of nothing, inexplicably gives us a glimpse into the lives of a married couple that are unmentioned elsewhere in the book. Though this passage sticks out like a sore thumb, it is one of the few that seriously addresses the social conditions of the Depression, as Steinbeck did much more concertedly and effectively in The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. For the most part, the economic reasons for the preponderance of homeless persons in Cannery Row is glossed over in favor of near-slapstick humor.

Another odd thing about the novel is that while Doc is supposedly the protagonist, he is the character about whom we learn the least. It is hinted in several passages that he is a womanizer, but the reader never actually sees him with a woman. Doc is absent from much of the novel and is largely defined by what the other characters say about him. When he is present in the narrative, Steinbeck lovingly describes his laboratory and his profession in fascinating detail, but we never really get inside Doc’s head the way we do with Mack or the other bums.

Cannery Row may not be Steinbeck’s best-written or most profound novel, but it is still a fine work of American realist literature. It is apparent that he had a lot of fun writing it, and there is certainly enjoyment to be had in reading it.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R1S98X56J1DI2B/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Like a classical tragedy in novella form
Though John Steinbeck’s 1937 novella Of Mice and Men is often required reading in American high schools, I’m just getting around to reading this one in my middle age. I have run across film versions of this over the years, of course, so the plot held few surprises for me, but I still found it to be a very compelling read. The story is set in California during the Great Depression, but the themes it explores transcend time and place. Of Mice and Men is a master work of American regional realism, yet it has the taut concision and the mythic quality of one of Aesop’s fables or a classical Greek tragedy.

George Milton and Lennie Small are two migrant farm workers who drift together from ranch to ranch looking to take on work. George is a small, wiry, intelligent man while Lennie is a big, hulking fellow with a mental disability. Though not related, the two grew up in the same town, and George promised Lennie’s aunt before her death that he would take care of her nephew. Among their fellow migrant workers, the fact that the two travel together is unusual, and the pair share an uncommon loyalty to one another. That said, George isn’t always happy about the arrangement, as he continually scolds Lennie for being such an encumbrance. It is revealed that Lennie’s childlike intelligence has caused problems at their previous places of employment, bad enough that the two have had to flee violent repercussions. When the play opens, they have just landed a new position harvesting barley, and George hopes such troubles with Lennie will not repeat themselves. Despite their poverty, the two have a dream of saving enough to own a small patch of land, where they can grow their own crops and Lennie can tend to a herd of rabbits.

Steinbeck obviously wrote the book with the intention of it being adapted for stage and screen. Despite being written in prose, the structure of the narrative is very much that of a play. Each chapter is a different scene and begins with a couple paragraphs briefly describing the setting and the characters present. From that point forward, the text is almost entirely dialogue. What little physical description is present is written in the cursory style of stage directions. Though the story takes place in rural settings, there is little description or the natural environment. Most of the action occurs within barns or bunkhouses. Steinbeck offers no interior views into the character’s minds; instead, they soliloquize. Events that take place towards the conclusion of the drama are heavily foreshadowed in a manner that would probably go over just fine in a stage production but feels a bit heavy-handed in a prose work. In fact, if anything’s keeping Of Mice and Men from perfection it is this script-like format, which prevents Steinbeck from taking full advantage of the novella art form.

If this were set on the East Coast, rather than in Steinbeck’s beloved Salinas Valley, one could easily mistake this for a Eugene O’Neill drama. Though stark in its stage setting, Steinbeck’s grittily naturalistic depictions of human behavior generate a gripping psychological realism. Despite the Depression setting, the reader recognizes these characters and feels the plight of ordinary people thrust into an extraordinary situation. Whereas The Grapes of Wrath may have the grandeur of a historical epic, Of Mice and Men is a more personal, microcosmic study of humanity, yet the actions of its characters impart a universal moral lesson, almost like a biblical parable if not for its brutal fatalism. Belying its brevity, Of Mice and Men is a profound reading experience that despite its age has lost none of its emotional resonance.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful" vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R1FMHZCF17N080/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm

The Long Valley by John Steinbeck

California realism at its best
Published in 1938, The Long Valley is a collection of short stories by Nobel-Prize winning author John Steinbeck. The stories included here (with one exception) were written in 1933 and 1934, and most of them had seen prior publication in magazines. Among the selections is “The Red Pony,” which is probably just long enough to qualify as a novella. Steinbeck’s writing is the culmination of a long and distinguished tradition of California realism extending from Bret Harte to Frank Norris and Jack London. All but one of these stories are set in Steinbeck’s homeland of Salinas County, and they stand as wonderful exemplars of American regional realism.

To be honest, I was a bit underwhelmed by the volume’s first few selections. “The Chrysanthemums” and “The White Quail” are two contrasting, almost Ibsen-esque studies of wifehood that are perhaps too subtle to serve as captivating lead-off hitters. “Flight” starts out as a great piece of social realism about a poor Mexican family, but then turns into a sluggishly paced tale of a manhunt. “The Snake” is a precursor to Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row in that it stars a marine biologist named Doc who works in a lab on the Monterrey waterfront. Though the main character and the setting are fascinating, the story that unfolds is OK at best. “The Breakfast,” a 3-page description of a memorable campfire meal, may be vividly rendered, but it amounts to little more than a sketch. Though the first third of the book is a bit lackluster, the opening pages of “The Raid” will blow you away, and from that point on the masterpieces just keep coming..

“The Raid” is a brilliantly suspenseful tale of two socialist party members who are determined to hold a meeting, even though they know they will be beaten and possibly killed. Steinbeck’s storytelling is grimly realistic with a dash of the workingman’s leftist idealism that would be further developed in The Grapes of Wrath. On to something completely different, “The Harness” is a lighthearted slice of agrarian life in which a farmer gets a new lease on life after the death of his overbearing wife. Next, the shocking story “The Vigilante” is told from the point of view of a man who has just participated in his first lynching. Nothing prepares the reader for the bizarre title character of “Johnny Bear,” a creepy helping of rural gothic that reads like a classic episode of The Twilight Zone or The X-Files. In “The Murder,” a farmer marries a beautiful foreign woman who makes a cold and distant wife. The story turns brutal and a bit sexist, but real for its times, like a harsh blues song. The one oddball in the collection is “Saint Katy the Virgin,” a humorous piece set in medieval France. This story of a demonic pig is not without its satirical charms, but it bears no resemblance to any of the other selections and doesn’t really belong in The Long Valley.

The novella “The Red Pony” presents a series of scenes in the life of a boy growing up on a Salinas Valley ranch. In the opening chapter, the boy receives the red pony as a gift from his father, and his relationship to the animal becomes the defining moment of his life. Depending on the edition, the story “The Leader of the People” is sometimes considered the final chapter of “The Red Pony” and sometimes a separate story in its own right, a sequel with the same characters and setting. Together the “Red Pony” stories stand as expertly crafted works of American literary naturalism. Dealing with issues of life, death, coming of age, and the passing of the Old West, they are beautifully written, starkly authentic, and truly moving. For the most part, these same adjectives of praise can be applied to The Long Valley as a whole. Despite a few shortcomings here and there, overall the collection is a great work of American literature and a powerful reading experience.

Stories in this collection

The Chrysanthemums 

The White Quail 

Flight

The Snake 

Breakfast 

The Raid 

The Harness 

The Vigilante 

Johnny Bear 

The Murder 

Saint Katy the Virgin 

The Red Pony 

The Leader of the People

If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/RNB3A8MZIUIM5/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm