A Chance Christmas Dinner with John Steinbeck in 1947

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A chance Christmas dinner with John Steinbeck helped set the course of a young man’s life as an adventurer and Pan American pilot who crisscrossed the world many times–and then wrote a book about it. Charles Cutting honored Steinbeck by using the year of their meeting in the title of his book, 1947 Europe from a Duffel Bag. The book, which is available on Amazon, also includes harrowing and insightful experiences as a pilot.

“I was born in Pacific Grove, California, February, 1930,” Cutting writes. “My father as a young man worked down on Cannery Row in Monterey near our home in Pacific Grove. These were the days when the author John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts were well known. Because of this connection, I heard stories of these two men and some of their life and times.”

Cutting’s father, F. Douglass Cutting, had gone through a divorce and died when Charles was 12, Charles’s daughter Susan said. Charles’s grandfather, Francis Cutting–a superb plein air artist and Impressionist of the period–stepped in to help raise Charles. Francis would often take the boy with him when painting scenes along the California coast. The boy would play while the grandfather painted the land and sea around them.

Charles’s favorite location was Point Lobos, now a state reserve south of Carmel, and thought by many to be the inspiration for another writer of note who had connections to the Monterey Peninsula–Robert Louis Stevenson. It has been said that a tale about a hidden treasure at Point Lobos led Stevenson to write Treasure Island. But Charles Cutting mainly remembers it for the time spent there with his artist grandfather. When Francis Cutting relocated his studio from Pacific Grove to Campbell, California, he brought Charles with him.

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“By 1946 I was attending high school in Campbell,” Cutting continued. “My girlfriend in those school days was a friend of one of John Steinbeck’s nieces. Through this connection in 1947 my girlfriend and I were invited for Christmas dinner at the home of Steinbeck’s sister [Beth Ainsworth, who ran a boarding house in Berkeley at the time].

“As it happened, John came in unexpectedly from his reporting job in Europe and joined us for dinner. We had a warm visit and discussion of his just completed life in Europe. I was intrigued with his description of current events and life on the continent.

“One year later, I graduated from high school. After completing a summer of work, I combined my summer’s pay with my life savings for a grand total of $400. I set out to see for myself what John Steinbeck had talked about during that Christmas dinner in 1947.”

So at the age of 18, with his possessions in a duffel bag, Charles Cutting was off to explore a continent still recovering from World War II. That exploration would continue through his long flying career, including tense times, such as this expressed in one of his poems as his jet begins its climb over the Outer Hebrides: “Still our four engines strained upward through the vast blue void/Sharp sudden spasm and this machine becomes a problem child . . . .”

A Chance Encounter with a Masterful Painting

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I met Charles Cutting by accident or, maybe I should say, by way of art. Driving home to Pacific Grove from San Francisco several decades ago, I stopped at the Red Barn weekend flea mart off Highway 101 to stretch my legs. I didn’t expect to find anything of interest; it was late Sunday afternoon and booths had been pretty well picked over. But in a large cardboard box I found an early 20th century oil painting of a cypress tree on dunes against a moody sky, likely painted in Pacific Grove’s Asilomar or at Point Pinos or nearby Pebble Beach. A beautiful painting, it was signed F.H. Cutting. Research showed that F.H. stood for Francis Harvey and that Cutting had exhibited prolifically, including the California Palace of the Legion of Honor and the Stanford Art Gallery, winning many awards in his lifetime.

Somehow, that led me to Charles Cutting. Or he contacted me when I inquired on the internet after his grandfather. Neither of us remembers exactly how it happened, but we got to know each other and Charles told me the Steinbeck story as well as stories of his career as a Pan Am pilot. Several years later, in 2007, he published 1947 Europe from a Duffel Bag. He once wrote me, “My encounter with Steinbeck was brief on that Christmas in 1947, but it did have an effect on my future life. I never forgot it.”

The Time of Their Lives: William Saroyan, Steinbeck, and the Dollar Short Story

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It was a time in the mid-1930s. The writer William Saroyan (in undated photo) was driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles and, some miles down the road, decided he’d like to visit John Steinbeck in Pacific Grove. So he detoured. Steinbeck was busy writing but broke off to sit and talk with his fellow Californian.

It was a time in the mid-1930s and the writer William Saroyan decided he’d like to visit John Steinbeck.

Neither could know the coincidence and irony of what was coming. In 1940, both men would win the Pulitzer Prize: Steinbeck in literature for The Grapes of Wrath, Saroyan in drama for The Time of Your Life, an alarmingly original treatment of people waiting for something to happen, and a harbinger of plays like Waiting for Godot—except that in Saroyan’s piece something dramatic finally does happen. Really, what were the odds of a couple of guys sitting in a little room in Pacific Grove, California, each simultaneously nabbing a Pulitzer a few years later—though Saroyan would turn his Pulitzer down, saying he did not believe in awards in the arts. Steinbeck would be quoted as saying, “Bill knows what he wants to do and I don’t see that it is anybody’s business.” He said he felt better about his Pulitzer because Saroyan, though rejecting it, got one too.

Steinbeck said he felt better about his Pulitzer Prize because Saroyan, though rejecting it, got one too.

Of course Steinbeck had already shown what he could do, having written Tortilla Flat, his first popular novel—along with the stories later collected in The Long Valley—and likely at work on his 1937 hit, Of Mice and Men. When they met, however, Saroyan was simply the hottest short story author in America, closely identified with California’s Central Valley and the Armenian community around Fresno, much as Steinbeck came to be with the Salinas Valley and the characters around Monterey County. Known for writing quickly, Saroyan believed in spontaneity—which produced frequent masterpieces but also, now and then, a story that might need more work. But Saroyan was Saroyan, and The Time of Your Life, The Human Comedy, and The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze would make him famous.

Saroyan was simply the hottest short story author in America, closely identified with California’s Central Valley.

Back in Pacific Grove, Steinbeck said he’d like Saroyan to meet Bruce and Jean Ariss, who lived nearby. Bruce was an artist and Jean was a writer whose novel The Shattered Glass was inspired in part by the Monterey of the 1930s and 1940s. Saroyan followed Steinbeck in his car to the young couple’s home, and the evening went well, with plenty of wine and lots of talk. Recalling the evening some years later, Jean said that eventually Steinbeck decided he had to go home and get back to writing. Jean and Bruce invited Saroyan to stay for more talk and another glass, and they mentioned that they had become involved with a local literary magazine. Saroyan found that interesting and asked for more information.

Back in Pacific Grove, Steinbeck said he’d like Saroyan to meet Bruce and Jean Ariss, and the evening went well.

Finally Saroyan said it was time for him to get going. But as he was leaving he changed his mind about trying to drive all the way to Los Angeles. “You know, it’s gotten late and I’m tired and have had too much wine,” he said. “Is there a hotel or inn nearby?” Bruce and Jean recommended one, then said goodbye to the hottest short story writer in America. The next morning they heard a knock on their door. A red-eyed Saroyan stood holding a thin, wrinkled manuscript—“A short story I just wrote. I hope you like it. That will be one dollar, please. And now I have to be on my way.”

The next morning a red-eyed Saroyan stood holding a thin, wrinkled manuscript. ‘That will be one dollar, please.’

“That was so wonderful of him—a William Saroyan short story for our magazine!” Jean told me many years later. “We loved him forever. John Steinbeck was a good friend, but he would never have done something like that for us.” Jean added that, while Steinbeck took time with his writing, spending too long on a short story might have been considered slothful by Saroyan. I don’t know the title of the story Saroyan wrote that night—if Jean told me I’ve forgotten—and I don’t even know if Bruce and Jean ever published it. But the episode meant enough to Jean to have created an indelible memory.

‘We loved him forever. John Steinbeck was a good friend, but he would never have done something like that for us.’

Saroyan first moved me when I did a scene from his sad and lovely play Hello Out There as a student at Los Angeles City College. In it, a young man passing through a small town is falsely accused of rape and jailed. As citizens gather to lynch him, he gives the jail’s shy and gentle young maid the money to get out of town and start a new life, urging her to leave the building before the lynching party arrives. As she exits, their eyes meet and you realize the young man and timid maid have fallen deeply in love. Then there was the inaugural art exhibit at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, which I co-curated with Patricia Leach more than 20 years ago. The morning after the opening, a young artist named Gailyn McClanahan walked into our Pacific Grove gallery, looked around, and said, “I have to go get my husband—be right back!” Her husband was William Saroyan’s son Aram, a writer, playwright, and poet. How ironic, I thought at the time: Steinbeck last night, Saroyan today.

Gailyn’s husband was Saroyan’s son Aram. How ironic, I thought at the time: Steinbeck last night, Saroyan today.

Nancy and I got to know and like Gailyn and Aram, and I thought of them when President Biden condemned Turkey for the Armenian genocide during World War I. This horror haunted William Saroyan, who expressed his feelings in the brilliant story-essay “Seventy-Thousand Assyrians.” And I knew that Aram could carry a similar heaviness. At dinner some years ago, the topic of the Armenian genocide came up in conversation and Aram seemed to slip into a dark mood. When he excused himself from the table, Gailyn explained that this happened occasionally, that what had haunted the father also haunted the son.

I thought of them when President Biden condemned Turkey for the Armenian genocide during World War I.

The other day I contacted Aram to ask him what his father would have thought about the President’s comments, and I was saddened to learn that Gailyn, like Nancy, had died. Of his father’s response to Biden’s censorship of Turkey, Aram said, “I certainly support your idea about my father’s no doubt very positive response to President Biden’s official recognition—that Ottoman Turkey’s massacre of the Armenians was an act of genocide.” He continued: “Virtually all Armenians, including hybrids like me, were/are deeply heartened by his act, which has been so long in coming.’’

Aram said, ‘I certainly support your idea about my father’s no doubt very positive response to President Biden’s recognition that Turkey’s massacre of the Armenians was an act of genocide.’

More than a century late! But President Biden deserves great credit for articulating what others thought but shrank from saying. Like William Saroyan, John Steinbeck would approve.

Like John Steinbeck, Nick Taylor Heading for France

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Nick Taylor, the popular San Jose State University English professor and fiction writer who has served as director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies since 2011, recently announced that he will be leaving the position to become resident director of the California State University system’s international programs in Paris and Provence, France. On May 17 Taylor sent the following message to members of the International Society of Steinbeck Scholars, the organization which is headquartered at San Jose State:

I am writing to let you know that this summer I will be stepping down as Director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center. In my ten years in this role, I have had the privilege of meeting many of you at our international conferences in 2013, 2016, and 2019, and many more via email and phone. I continue to be impressed by the intelligence, creativity, and passion of Steinbeck scholars. I will miss working day-to-day to advance the mission of this vital institution, but I plan to remain on the Editorial Board of Steinbeck Review and to serve on the Advisory Board of the Center.

Two assistant professors at San Jose State will divide Taylor’s duties, which include management of the Steinbeck studies center—located in San Jose’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Library—and the Steinbeck writers’ fellowship program, which is funded by a bequest from the center’s founder, the late San Jose State English professor Martha Heasley Cox.

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Daniel Lanza Rivers

According to the announcement, Daniel Lanza Rivers will become the center’s director, “handling all scholarly and organizational duties, including Steinbeck Review. Daniel has a PhD in Cultural Studies and English from Claremont, an MA from NYU, and a BA from Sonoma State. He came to Steinbeck through his work in the environmental humanities. His current book project examines California’s ‘settler ecologies,’ with chapters on fire, grizzly bears, and other California touchstones. He also publishes on transnational American studies and gender and sexuality studies.”

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Keenan Norris

Keenan Norris will coordinate the Steinbeck Fellows program, which supports emerging talent through stipends, networking, and opportunities to showcase writing. According to the announcement, “Keenan is a novelist and essayist with a PhD in English from UC Riverside and an MFA from Mills College. His second novel, The Confession of Copeland Cane, will be published in June. Keenan has a strong network in the Bay Area writing community and years of mentorship experience. Both he and Daniel have served on the selection committee for the Steinbeck Fellows, so they are well acquainted with the program and its alumni.”

Exploring Cannery Row Along the Pacific Crest Trail

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John Steinbeck preferred coasts to mountains, but the opposite is true of Joshua Powell, the artist-author of an artful new book, The Pacific Crest Trail: A Visual Compendium. Quoted in a February 20, 2021 Spokesman-Review profile by Stephanie Hammett, the Washington State resident said that he picked up a copy of Steinbeck’s 1945 novel Cannery Row while staying overnight with friends in Belton, California (pop. 22) in 2012. He kept the copy his hosts gave him in his knapsack, working his way along the 2,653-mile Pacific Crest Trail—and having an unexpected experience of discovery. “’I would pull it out and read it from time to time, maybe 10 minutes before going to sleep, but it ended up having a huge effect on my experience,’” Powell told Hammett, who added that Powell “started seeing connections between his hike and the plot surrounding the character of Doc in Cannery Row, an early thru-hiker of sorts himself.” John Steinbeck continues to sustain the young artist-author. “’That was kind of shocking to me, that this book I just randomly happened to find, by a very famous writer, actually had this direct connection to what I was doing,’ he said, explaining how he went from casually reading Cannery Row to tracking down every bit of Steinbeck he could find.”

Photo of Joshua Powell by Laura Goff courtesy of the Spokane, Washington Spokesman-Review.

Nancy Ricketts Recalls Life in John Steinbeck’s Shadow

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Nancy Ricketts, the daughter of John Steinbeck’s collaborator and confidant Ed Ricketts, recalls growing up under Steinbeck’s shadow in pre-World War II Pacific Grove and Monterey in a recently published memoir, Becoming Myself: The Story of a Turbulent Youth. A professional archivist and confirmed Episcopalian (like Steinbeck and her father), she is the author of A Brief History of St. Peter’s-By-the-Sea, an historic Episcopal church in Sitka, Alaska, where she makes her home. Listen to her interview with KCAW News in Sitka, recorded on September 3, 2020, to learn more. (Nancy Ricketts will participate via video in the closing session of “Cannery Row Days”—a six-week series in celebration of Steinbeck, Ricketts, and the Cannery Row they created, on November 7, 2020.)

Archive photo of Nancy Ricketts courtesy Raven Radio Foundation.

John Steinbeck Helps Physicians Self-Heal

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“Using the Humanities to Help Heal”—an August 13, 2020 feature post by E.J. Iannelli—leads its report on an innovative program for post-graduate students in internal medicine at the University of Washington with the experience of Travis Hughes, a third year UW internal medicine resident in Spokane, Washington, who found an unexpected path to self-understanding in East of Eden, the 1952 novel John Steinbeck believed he was born to write. Encountering the “malformed soul” of Steinbeck’s character Cathy Ames for the first time during a “Daily Dose of Humanities” discussion session designed to help primary care physicians better understand their patients and themselves, Hughes said that Steinbeck’s case history of a sociopath with “no remorse and very little empathy” left him with an important lesson: “that I shouldn’t lose touch with my emotions.” Along with long distance medicine and COVID-19 pandemic protocols, “the adoption of electronic medical record (EMR) software has sterilized the emotional connection between medical professionals and their patients”—a connection which can be recovered by insights gained from art, music, and literature. “I find that I learn not only about shared human experience but also about the people that I work with based on the choices of art that they bring in,” says Hughes of the program. “It puts my heart and mind in a more generous, empathetic position. And it makes me think about what life is like as a patient. I’m not just seeing a lab value, I’m seeing a person who’s similar to me.” The program is the brainchild of Dr. Darryl Potyk (at left in photo, with internal medicine residents), the chief for medical education at UW’s school of medicine in Spokane, Washington.

Photo by Young Kwak courtesy of The Inlander.

Like Steinbeck, Short Stories By Michael Katakis Show How Dangerous Men Can Be

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John Steinbeck said Montana was the state he’d pick to live in if he hadn’t been born in California, or become a citizen of the world who now called Manhattan home. In the early short stories of The Pastures of Heaven (1932) and The Long Valley (1938), the author of The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden showed how vast spaces, violent events, and the struggles of victims and villains conspire to make good men dangerous and dangerous men deadly, stripping the veneer off civilization to expose the coarseness, and the fineness, of the essential human grain. Like Steinbeck, the American writer Michael Katakis can claim global citizenship (Carmel, Paris, London), international connections (as a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and executor for Hemingway’s literary estate), and—as demonstrated in his latest book, Dangerous Men—an ability to transpose personal loss (the tragic death of his young wife, the anthropologist Kris L. Hardin) into a particularized locale (rural Montana) as remote from most readers’ experience as Hemingway’s Pamplona or Steinbeck’s Big Sur.

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Dangerous Men is Michael’s first work of fiction, and “Hunter’s Moon”—the most nakedly autobiographical of the interconnected short stories in the collection—was written in Montana 16 years ago, long before Kris died from a brain tumor. Much of the rest of the writing was done over coffee or an appertif at a Paris-boulevard café, in a process of self-recovery that one doubts is finished, or ever will be. The result is a work whose dark tone and deadly theme are announced in the epigraph from The Pastures of Heaven that opens “The Fence,” the first story; the second, “Home for Christmas,” ends with a bitter reversal worthy of O’Henry, or the occasional Steinbeck. The remaining stories recount the revenge odyssey of a wandering hero with the wonderful name of Walter Lesser, a latter-day cowboy and Gary Cooper lookalike who ends up, like Tom Joad, as a larger-than-life legend. Raja Shehadeh, the author of Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape (2008), has described Dangerous Men as “a work of great sensitivity and lyrical beauty.” For fans of John Steinbeck, the Montana short stories of Michael Katakis are also a form of continuing communion with the spirit of The Pastures of Heaven—a place where violent events play out against vast spaces under the sign of the Hunter’s Moon. Highly recommended for Steinbeck readers and others safe-sheltering from the dangerous men in Washington, D.C.

Hunter’s Moon photograph courtesy of the Daily Express.

After Travels with Charley, Pittsburgh Newspaper Journalist Finds Staying Home with COVID-19 Easy

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I’m a very lucky man.

Living in an old money-pit at the top of a hill in the woods and having no neighbors was always a sweet deal for an underpaid Pittsburgh newspaper journalist.

But in the medical and political madness of our times, they have become priceless gifts.

When summer is in full swing my 12 acres are ridiculously green and lush. I like to say it’s like being in Vietnam, but I have no idea what I’m talking about because I dodged that jungled corner of the world half a century ago.

On any given morning here in Western Pennsylvania, my Montana-raised wife Trudi and I can look out one of our 20 oversized windows and see a Disneyland of birds, chipmunks, rabbits, squirrels, groundhogs, and deer. In the spring and fall, wild turkeys parade past my house. Where they spend their summers I don’t know.

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Birds are everywhere. They wake us up at dawn and dart through the under-story all day. Turkey vultures circle silently above our 1938 vintage metal roof. Robins and doves have built nests in the crooks of our rain gutters. Woodpeckers have drilled holes in our ancient redwood siding for their homes.

The young Rough-Legged Hawk that flashed by our kitchen window and snatched a baby dove from its nest last month has moved on to tougher prey. At night we hear the local gang of coyotes howling and yapping, but during the day they are as invisible as the owls hooting somewhere in the dark.

Living in the woods in an old house means coexisting with nature—literally. It’s not just spiders, ants, and stink bugs. At one time or another, our uninvited house-guests have included birds, bats, frogs, toads, mice, snakes, and a teen-age raccoon who came in a kitchen window and thought it could live behind the cereal boxes.

During our pandemic and national shutdown, I’m even more blessed to be living in Penn’s Woods. For some strange reason unknown to the disease experts Pittsburgh and the western half of the state were spared the worst of the COVID-19.

In my largely rural, natural gas-fracking county 20 miles south of Pittsburgh, where 220,000 Flyover People live, we’ve had six deaths from COVID-19. Philly on the East Coast was hit hard, but there have been fewer than 200 deaths in Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh and 1.3 million Steelers-worshippers are located. More than half of the area’s COVID-19 deaths have been in nursing homes and, like everywhere else, only a handful have been under 70.

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Despite Pittsburgh’s relative good luck, the governor’s sweeping shutdown of the state quickly ended my career as a weekend Uber driver. As a worker in the transportation sector, I was deemed by the people in charge to be essential. But closing downtown offices, restaurants, bars, sporting events, and all nightlife in mid-March wiped out 90 percent of Uber’s customers. The evidence—two leased vehicles that rarely leave—sits in our driveway.

Miraculously, my potential financial disaster turned into a windfall when 1099-contract workers whose jobs were wiped out by COVID-19 were made eligible to receive $600 a week under the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

I wish I could say I’ve been using my government-paid vacation to write another book or catch up on my Cicero or Saroyan. But mostly I’ve been mowing my weedy token lawn, playing golf twice a week, and wasting time ranting and raving about political things I can do nothing about on Facebook and Twitter.

But I haven’t been a total bum for three months.

I’ve been trying to get Hollywood interested in my tragically overlooked 1948 Jim Crow history book, 30 Days a Black Man, which I hope Netflix will make into a series co-starring Jeff Daniels and Denzel Washington.

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On my website I posted the original newspaper series in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that 30 Days is based on. In 1948, star newspaperman Ray Sprigle collaborated with the NAACP of Walter White and pretended to be a black man in the Deep South for a month.

Sprigle shocked the oblivious white North with his angry, powerful, nationally syndicated account of the oppression, discrimination, and humiliation 10 million blacks suffered every day under Old Jim Crow. Sadly, his mostly forgotten series about life in America’s apartheid is timely as hell.

And oh yeah.

I also put together a small Kindle book called Chasing Steinbeck’s Ghost, which is a time-and-place-line of the 10,000-mile road trip Steinbeck took in the fall of 1960 for Travels with Charley.

Ten years ago in September I retraced Steinbeck’s route as faithfully and accurately as possible for what became my 2013 nonfiction book Dogging Steinbeck.

The Chasing Steinbeck’s Ghost timeline is as accurate as I could make it. It includes a bunch of photos I took of such things as Steinbeck’s Sag Harbor home, the trendy places he hung out at in San Francisco, and the big ranch in Texas where he and Elaine spent Thanksgiving.

There also are a few excerpts pulled from Dogging Steinbeck about some of the many fictions and fibs Steinbeck and his editors at Viking Press slipped into what until I came along 50 years later was marketed and taught as a work of nonfiction.

I hope my little guide doesn’t ruin the fun for others who want to follow Steinbeck’s tire tracks. Traveling around the USA to see America and meet Americans—post-COVID 19, of course—is a road trip everyone should experience at least once.

Supreme Court May Decide Who Owns Creative Rights to the Works of John Steinbeck

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The latest installment of the long-running saga over who owns creative rights to the works of John Steinbeck is on the way to the U.S. Supreme Court according to Steven Todd Lowe, an entertainment attorney who serves as president of the California Society of Entertainment Lawyers, the organization which has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the lawsuit brought by the estate of John Steinbeck’s son, Thom Steinbeck, against that of Waverly Kaffaga, the daughter of John Steinbeck’s third wife, Elaine Steinbeck. Steinbeck fans familiar with Bleak House but confused about the Dickensian issues involved in the Steinbeck family feud may seek clarity by reading “Steinbeck Family Battle Appealed to Supreme Court”—the June 26, 2020 blog post in which Lowe attempts to explain “the somewhat complicated fact pattern and salient legal issues” surrounding the ongoing Jarndyce v. Jarndyce drama.

Photo of Charles Dickens courtesy Britannica.com.

John Steinbeck, COVID-19, And Facing Homelessness

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What would John Steinbeck have to say about the COVID-19 crisis? What would he focus on? I think it would be the plight of the homeless in places like San Francisco and Los Angeles, teeming with people struggling to survive without shelter or support.

Sleepless in Los Angeles, Cold in San Francisco

I was “homeless” several times in Los Angeles. I don’t pretend it was a big deal. I was young. I could have returned to my family in the Midwest. And there wasn’t a virus on the loose threatening death. But I had a taste of what it was like to sleep on beaches and park benches on cold nights, amidst dangers real and imagined. One night I woke to a gang fight going on nearby and decided it would be just as easy to be homeless in San Francisco as Los Angeles. Putting everything I owned in a battered leather suitcase, I hitchhiked north toward San Francisco, stopping along the way in Monterey, a town I had never seen. It would be my first real exposure to John Steinbeck, beginning with the Monterey Public Library, a display of Steinbeck’s books in the window attracting me.

I had a taste of what it was like to sleep on beaches and park benches on cold nights, amidst dangers real and imagined.

I picked a copy of Of Mice and Men off the shelves. As the homeless do to this day—or once did, since libraries are currently closed across much of the country, making a huge difference in the lives of the homeless—I could get warm while reading. George and Lennie’s story is set in South Monterey County, which I had passed through that morning. I read till the library closed, lingering over passages as I do when something moves me. George and Lennie were, after all, in a way homeless too.

I picked a copy of Of Mice and Men off the shelves. I could get warm by reading.

Then I walked down a street called Calle Principal, leading to an old building with a sign reading “Hotel San Carlos.” I stood out front with my leather suitcase wishing I had enough money for a room. A man came along, and after talking he went into the hotel and convinced the desk clerk I should get a good deal on a room for the night. Decades later I would write a short story about John Steinbeck and his wife Carol and that raffish old hotel. Writing from my memories of that lonely evening in Monterey, it was easy to set the scene, back in the 1930s: “They made their way clumsily down Calle Principal toward the hotel . . . which was in the Spanish style with a plaza and fountain. In the lobby a moth flit from lamp to lamp . . . .“

I stood out front with my leather suitcase wishing I had enough money for a room.

The area intrigued me. In the morning I walked along the shoreline to the town of Pacific Grove, then hitchhiked the six or so miles to the Carmel Mission. The room at the San Carlos no longer available and having money for only food and cigarettes (yes, I smoked), I hitched on to San Francisco that evening. I learned The City is a harder place to be homeless than Los Angeles because it is colder, especially when the sea wind blows in from the bay. After several days meeting “partially homeless” people like myself, I hitched my way back to Los Angeles.

The City is a harder place to be homeless than Los Angeles because it is colder.

I was going to write about other homeless experiences in Los Angeles—having my clothes locked up because I owed rent at the Mark Twain hotel, which I chose because I’m from Missouri . . . sleeping at night under a golf course tree, caddying during the days to earn money . . . having a car for a time, parking it on Santa Monica beaches and bathing in the ocean . . . on a foggy night pulling over to sleep on Mulholland Drive, discovering at sunrise that only a few feet separated the car and me from a plunge into the San Fernando Valley . . . savoring the warmth of sitting in class at Los Angeles City College after cleaning up in the school’s lavatory.

What I Learned from Being (Briefly) Homeless

But when it comes down to it, I simply owe a lot to being briefly homeless. It introduced me to the Monterey Peninsula. John Steinbeck’s Pacific Grove eventually became my new home, the place where my wife Nancy and I raised our daughters Amy and Anne. I wrote for the Monterey Herald, learning more about Steinbeck from a soulful city editor named Jimmy Costello. Jimmy had been Steinbeck’s friend and told me of the incident at the Hotel San Carlos. He had been there. The Carmel Mission I’d hitchhiked to from Monterey became the site for the premiere of one of my plays. And I was honored to co-curate, with Patricia Leach, the inaugural art exhibition at the National Steinbeck Center in nearby Salinas. It was called This Side of Eden: Images of Steinbeck’s California, and the works on display included several depictions of homelessness, among them Maynard Dixon’s prophetically titled “No Place to Go.” Unfortunately, the subject of the painting is just as relevant today as it was in the 1930s.

I wrote for the Monterey Herald and learned more about Steinbeck from a soulful city editor named Jimmy Costello.

The greater irony for me is that the same Monterey Public Library which helped introduce me to the world of John Steinbeck recently asked if I would take part in a panel discussion on writing planned for late April. The event has been postponed, of course, because of the coronavirus. When it is rescheduled it will be a sign that that we have survived this latest test of our shared humanity—and that those living with homelessness can still count on libraries for warmth . . . as well as a good read.