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Rethinking John Steinbeck By Lisa Singh,
a writer in Richmond, Virginia |
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Not since Steinbeck's receipt of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 has his work been showered with such shortsighted praise. Like the Swedish Academy, which gushed long after Steinbeck had finished his last social-conscience novel that "his sympathies go out to the oppressed," his many admirers prefer to ignore the reality. The truth is that after he wrote The Grapes of Wrath, his Pulitzer Prize-winning documentary of protest about the forced migration of the "Okies" from their repossessed farms, Steinbeck went soft, spending his last few decades cranking out often soppy and uncritical works. When he accepted the Nobel Prize, at least the American critics of the day, the New York Times among them, challenged the Academy's choice. Really, Steinbeck was at the peak of his powers in the 1930s, when every intellectual wanted to write that great proletarian novel. It was smart to be a Marxist then, and Steinbeck kept in line by contributing his share. A forerunner to The Grapes of Wrath, In Dubious Battle glorified Communist strike tactics and secured his place in the hearts of the day's intellectuals. Today, the book is just irritating; splattered with sophomoric philosophizing about human nature, it reads like a how-to guide for strikers. Even though he was never a member of the Communist party, Steinbeck was a sucker for the zeitgeist. The critics of the 1930s didn't see it, but this sort of fashionable embrace produced only a dilettantish grasp of the ideology. That's clear from In Dubious Battle, in which Mac, the hero, rants that "anybody that wants a living wage is a radical" and the "infection is invested capital." To his credit, Steinbeck tempered the sermonizing in The Grapes of Wrath, but even there he couldn't resist the propaganda, especially in the last part. In the process, he sabotaged what could have been a great work. "Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there," says Tom Joad, now high on Marx and ready to die for the cause. (The 1940 film version is better, because, for one thing, it softens the book's preachy tone; the Joad family, the introductory words of the film tell us, is driven from their fields by "natural disasters and economic changes beyond anyone's control." In the book, it's clear that those "economic changes" are brought about by those big, bad bankers.) "Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist," Steinbeck later wrote of his 1930s fling with chic ideas, and added about his friends who claimed to be Communists, "the ones I knew…couldn't have disrupted a Sunday school picnic." Some intellectuals — Arthur Koestler and Whittaker Chambers, among them — really gave their hearts and minds to Communism. When their god failed them, they found themselves staring into the void and were stirred to greater depth by confronting it. Steinbeck, though, had no crisis of faith. He never saw the void. Instead, in the decades to come he just faded to pink and lapsed into self-indulgence. In self-righteous works, such as East of Eden (too long by half), Steinbeck pontificated throughout on why the world is the way it is. But Steinbeck is at his most flaccid in one of his last books, the dopey Travels with Charley (1962). Here we see a man near life's end who sadly had nothing left to say and embarked on a road trip because, let's face it, road trips write themselves. Throughout his three-month motor tour, Steinbeck coasts in neutral. His superficial banter with people produced such hackneyed thoughts as, "Niagara Falls is very nice"… "rabies is a dreadful thing"… "government can make you feel so small and mean"…."there's nothing I like better than scented sheets." About the south's racial divide, he could only say, "I've only told you what a few people said to me and what I saw. I don't know whether they were typical or whether any conclusion can be drawn." But he did venture this bit of profundity, "it is a troubled place and a people caught in a jam." Like the people he encountered, Steinbeck is exactly what his old Commie soapbox characters detest, a capitalist with a narrow horizon. In a limited way, Steinbeck did acknowledge his debt to his country — but apologetically. Defensively, like some guilty materialist, he laid his cards on the table. He told us he bought a new, top-of-the-line trailer, equipped with a small house and double bed, and rattled off a laundry list of trip essentials: "far too many clothes, blankets and pillows, and many too many shoes and boots, padded sub-zero underwear…bourbon, scotch gin, vermouth, vodka, a medium good brandy, aged applejack, and a case of beer." And of all things, he brought along not some pointer but a French poodle that only responded quickly to commands in French. Yet, even if you want to like Steinbeck for his candor, what's irritating is his condemnation of the average American, whom he blasted for being unreflective and bland. Travels with Charley is plain embarrassing, and it's unfortunate that Viking chose to mark his centennial with its reissue (also republished are The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men, and The Pearl). For a man once praised for his gritty, realistic description of the Joad family's plight, in Travels with Charley Steinbeck backtracked: "I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger." And Ma Joad, Mother Earth incarnate, would've loved this one: "Perhaps we have overrated roots as a psychic need." With two exceptions, Of Mice and Men and Cannery Row, the reissues aren't worth buying. Viking has also brought out America and Americans and Selected Non-Fictions, which showcases Steinbeck's non-fiction writing through the years, his ideas, projects, personal reflections on friends such as Henry Fonda, as well as his coverage from the battlefronts of World War II and Vietnam. Interestingly, Steinbeck supported the American presence in Vietnam. But the book's editors, Susan Shillinglaw and Jackson J. Benson, excuse Steinbeck's stance with this shallow explanation, "Steinbeck waxed enthusiastic about war machinery because he had long been fascinated by weapons — odd weapons, the history of warfare, target practice with his sons." His third wife, Elaine, adds, "John changed his mind totally about Vietnam while there, and he came home to write it and spent all the rest of the time dying. That's not just an apology for John. It's true." Just when you think the older Steinbeck might take a fresh stand, his flock shatters the hope. So what's worth remembering about his work? When he relaxed, when he resisted the urge to philosophize and just write stories that draw on his personal experiences, he shined. He was at his most engaging when he wrote the whimsical, personal tales inspired by the quirky, odd people of his native California. There's Doc, a "half-Christ and half Satyr," and Dora, the orange-haired madam, and Lee Chong, who sells food and firecrackers and a whiskey called Old Tennessee. They're socially deviant and full of pathos, and voices such as theirs make it a joy to read Cannery Row, Wayward Bus, Sweet Thursday, and Tortilla Flat. Still, character sketches aren't enough to secure a place in the canon. So we dust off The Grapes of Wrath and hold to the belief that Steinbeck carried the oppressed in his heart till the day he died. But in the end, he hinted at something else, that all those big ideas that gave Tom Joad and Mac a reason to live were a blind alley, a false scent, and that in reality, there didn't need to be a revolution to enjoy the simple things. That conclusion isn't something his admirers are likely to accept. If they did, what then would they have to make of his whole earlier career? And his famous modesty? Really, an older Steinbeck understood that ultimately what matters — what mattered to him, probably all along — are the small comforts. Some people come to that conclusion in profound ways, but not Steinbeck. After all, it's one thing to enjoy the small things as a Christian or Stoic and another to enjoy them as a guilty materialist. Sadly, the last few pages of Travels with Charley sums up his whole career; he wrote, "In the end of it was one shining reality — my own wife, my own house in my own street, my own bed." So much for Ma Joad's sermon, "What we got lef' in the world, nothin' but us. Nothin' but the folks." |
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life, John Steinbeck packaged himself as an unpretentious sort,
with little patience for award ceremonies and overtures of polite
acceptance. Now, some 30 years after his death, he is securely stamped
in the public mind as a champion of the common man. February marks
the centenary of his birth, and with close to 200 events nationwide
marking the occasion, he is the focus of the largest celebration
of a writer in American history.
