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Celebrating the Steinbeck centenary
When most people hear John Steinbeck's name, they think of his gritty masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath, or perhaps of one of the evocative novellas that still are read in high schools across the land -- The Pearl, The Red Pony, Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men. But few remember that Steinbeck's byline appeared frequently above nonfiction pieces in some of the major periodicals of his day, or that he published a number of well-received nonfiction books, including Travels with Charley, the story of a cross-country journey with his poodle; Once There Was a War, a collection of his journalistic dispatches from Europe during the Second World War; and his final book, America and Americans. |
REVIEWS BY ROBERT WEIBEZAHL
The real appeal of this new book, though, are the 30-odd years' worth of shorter pieces, many never before collected. It is from these that we get a firm sense of Steinbeck the man. In his nonfiction, he often wrote in an informal, almost conversational voice that is somewhat different from the voice we hear in his fiction. There are no bounds to Steinbeck's choice of subjects. He writes about things we expect him to write about: California labor issues, the Congressional witch hunts of the '50s, the battlefields of Europe and Southeast Asia. But there are a lot of surprising pieces here, too: affectionate vignettes from time spent living in Paris; a generation gap-spanning dialogue with his two young sons; appreciations of Robert Capa, Henry Fonda and Bob Hope; random thoughts on fishing, book collecting and dogs; open letters to Adlai Stevenson and Yevgeny Yevtushenko.
Edited by Susan Shillinglaw and Jackson J. Benson Viking, $27.95 ISBN 0670030627
Library of America, $35 ISBN 1931082073
For the Steinbeck centennial, Penguin is also reissuing The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, Cannery Row, The Pearl and Travels with Charley in new commemorative trade paperback editions, as well as a boxed set of all six books. Whether by sampling the lesser-known nonfiction or diving into one of the great works of fiction, Steinbeck's centennial birthday provides the perfect opportunity to become reacquainted with the writing of a master who was unquestionably one of the most important and widely read chroniclers of America in the mid-20th century.
Penguin, $78 ISBN 0147716756
California-based writer Robert Weibezahl has been a devoted Steinbeck fan since first reading The Red Pony and The Pearl in the seventh grade. |
In time for the 100th birthday of the Nobel laureate on February 27th, this last book is being reissued as part of a volume called America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction, edited by Susan Shillinglaw and Jackson J. Benson. Written in 1966, two years before the writer's death, the nine essays originally accompanied a collection of photographs, but they stand alone here, and they stand up well. Although late in life Steinbeck jeopardized his lifelong credentials as a liberal by supporting his friend Lyndon Johnson's stance on Vietnam, these "think pieces" reaffirm that his dogged populism and progressive beliefs were still very much intact at the end. The essays underscore how much Steinbeck loved the country and its people, an affection that was not a blind one. He was appreciative of America's uniqueness, but equally aware of its contradictions and suspicious of its parochialism.
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One of the longer pieces is a freewheeling eulogy of his friend Ed Ricketts, the marine biologist who inspired the central character of Doc in Cannery Row. It is interesting to see how closely Steinbeck limned the truth in that novel, which is one of four collected in Steinbeck: Novels 1942-1952, the Library of America's third and final volume of his major works. Also in this edition are his timeless parable The Pearl, with its original illustrations by Jose Clemente Orozco, and the less familiar The Moon Is Down, a novella about the Nazi occupation of an unnamed Scandinavian country. But the centerpiece of the collection is East of Eden, Steinbeck's magisterial retelling of the book of Genesis through several generations of a Salinas Valley family. Those who only know the story from the Elia Kazan film adaptation are in for a treat, for the novel spans many more years and tells a much richer story.