Working Days (6 page)

2. John Steinbeck to Pascal Covici, January 16, 1939. In Elaine Steinbeck and Robert Wallsten, eds.,
Steinbeck: A Life in Letters
(New York: The Viking Press, 1975), p. 178. Hereafter entered in text of my Introduction. Steinbeck’s proprietary attitude toward his recently completed novel, so passionately defended in his January 16 letter to Covici, began to fade with each subsequent writing project. By 1955, invited to respond to a couple of diametrically opposed scholarly essays on
The Grapes of Wrath
which had recently been published in
The Colorado Quarterly,
Steinbeck was content to make only modest claims for his greatest book: ”I don’t think the
Grapes of Wrath
is obscure in what it tries to say. As to its classification and pickling, I have neither opinion nor interest. It’s just a book, interesting I hope, instructive in the same way the writing instructed me. Its structure is very carefully worked out and it is no more intended to be inspected than is the skeletal structure of a pretty girl. Just read it, don’t count it!“ Steinbeck’s complete ”A Letter on Criticism“ is readily available in E. W. Tedlock and C. V. Wicker, eds.,
Steinbeck and His Critics: A Record of Twenty-five Years
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957), pp. 52-53.

3. Jackson J. Benson had compiled the most useful account of Carol Steinbeck’s background, life, and political enthusiasms. See his
The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer
(New York: The Viking Press, 1984), passim. Hereafter entered in the text of my Introduction. Contrary to what most critics have observed—or wished—Steinbeck was not very much interested in doctrinaire political theories at this point of his career. Benson sets the record straight in his
True Adventures of John Steinbeck,
and in his subsequent ”Through a Political Glass, Darkly: The Example of John Steinbeck,“
Studies in American Fiction,
12 (Spring 1984), 45—59. Carol, a liberal feminist ahead of her time, was a fascinating person who deserves an accurate biography of her own. California journalist Gene Detro has made a gossipy beginning, though the tone of his writing is unfairly biased against John. Consult ”Carol—The Woman Behind the Man,“ The Monterey Herald
Weekend Magazine,
June 10, 1984, 3—6, and ”The Truth About Steinbeck (Carol and John),“
Creative States Quarterly,
2 (1985), 12-13, 16.

4. Telegram in the Annie Laurie Williams Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Pare Lorentz (b. 1905) was another of those forward-looking, enormously gifted men Steinbeck struck up working friendships with in the late 1930s. He had been a movie critic, syndicated political columnist, essayist, short story writer, and documentarian, whose first books,
Censorship: The Private Lives of the Movies
(with Max Ernst), and
The Roosevelt Year:
1933, appeared in 1930 and 1934, respectively. In two years, working as author, director, and producer on relatively modest budgets from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal-inspired Resettlement Administration Lorentz had made a couple of pioneering documentary films. Both
The Plow that Broke the Plains
(1936) and
The River
(1937) dealt with human displacement and natural erosion caused by the Dust Bowl and Mississippi Valley floods, themes which were close to Steinbeck’s own. Lorentz, one of the most innovative artists of his age, directed the fledgling United States Film Service from mid 1938 through its demise in March 1940. The most detailed account of Lorentz’s life and art is in Robert L. Snyder, Pare
Lorentz and the Documentary Film
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968). Lorentz met Steinbeck for the first time in Los Gatos in February 1938, when Steinbeck was writing ”L’Affaire Lettuceberg,“ a precursor to
The Grapes of Wrath.
After their initial meeting, the dynamic Lorentz became an increasingly important figure in the novelist’s life, providing everything from practical advice on politics and filmmaking (they never made
In Dubious Battle,
but he hired Steinbeck to help with the filming of
The Fight for Life
in Chicago in April 1939) to spirited artistic encouragement, as Steinbeck’s numerous references to Lorentz throughout
Working Days
indicate. Although Lorentz would not claim influence on
The Grapes of Wrath
(Pare Lorentz/Robert DeMott, telephone interview, March 22, 1988), Steinbeck thought otherwise, as he told Joseph Henry Jackson, ca. April 1939: ”Where I see the likeness now is in the chapter of the route where the towns are named [Ed.—Chapter 12]. I have little doubt that the Lorentz River is strong in that. But the other [Ed.—interchapters
of The Grapes of Wrath
]—maybe influenced by Dos Passos to some extent.... Quoted in Robert DeMott,
Steinbeck’s Reading: A Catalogue of Books Owned and Borrowed
(New York: Garland, 1984), p. 142. In “Dorothea Lange: Camera with a Purpose,” published in T. J. Maloney, ed.,
US Camera 1941, Volume 1: “America”
(New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940), Pare Lorentz stated that Lange’s photographs and Steinbeck’s novel “... have done more for these tragic nomads [Ed.—migrant workers] than all the politicians in the country. It again is a triumph of art over politics; or specifically, another proof that good art is good propaganda” (p. 96).

5. Steinbeck’s disillusion with his marriage to Carol is graphically revealed in two sources (both so full of venom and convenient lapses that they need to be employed judiciously): a series of confessional letters to his agent Mavis McIntosh, written between May and September 1941, now at the University of Virginia Library; and his second wife’s recollections, “ ‘The Closest Witness’: The Autobiographical Reminiscences of Gwyndolyn Conger Steinbeck,” a 1979 MA thesis at Stephen F. Austin State University, transcribed and edited by Terry G. Halladay from original audio tapes recorded by Gwyn. (NOTE: In late 1941 or early 1942 Gwendolyn changed the spelling of her name to Gwyndolyn; except for those instances where Steinbeck uses the earlier spelling, all references to her in Working Days will be spelled with a
y
, as she preferred.) See also Benson,
True Adventures of John Steinbeck
(p. 460), who writes that Steinbeck “... perceived Carol as the cause of his malaise and Gwyn as the one person who could give him peace.”

6. For background on the Depression, the migrant labor issue and its historical evolvement, the Farm Security Administration programs and/or Tom Collins’s pivotal role as a camp manager, the following are recommended: Carey McWilliams,
Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1939), still the most telling testimony and companion to the veracity of
The Grapes of Wrath
(Chapters XVI and XVII of McWilliams’s sociological study cover ground plowed by Steinbeck’s novel, including Collins’s reports, and the disaster at Nipomo); Sidney Baldwin’s detailed but long-winded
Poverty and Politics: The Rise and Decline of the Farm Security Administration
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968); Walter J. Stein’s eminently readable
California and the Dust Bowl Migration
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973); and Dick Meister and Anne Loftis’s excellent
A Long Time Coming: The Struggle to Unionize America’s Farm Workers
(New York: Macmillan, 1977), to which I am indebted at the end of my Introduction for information about the “resolution” of the Dust Bowl Refugees’ plight. Although he has updated it twice (once for
True Adventures of John Steinbeck,
and once for inclusion in Ditsky’s anthology on
The Grapes of Wrath
), the most informative, best-illustrated study ever done on Collins is still Jackson J. Benson’s original version: “ To Tom, Who Lived It’: John Steinbeck and the Man from Weedpatch,”
Journal of Modern Literature,
5 (April 1976), 151-210. In unpublished correspondence, written ca. January 20, 1939, Steinbeck told Annie Laurie Williams: “Letter from Tom. He’s sneaking a new camp into the pea picking district and has to do it at night.... When he gets a fence and a flag up they don’t dare bother him because he’s on government land then—so he gets his fence and his flag up at night. It’s very melodramatic but the only way. The Associated Farmers would kill him if they could.” (Annie Laurie Williams Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.)

7. Annie Laurie Williams to John Steinbeck, Letter, July 2, 1938. Benson gives no indication that an edition of Collins’s reports went beyond the stage of being rejected by Covici-Friede, who thought the reports too sectional for wide interest (an odd decision for such a socially minded house). In breaking news of Pat Covici’s decision, Steinbeck wrote Collins in the spring (?) of 1937 (not, I suggest, as Benson dates it, in 1938): “The only thing left to do that I can think of is to utilize the material in other forms. You know of course my plans for the long novel dealing with the migrant [Ed.—probably ”The Oklahomans“]. I can use the great gobs of information. But the thing that hurts me is that I had hoped that from this piece of work which I still think is the finest social study I have ever seen, you could make a little money to carry on with....” Quoted in Benson, “ To Tom, Who Lived It’ ” (p. 205), and in more truncated form in
True Adventures of John Steinbeck
(p. 376). In constructing my version of events I have also relied on unpublished letters by Annie Laurie Williams to Steinbeck on January 4, 1937, and November 18, 1937. The latter concludes: “... Tom’s new material is fine. Mavis has it out with a publisher now. I just had a nice letter from Tom and am answering it right away. I sure do like that man and think it is a privilege to have him for a friend. Know you must have enjoyed your days with him.” (Annie Laurie Williams Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.)

8. For the background of Collins’s memoir, variously called “They Die to Live,” and “Bringing in the Sheaves,” consult Benson’s 1976
Journal of Modern Literature
essay, “ ‘To Tom, Who Lived It’ ” (pp. 206-10). Benson’s piece concludes with an appendix which reproduces Steinbeck’s “Foreword,” and prints those sections of “Bringing in the Sheaves” in which Steinbeck appears (pp. 211—32). Hereafter entered in the text of my Introduction.

9. John Steinbeck, interview with Herbert Kretzmer, London
Daily Express,
January 15, 1965. “What some people find in religion a writer may find in his craft ... a kind of breaking through to glory,” Steinbeck added.

10. John Steinbeck, “California’s Harvest Gypsies,” Chapter 1, San Francisco
News,
October 5, 1936, p. 3. Uniformly referred to as “The Harvest Gypsies,” Steinbeck’s series, with minor alterations in the text, and with the addition of a piece that appeared first on April 15, 1938, in The Monterey
Trader,
was reprinted as a pamphlet,
Their Blood Is Strong
(San Francisco: Simon J. Lubin Society, 1938). The text of this booklet is available in French, ed.,
A Companion to
The Grapes of Wrath (pp. 53—92). The whitewashed answer to “shiftless Okies” of
Their Blood Is Strong
and
The Grapes of Wrath
appeared from Frank J. Taylor in
Forum,
CII (November 1939), reprinted in Peter Lisca’s convenient The Grapes of Wrath:
Text and Criticism
(pp. 643-56). It was one of many unsuccessful knee-jerk attempts to discredit the accuracy of Steinbeck’s charges. Benson,
True Adventures of John Steinbeck
(pp. 418-25), is especially informative about various responses to Steinbeck’s portrait of California migrant conditions.

11. Louis Walther, “Oklahomans Steinbeck’s Theme,” San Jose
Mercury Herald,
January 8, 1938, p. 12. Obviously in
The Grapes of Wrath
Steinbeck did not abandon the land-hunger theme or his belief that the migrants represented a specific phalanx group within the large mass movement the nation was experiencing in the 1930s. They would change California, Steinbeck later said in a self-created interview, because “... they are brave, because although the technique of their life is difficult and complicated, they meet it with increasing strength, because they are kind, humorous and wise, because their speech has the metaphor and flavor and imagery of poetry, because they can resist and fight back and because I believe that out of those qualities will grow a new system and a new life which will be better than anything we have had before.” Quoted in Lisca, ed., The Grapes of Wrath:
Text and Criticism
(p. 862).

12. John Steinbeck to Elizabeth Otis, May 1938. In Florian J. Shasky and Susan F. Riggs, eds.,
Letters to Elizabeth: A Selection of Letters from John Steinbeck to Elizabeth Otis
(San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1978), p. 7. Steinbeck was “treasonable enough” to believe that California subverted human liberty with its own brand of fascism. For a long time after the lettuce strike, he feared that vigilantism in Salinas would continue to suppress workers’ democratic rights. In this statement, written in November 1937, and published in May 1938, he established a telling connection between tyranny at home and abroad: “Just returned from a little tour in the agricultural fields of California. We have our own fascist groups out here. They haven’t bombed open towns yet but in Salinas last year tear gas was thrown in a Union Hall and through the windows of workingmen’s houses. That’s rather close, isn’t it? Your question as to whether I am for Franco is rather insulting. Have you seen anyone not actuated by greed who was for Franco? No, I’m not for Franco and his Moors and Italians and Germans. But some Americans are. Some Americans were for the Hessians England sent against our own revolutionary army. They were for Hessians because they were selling things to them. The descendants of some of these Americans are still very rich and still touchy concerning the American Way, and our ‘ancient liberties.’ I am treasonable enough not to believe in the liberty of a man or a group to exploit, torment, or slaughter other men or groups. I believe in the despotism of human life and happiness against the liberty of money and possessions.” In
Writers Take Sides: Letters about the war in Spain from 418 American authors
(New York: The League of American Writers, 1938), pp. 56—57.