Author Christopher Hitchens Defends Orwell’s Accusation

September 19, 2013 by

Why Orwell Matters, a Book by Christopher Hitchens, This Blog Writer's FriendWhen Winston Churchill described the Soviet Union as dropping an Iron Curtain across Central Europe his speech to an American audience in 1946, George Orwell was living in London and imagining a future England under a Stalinist dictator. From Orwell’s paranoia about the Soviet Union came his masterpiece 1984. A less fortunate outcome was a set of accusatory, argumentative letters, diaries, and notebooks produced during the four years of Orwell’s remaining life, including a list of 100 or more suspected “crypto-communists” such as John Steinbeck. The late author Christopher Hitchens, Orwell’s intellectual heir and ardent defender, provided insights into the writer’s mindset in Why Orwell Matters, a convincing argument for Orwell’s continued relevance, despite lapses of judgment like the paranoid list. My friend Christopher Hitchens died in 2011. I regret now that I never asked him about Orwell’s list while he was alive.

Why Christopher Hitchens Matters

I met Christopher Hitchens while moderating a debate about socialism during the dying days of the old Soviet Union. The Iron Curtain was falling throughout Europe, and the debate organizer explained that the challenging case for socialism would be made by Christopher Hitchens, an English-born journalist whose name was new to me. Trained in political debate at Cambridge, Christopher Hitchens rarely lost an argument on any subject that engaged his interest, including democracy movements behind the Iron Curtain, post-Soviet Union U.S. politics, and the questionable existence of God. I learned this in the course of a friendship that lasted until his much too early death.

Like Orwell, Christopher Hitchens was a master of irony, irreverence, and oxymoron. A loyal friend, he was relentless in print but respectful in person. Like Orwell, he remained faithful to his early socialist ideals while criticizing communism as it developed in the Soviet Union and its Iron Curtain satellites. He shared a tough, pared-down liberalism with Orwell and (I believe) with Steinbeck as well. Its basic principles (in my own words) are relevant to the case of Orwell vs. Steinbeck:

The Seven Laws of Liberalism

* Freedom is precious.
* Truth is objective.
* Reason is essential.
* Every individual has value.
* No authority is infallible.
* God is debatable.
* History happened.

Ten Questions for Christopher Hitchens

Liberal ideals inform everything Christopher Hitchens wrote, including his short book about Orwell. I find the same values in Steinbeck, a writer of fiction less partisan or politically sophisticated than either Englishman. Orwell accused Steinbeck of favoring the Soviet Union over democracy, and neither Hitchens nor Orwell acknowledged Steinbeck’s characteristically American liberalism. In compensation for their failure, here are the questions I would ask Christopher Hitchens, Orwell’s finest defender, if I still had the chance :

1. Like Steinbeck, Orwell was a religious skeptic who clung to the King James Bible and echoed liturgical language in the cadence of his prose. Like Steinbeck, Orwell requested and received a Church of England funeral. What should we make of this paradox in the behavior of these profoundly lapsed Anglicans?
2. Like Steinbeck, Orwell was an empiricist who preferred evidence over theory and was once described as having too much common sense to be  interested in philosophy. Yet Steinbeck’s thinking about teleology and group behavior reflect similar ideas in Orwell’s social writing. What meaning can we take from this coincidence in the thinking of these covert philosophers?

Orwell was an empiricist who preferred evidence over theory and was once described as having too much common sense to be  interested in philosophy.

3. Like Steinbeck, Orwell was an anti-imperialist democrat who distrusted centralized power. This position was well-established in both writers by 1943, when each was in London. Yet I find no record that they met when they had the opportunity. What conclusion can be drawn from Orwell and Steinbeck’s failure to connect?
4. In your book you describe Orwell as “a natural Tory.” Like Steinbeck, he held old-fashioned ideas about private ownership, self-sufficiency, and family loyalty absorbed from his upbringing in a small rural town. Yet both writers remained pro-labor, small-d democrats throughout their lives. What can be inferred from this inconsistency of liberal and conservative values?

Like Steinbeck, Orwell was an anti-imperialist democrat who distrusted centralized power.

5. Unlike Steinbeck, Orwell never visited the Soviet Union. In your book you explain that Orwell “never went through a phase of Russophilia or Stalin-worship or fellow-travelling.” What conclusions can we draw from Orwell’s distant opposition to the Soviet Union and his reaction to Steinbeck’s journey behind the Iron Curtain?
6. Like Steinbeck in Vietnam, you supported America’s invasion of a foreign country, and you became an American citizen in an act of solidarity with the administration of George Bush. Unlike you, Orwell disliked America and Americans, including Steinbeck. Yet he never visited the America. What motivated Orwell’s animosity-from-a-distance toward the United States?

Orwell never went through a phase of Russophilia or Stalin-worship or fellow-travelling.

7. Unlike Orwell, Steinbeck resisted criticizing other writers in print. Orwell publicly denigrated American regionalists like Steinbeck as reactionaries by definition, and he disparaged Steinbeck’s work in his private writing. What motivated Orwell’s public criticism and private doubts about John Steinbeck?
8. Orwell’s Cold War list of “crypto-communists” included pro-Soviet Union American politicians such as Henry A. Wallace and Claude Pepper, despite their anti-imperialist, pro-labor domestic positions (also Steinbeck’s). Was there more to Orwell’s suspicions about these politicians than their support for the Soviet Union?

Unlike Orwell, Steinbeck resisted criticizing other writers in print.

9. Besides Steinbeck, Wallace, and Pepper, Orwell’s list included Charlie Chaplin, Paul Robeson, and Orson Welles. Yet each shared Orwell’s distrust of reactionary media moguls like Citizen Cain—William Randolph Hearst. Why did Orwell single out Steinbeck, Robeson, and Welles in his list of Iron Curtain sympathizers wihtin the United States?
10. Like Steinbeck, Orwell was deeply attracted to the ficton of Jack London, whose 1906 novel The Iron Heel—like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World—clearly influenced the writing of 1984. Yet Steinbeck’s 1942 anti-fascist piece, The Moon Is Down, apparently lacked similar appeal for Orwell. In your book you note that Orwell lashed out at other writers—including Huxley—but apologized after the fact. Did Orwell have similar second thoughts about Steinbeck before he died?

How the Soviet Union Became Orwell’s Obsession

Christopher Hitchens notes that while working for the BBC, Orwell included “the grittier work of James T. Farrell, John Steinbeck, and Archibald MacLeish” in a radio program about new writers. Orwell’s scripts were scrutinized by BBC censors to avoid offending listeners, and his on-air words didn’t always reflect his real opinion. This was clearly the case with his views on Steinbeck, who is described in Orwell’s diary as a “spurious writer” and “pseudo-naif.” Unfortunately, Steinbeck is only one example of Orwell’s muddled opinions about literary quality. In a notorious case of poor judgment, he publicly criticized W.H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939” for lack of authenticity, credibility, or accuracy in its description of the Spanish Civil War. Today Auden’s anti-fascist masterpiece is considered by many his greatest poem.

Steinbeck is described in Orwell’s diary as a spurious writer and pseudo-naif.

Orwell’s public muttering about Auden provides another clue to his disapproval of Steinbeck. Like Aldous Huxley before him (and Christopher Hitchens years later), Auden emigrated to the United States, arriving in 1939 with the English writer Christopher Isherwood. Like Huxley and Hitchens, Auden and Isherwood were attracted by certain American freedoms—including sex—not found in England. Unlike Christopher Hitchens and George Orwell, both Auden and Isherwood were gay—card-carrying members of the “pansy left” publicly disparaged by Orwell. Orwell’s anti-American bias and anti-gay prejudice combined in his attack on Auden. In the case of Steinbeck, “anti-Soviet Union anti-Americanism” appears to have been sufficient cause for censure.

Why Christopher Hitchens’ Defense of Orwell Falls Short

In Why Orwell Matters, Christopher Hitchens defends Orwell’s list of “crypto-communists” as a harmless intellectual exercise, a game of “guessing which public figures would, or would not, sell out in the event of an invasion or a dictatorship.” He surmises that Orwell’s conservatism about sex in general and gay sex in particular was the result of Orwell’s boyhood experience as a student at St. Cyprian’s, a Dickensian hellhole where bullying, beating, and buggery were routine. But Orwell went on to Eton, where he perfected his French under Aldous Huxley and began his lifelong friendship Cyril Connolly, an openly ambisextrous editor who proved helpful to his career.

Christopher Hitchens defends Orwell’s list of crypto-communists as a harmless intellectual exercise, a game of guessing which public figures would, or would not, sell out in the event of an invasion of a dictatorship.

In the end, Christopher Hitchens’ argument fails to exculpate Orwell. Of  Orwell’s “crypto-communists,” he explains that “while a few on ‘the list’ were known personally to Orwell, most were not,” concluding that Orwell’s charge against people he didn’t know didn’t make him a “snitch.” Illiberal, inconsistent, and unconvincing. The world of 1984 is crawling with snitches whose testimony leads to torture and death at the hands of Big Brother. Every individual has value, truth is objective, and history happens. Orwell showed his list naming Steinbeck to influential friends, one of whom worked for an agency of government with the Orwellian name “Information Research Department.”

I agree with Christopher Hitchens that George Orwell still matters. But not always for the right reason. Unlike my late friend, Orwell was prejudiced against gays, Americans, and anyone he suspected of sympathy with the Soviet Union. Though if he hadn’t attacked Steinbeck, even that might not matter.

Filed Under: Books, Cultural History, Featured Tagged With:

The Philosophy of Our Discontent

September 13, 2013 by

Image of title page from The Winter of Our DiscontentNovels by Steinbeck communicate differently to different eras, and The Winter of Our Discontent is no exception. Among all the books by Steinbeck that I have read, it is arguably the most philosophical and the least appreciated. Many critics wrote it off as the weakest of all the mature novels by Steinbeck when it was published, yet Steinbeck quotes Shakespeare in the book’s title—a sign of his seriousness and a key to his meaning—and the novel sold well despite doubtful reviews. Later readers have faulted the lack of social relevance on the scale of The Grapes of Wrath and other serious books by Steinbeck—from In Dubious Battle (where Steinbeck quotes Milton) through Sea of Cortez, the most obviously  philosophical of all the books by Steinbeck that survived his habit of aborting projects he felt were becoming shaky, stale, or redundant. Among my favorite books by Steinbeck written after East of Eden, The Winter of Our Discontent most rewards rereading as a philosophical text for our times—a monument of modern existentialism as impressive today as when it was written.

Shakespeare and Steinbeck on the Human Condition

As numerous books by Steinbeck explain, man’s moral problems never really change. Like other novels by Steinbeck—especially East of Eden—The Winter of Our Discontent is most meaningful when read as a contemporary restatement of this well-worn theme. Steinbeck’s story of greed, delusion, and dishonesty in Eisenhower’s America presents issues that precisely parallel current conditions: The payouts and game-show scandals of the 1950s and 60s are today’s privacy invasion and reality television. The hatred of foreigners by American nativists then is our fear of terrorists and illegal immigrants now. The easy resort to plagiarism depicted in The Winter of Our Discontent continues among students today, facilitated by Google and Facebook. Steinbeck quotes Shakespeare in his title for a reason. Ethan Hawley is Hamlet (yes, wrong play), his dilatory self-doubt deepened by the corruption, darkness, and betrayal growing like a Danish cancer.

The easy resort to plagiarism depicted in ‘The Winter of Our Discontent’ continues among students today, facilitated by Google and Facebook.

Three features of The Winter of Our Discontent—after East of Eden, the most autobiographical of all the surviving novels by Steinbeck—advance the book’s philosophy of existential discontent. These include (1) the externalization of the primary character’s internal process, (2) the prevalence of symbolic contrasts and dualities in other characters, and (3) the necessity of self-understanding and personal sacrifice to end cycles of social failure like that experienced by Ethan Hawley before the novel begins. Through skillful use of these materials Steinbeck captures the universal human condition in an unmistakably contemporary setting, communicating his personal anxieties about himself and the culture of his time and creating a screen upon which each of us can project our own feelings of personal failure, ambivalence, and remorse.

Three features of ‘The Winter of Our Discontent’—after ‘East of Eden,’ the most autobiographical of all the surviving novels by Steinbeck—advance the book’s philosophy of existential discontent.

As he recounts his daily thoughts and experiences in real time, Ethan interprets himself and the people around him, both living and dead. His memories of Aunt Deborah and Captain Hawley in particular serve as vehicles for his developing self-critique and his ongoing argument with contemporary culture.  Remember, Steinbeck quotes Shakespeare in the title for a reason. In doubt, dilation, and despair, Ethan is is more Hamlet than Richard. Although neither of Ethan’s dead ancestors is a Polonius, the imagined voices of his grandfather and aunt help Ethan understand both himself and his world as modes of being neither absolutely right nor absolutely wrong—a post-Polonius principle of existential ethics. Unlike Hamlet, Ethan listens, understands, and appears to think his way out of his crisis before it’s too late.

Externalizing the Inner Drama in Ethan Hawley’s Daily Life

Steinbeck externalizes Ethan’s internal drama through soliloquy, dialog, and place symbols for Ethan’s internal spaces. Ethan’s hiding place under the pier, for example, represents the secrecy of his mind, the mulling-place for his anxieties, and a means of escape from the moral pressure he experiences in his closest relationships. The grocery store where he works provides an interior stage peopled by imaginary players before he opens the door for daily business and buyers reality intrude. Of all the books by Steinbeck in which humor serves irony, The Winter of Our Discontent achieves this difficult effect the most subtly in minor scenes where Ethan is in fact but doesn’t act as if alone.  Using liturgical language, Ethan exercises imagined power over the commercial products lined up like acolytes on his shelves in a self-revealing rite of compensation for his family’s lost ownership of the store where he now clerks.

Of all the books by Steinbeck in which humor serves irony, ‘The Winter of Our Discontent’ achieves this difficult effect the most subtly in minor scenes where Ethan is in fact but doesn’t act as if alone.

Ethan’s friend Danny has his own hiding place—the old cellar where he recalls his happy childhood with Ethan before falling from grace as the town drunk. Margie Young-Hunt, too, has her symbol of escape from the boredom of daily life in Baytown, Long Island. The mirror she uses to apply her morning makeup provides time and means for self-reflection on her meaningless life and the men in it, including Ethan,  her best friend husband. Significantly, only Mary Hawley needs no hiding place. Other-directed and uncomplicated, she is a domestic type not found (by me, anyway) in the other novels by Steinbeck I’ve read.

Interpreting Dualities and Sacrifice in Novels by Steinbeck

The contrasts and dualities in novels by Steinbeck are often quite obvious. Here, too, The Winter of Discontent is no exception. Ethan’s attributes as a semi-responsible family man and quasi-productive citizen contrast with Danny’s habitual vagrancy and alcoholism. Mary’s loyalty and innocence are juxtaposed with Marjorie’s sexuality and deceit. Ethan and Mary’s children, Allen and Ellen, are polar opposites. Even Red the dog and the cat living behind the store enact a polarity of type and temperament.

But the most significant duality is represented by Captain Hawley and Aunt Deborah in relation to Ethan’s unfolding process of self-awareness. The ghost of the Captain is a pragmatic mentor figure who comes to Ethan’s aid with practical advice. Aunt Deborah is emotional, almost mystical, and encourages Ethan to seek his own answers inwardly by recalling moments of lost joy from the past. In philosophical terms, Ethan’s antithetical ancestors represent materialism and idealism, praxis and pathos, action and feeling, in forms not found in other books by Steinbeck with characters who are dead, or like the story’s dog and cat, animals.

Ethan’s antithetical ancestors represent materialism and idealism, praxis and pathos, action and feeling, in forms not found in other books by Steinbeck with characters who are dead, or like the story’s dog and cat, animals.

As with Shakespeare, Steinbeck quotes the Bible for a reason and usually a symbol. In the context of its numerous biblical references, The Winter of Our Discontent can be read as a symbolic story about man’s fall from innocence in which the warring halves of Ethan’s psyche are projected as both Adam and Eve. Are their sins visited on the Hawley children, as in the biblical account? In my reading of other novels in which Steinbeck quotes Genesis, the answer is usually yes.

When Ethan determines to accomplish his goal of reversing the decline in the Hawley family’s fortunef through will and effort—the method advised and exemplified by Captain Hawley—he avoids the irreversible corruption of spirit represented by betrayal, robbery, and suicide. But while passing Ethan by, the killing spirit touches his son Allen, a child of his decade who cheats on his essay without feeling remorse. Like other autobiographical novels by Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent may also reflect the struggles of Steinbeck’s immediate family across the eternal father-son divide.

Like other autobiographical novels by Steinbeck, ‘The Winter of Our Discontent’ may also reflect the struggles of Steinbeck’s immediate family across the eternal father-son divide.

This moral chain reaction can only be broken by an act of sacrifice, another motif found in books by Steinbeck in which Steinbeck quotes the Bible to suit his purpose. Ethan’s decline began before the novel with his father’s reckless spending and his own bad investments. Caught in a crisis by bad luck and bad behavior, he struggles from the first page with growing economic insecurity—a cycle that can’t be broken until Danny becomes the living sacrifice, leaving his land to Ethan  in an act of self-expiation and self-sacrifice (Danny characters occur in earlier novels by Steinbeck, but never as an existentially convincing as in The Winter of Our Discontent.)

Why Steinbeck Quotes Shakespeare in His Titles

When Steinbeck quotes Shakespeare’s Richard III in the novel’s title, what does he want us to consider as we read? Ethan’s bad behavior, obviously—although as suggested, Ethan more resembles Hamlet than Shakespeare’s malevolent monarch. But Steinbeck’s title for The Winter of Our Discontent reminds us of the separate dilemmas faced by Danny and Mary and Margie (note the biblical names) as well as by Ethan in his Hamlet-like anguish. The evil usurper who reveals his inner thoughts in Richard III opens uses our to denote his status as king. Steinbeck’s characters are contemporary Americans, and their thoughts—like ours—are much more about me than we.

The evil usurper who reveals his inner thoughts in ‘Richard III’  uses ‘our’ to denote his status as king. Steinbeck’s characters are contemporary Americans, and their thoughts—like ours—are much more about ‘me’ than ‘we.’

The our of Richard’s discontent in the play Steinbeck quotes is isolated, the political and psychological paranoia of a one-man murder ring. In The Winter of Our Discontent, the attitude of discontent is philosophical—an existential anxiety embodied in the protagonist, his spouse, his best friend, his would-be mistress, and in the personal life of the author as well. Discontent in the play Steinbeck quotes for a reason is individual. In The Winter of Our Discontent it is dramatized as  a condition of existence for everyone involved—including us.

 

Filed Under: Featured, Philosophy Tagged With:

From East of Eden to Silicon Valley and Steinbeck Country

September 6, 2013 by

 

The cover of a British edition of East of EdenMy journey from East of Eden to Silicon Valley and Steinbeck Country began in the early 1960s. One summer I worked in a west London warehouse that stored spare parts for a Royal Air Force aircraft maintenance unit, helping the aged custodian move engine parts and other heavy objects during a business slowdown. Not many RAF planes seemed to be  in distress, so I had plenty of time to read on the job. One day my boss picked up a worn paperback novel and tossed it to me: “Here, catch this. It’s got some dirty bits in it. You might like it.”

It Started in England with East of Eden

A semi-clothed maiden on the well-thumbed cover promised the pleasures of a “bodice ripper”—not my usual choice of reading material. But having swept the aisles for the day and with nothing else to do, I dug into my first Steinbeck novel. Yes, there were a few racy bits to be found in To a God Unknown, but the bold writing style and the imagination behind the storytelling captivated me far more. By the end of the summer I’d read every book by John Steinbeck I could find, including East of Eden. I still have the yellowing paperback copy with James Dean and Julie Harris on the cover that set me back three shillings and sixpence from my warehouse wages.

Images of “light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness” and hot, dry afternoons near Jolon in Steinbeck’s Valley of Nuestra Señora proved particularly appealing during that typically cold, damp English summer. I vowed that one day I would travel to California and see Steinbeck Country for myself. It was a promise I would keep in my five-decade odyssey from England to Silicon Valley and Steinbeck Country. I even got an unanticipated boost along the way from the Oprah book club—but that lay far in the future.

The cover of Steinbeck Country: A Souvenir & Guide

Stop #1: Silicon Valley

After graduating from college with a degree in physics, I found employment in England in the booming new business of semiconductor electronics. Within a few years I was working for a European affiliate of Fairchild Semiconductor, the Mountain View company that spawned Intel and other Silicon Valley “Fairchildren” startups. Sensing that the real action in the buoyant computer chip industry was in California, after several years working in England I negotiated a transfer and arrived in San Francisco in 1968. It was the first stop in my Silicon Valley-Steinbeck Country-Oprah book club journey.

Although I only planned to stay in California for a couple of years, I continued to live and work in Silicon Valley until I retired 15 years ago. During that time the Santa Clara “Valley of Heart’s Delight” morphed into Silicon Valley, and the microchip business evolved from maverick entrepreneurial startups run by cowboys with clipboards to strategic assets managed by nation states.The number of transistors on a silicon chip swelled from a dozen or so to more than one billion, and Silicon Valley became an international brand.

I visited Steinbeck Country—the agricultural Salinas Valley, the fishing town of Monterey, and peaceful Pacific Grove—several times during the early years of my Silicon Valley career. I walked the hallowed length of Monterey’s Cannery Row, peered into Steinbeck houses in Monterey, Pacific Grove, and Salinas, and hiked some of the lower trails into the Big Sur country, the setting for Steinbeck’s story “Flight.” I also took classes from the well-known photographer Steve Crouch, inspired by his classic 1973 coffee-table volume, Steinbeck Country.

Back in the days before the National Steinbeck Center, Salinas was a sleepy stop on the road south from Silicon Valley. Cannery Row was showing early signs of recovery as a tourist destination from the collapse of the sardine industry predicted by Steinbeck and his best friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts. But I remained a captive of the Silicon Valley siren call until retiring in 1998. By then much had changed in Steinbeck Country, home turf for the author of East of Eden, since my early trips down Highway 101 from Silicon Valley.

The cover of East of Eden: New and Recent Essays

Stop #2: Steinbeck Country

When I retired I began to submit day-trip features to the travel sections of the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News, including an article on Salinas, where the National Steinbeck Center had recently opened. That event was international news, but travel-section advertisers failed to find the destination compatible with selling big-ticket vacation cruises, and neither paper took my piece on Steinbeck’s hometown. I was beginning to understand how Steinbeck felt before his first book was accepted.

Eventually I sent my effort to Susan Shillinglaw, a professor of English at San Jose State University and at that time the director of the Center for Steinbeck Studies. She published my article—“Something to Do in Salinas”—in the fall 2001 issue of Steinbeck Studies, and she invited me to show slides of places in Steinbeck Country related to Steinbeck’s fiction at the Steinbeck Centenary Conference, held on Long Island at Hofstra University in 2002. Steinbeck wrote much of East of Eden in his Manhattan apartment; eventually he also bought a house in Sag Harbor, the Monterey-like fishing village on Long Island that provided the setting for The Winter of Our Discontent.

Following my presentation at Hofstra several attendees asked for copies of the images I’d shown. I used an early-generation digital camera with a state-of-the art two-megapixel sensor to take my pictures, and copies could only be printed at postcard size. Naturally I was eager to find a way to satisfy Steinbeck lovers who wanted permanent images of Steinbeck locations, and eventually I settled on a format that allowed several small photos to be printed per page in the book I produced.

Published in 2003 as a low-cost souvenir and travel guide, Steinbeck Country: Exploring the Settings for the Stories sold steadily at the National Steinbeck Center, online, and through other outlets. After Susan included a page about the book on the website she edited for the Oprah book club selection of East of Eden later that year, sales spiked.

Silicon Valley app for Steinbeck Country & Beyond

Stop #3: The Oprah Book Club

Exposure on the Oprah book club website generated invitations from community book clubs and libraries for presentations about Steinbeck Country. It ultimately led to new Steinbeck Country travel-writing and photography opportunities as well, along with requests to provide images for academic publications such as East of Eden: New and Recent Essays, a recent collection of scholarly articles edited by Henry Veggian and the late Michael J. Meyer.

But the market for printed travel titles has changed dramatically since I published my guide book 10 years ago. Today digital versions are preferred over print because of their portability, flexibility, and ease of updating. To serve the growing market for mobile-device apps, I partnered with the National Steinbeck Center to transfer the book’s content to digital format.

Introduced at the Steinbeck Festival in May of 2013, the Steinbeck Country & Beyond app contains over 200 pages and almost 1,000 images, compared with only 32 pages and 100 or so photos in the printed book. An easy-to-use mobile reference and travel guide to Steinbeck’s works and the people and places that inspired them, the app is available from Apple’s iTunes App Store and on Google’s play for Android platforms. There is also a website version for readers who do not have access to a smartphone or a tablet.

Only a writer as creative as Steinbeck could have predicted 50 years ago where my path would lead. From reading East of Eden in England to a career in Silicon Valley and retirement in Steinbeck Country—with an unanticipated boost from the Oprah book club along the way—my story continues to surprise even me.

Filed Under: Featured, Places & Events, Steinbeck's California Tagged With:

Steinbeck’s Home Movies

August 30, 2013 by

Still image of John Steinbeck from home movies made by the author whose books became historic films.Do you like historic films as much as I do? Then you’ve probably seen Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and East of Eden, three classic movies made from books by John Steinbeck soon after they were published. If you love reading Steinbeck’s fiction, you may also be familiar with books about John Steinbeck such as Jackson Benson’s biography, The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer. If you want to see everything imaginable about John Steinbeck in one location—DVDs and documents, books about John Steinbeck and artifacts from the author’s life—the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University is worth a trip. I discovered it almost by accident about a year ago. It got me started reading Steinbeck and eventually led me to the author’s home movies.

Where Classic Movies Meet Books About John Steinbeck

I drove to the Martin Luther King, Jr., Library one afternoon last summer out of curiosity. The library is a big, sleek building at a major intersection in downtown San Jose, and I’d heard that it’s the only public library in America operated jointly by city government and a public university. Inside the atrium I noticed a bank of elevators with signs pointing to special collections on the fifth floor. The ride up provided a dramatic view of the mountains near San Jose. The fifth floor had its own kind of drama. The sound of Beethoven poured from a center devoted to his music, and the California Room looked large, light, and welcoming. But my attention was caught by period posters of classic movies made from books by John Steinbeck, visible through the spacious window of the  Martha Heasley Cox Steinbeck Studies Center. I went in and was amazed at what I discovered.

Amidst rows of books about John Steinbeck and objects from the author’s life—including his famous portable typewriter—I encountered Paul Douglass, professor of English at San Jose State University and the director of the Center. He was talking with Peter Van Coutren, the Center’s archivist, but they stopped their conversation to answer my questions. Some academics seem preoccupied or otherworldly. Not Paul and Peter. They’re down to earth, friendly, and available to everyone who walks through the door. Peter pointed out the manuscripts of books by John Steinbeck scrawled in the author’s barely readable writing. Paul commented on several scholarly books about John Steinbeck on display. As I browsed DVDs of Steinbeck’s classic movies and other historic films—including Ken Burns’s documentary on the Dust Bowl—Paul explained how Martha Heasley Cox, a retired English professor, started the Steinbeck collection that now bears her name. Peter and Paul invited me to visit again, and recently I did. But it was the writer’s home movies, not books about John Steinbeck, that brought me back.

Still image from Steinbeck's home movies, propably shot at Doc's lab, the setting of scenes from several historic films.

How Books by John Steinbeck Led Me to His Home Movies

Between visits I read books by John Steinbeck that inspired three of my favorite historic films, plus books about John Steinbeck as a novelist and screenwriter. I’ve always liked how John Ford directed Henry Fonda as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, and I love the way Elia Kazan—the director of On the Waterfront and other classic movies—let James Dean improvise the role of Cal Trask in East of Eden. When I drove to California after high school to break into movies, I had James Dean’s image in my mind. Unfortunately both our careers were brief. I ended up working at a restaurant in Los Angeles; Dean was killed in a car crash on the road to Salinas, the setting of East of Eden. After a year, I went home to Florida, where I became a professional photographer and videographer. But I never forgot the beauty of California pictured in classic movies from those books by John Steinbeck. Returning to California to live was my dream, and not long ago it came true. Visiting the Steinbeck Studies Center motivated me to read Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and East of Eden. From there I moved on to books by John Steinbeck set in nearby Monterey. (Remember Hitchcock’s classic movies made in California? The unforgettable mission scene in Vertigo takes place at San Juan Bautista, between Monterey and San Jose.)

Monterey is where I learned about Steinbeck’s home movies, acquired in the 1980s by Robert DeMott, the Center’s acting director after Martha Heasley Cox retired. I no longer work as a videographer, but I still love historic films. When I heard about Steinbeck’s home movies, I read more about his time in Hollywood and his relationship with the makers of other classic movies, including Alfred Hitchcock, who directed Lifeboat and clashed with Steinbeck. I returned to the Steinbeck Studies Center to see for myself how Steinbeck used a movie camera. The Center’s collection includes home movies made by Steinbeck in Monterey as far back as the 1940s, when movie cameras were clunky and you had to be a technician to make one work. Viewing the Center’s DVD sampler of Steinbeck’s home movies gave me a thrill. The visual imagination behind the camera is apparent in scenes that would go viral today. That segment where a curious mouse confronts a caterpillar, for example—most likely filmed at Doc Ricketts’s legendary lab, where Steinbeck liked to hang out with friends and shoot the breeze.

See Steinbeck’s Home Movies for Yourself at the Center

Think what John Steinbeck could do with a smartphone today! As the Center’s sampler shows, his skill with a movie camera was truly impressive. So, by the way, is the Center’s annual John Steinbeck Award. Past winners include Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp. This year’s awardee is Ken Burns, the maker of historic films on the Civil War, jazz, Prohibition, the Dust Bowl, and World War II, among other subjects of books by John Steinbeck. Burns will receive the John Steinbeck Award on Friday, December 8, at the San Jose State University Student Union Center. Tickets are still available from Ticketmaster. Why not plan your visit so you can attend the event and sample Steinbeck’s home movies, all in one trip? Admission to the Center is free, and the library is only a short walk from the Student Union. See you there!

Filed Under: Featured, Music & Media, Steinbeck's Films Tagged With:

Robert DeMott’s Typewriter

August 23, 2013 by

John Steinbeck books typewriter.Among the great novels, John Steinbeck books, and artifacts on view at the Center for Steinbeck Studies sits the elegant Hermes typewriter Steinbeck used in Travels with Charley, its surface etched by Steinbeck with the enigmatic phrase: “THE BEAST WITHIN.”  It’s there thanks to Robert DeMott, the author of numerous John Steinbeck books and articles and arguably the most original writer about the great novels of John Steinbeck alive today. As the 75th anniversary of the The Grapes of Wrath approaches, Bob is the ideal guide for readers of John Steinbeck books who have lost their emotional connection with the great novels, including The Grapes of Wrath. To recover your lost chord with Steinbeck, go to Steinbeck’s Typewriter by Bob DeMott. This superb collection of essays on The Grapes of Wrath and other John Steinbeck books, first published in 1996, was recently reissued in paperback as An Authors Guild Backinprint.com Edition. Take your time when you read it. Even the footnotes are fascinating.

The Story Behind a Trio of John Steinbeck Books

In his introduction Bob notes that Steinbeck’s Typewriter completes the trilogy of John Steinbeck books he began with Steinbeck’s Reading (out of print but available on the Steinbeck Studies Center website) and Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1989 and in print ever since. In a joyful anecdote, Bob explains how he acquired Steinbeck’s typewriter for the Steinbeck Studies Center—along with rare editions of John Steinbeck books, manuscripts, and family memorabilia—while serving as acting director and visiting professor of English at San Jose State University, almost 30 years ago. He tells the story as if it happened  yesterday, and its impact still feels fresh. “In my moment of obsessive identification,” he says, “the diminutive machine came alive as a cumulative metaphor for the entire complex of Steinbeck’s working life. . . .”

In my moment of obsessive identification, the diminutive machine came alive as a cumulative metaphor for the entire complex of Steinbeck’s working life.

As this episode suggests, Bob’s approach to the great novels of John Steinbeck is direct, existential, and engaged. Propelled by passion and supported by research, the essays in Steinbeck’s Typewriter are academic in only narrowest sense the word. Instead, as Bob admits, they are “intensely personal, by which I mean they either echo thematic resonances in my own life”—a level of participation in John Steinbeck books that the author of The Grapes of Wrath invited his readers to discover when his books were first read. With astonishing depth and prodigious detail, Bob maps the structure, philosophy, and language of each of the great novels—The Grapes of Wrath, To a God Unknown, East of Eden, and The Winter of Our Discontent—discussed in Steinbeck’s Typewriter. His side excursions are equally compelling—into Steinbeck’s poetry, Steinbeck criticism, and the manuscript mysteries behind The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and The Winter of Our Discontent.

Language and Politics in the Great Novels

An examination of the second draft of The Winter of Our Discontent, for example, “shows that the final thirteen pages of the novel were not in the autograph manuscript but were added by Steinbeck . . . .” A Steinbeck ledger, also studied by Bob at the Pierpont Morgan Library, reveals that Steinbeck planned to write a play-novel on the Cain-Abel theme used in East of Eden as early as 1946, the year his second son was born. The first draft of The Grapes of Wrath helps explain how the greatest of the great novels by Steinbeck was finished so quickly:  “When he was hot,” as he was with The Grapes of Wrath, “Steinbeck wrote fast, paying little or no attention to proper spelling, punctuation, or paragraphing.” The typescript of the novel submitted to Steinbeck’s editor reveals that the four-letter words the writer was forced to remove before publication were the usual suspects—with the exception of a six-letter epithet still applied to unpleasant overweight cops.

When he was hot, Steinbeck wrote fast, paying little or no attention to proper spelling, punctuation, or paragraphing.

But Steinbeck’s Typewriter is more than a detective story about manuscripts or a bibliography of John Steinbeck books. In nine substantial essays it explores aspects of background, language, character, and thought encountered in the great novels from To a God Unknown to The Winter of Our Discontent. The echoes of Robinson Jeffers heard in the language of To a God Unknown are amplified by scanning lines from the novel as poetry. The “gruesome experiences, including rape and murder” of Steinbeck’s paternal grandparents in 19th century Palestine “throw some starling new light on East of Eden’s characters.”  The Grapes of Wrath is analyzed as a “huge symphony of language,” written while Steinbeck actually listened to Bach, Tchaikovsky, and Stravinsky—with a note that Steinbeck claimed “Edgar Varese the modern composer wants to do [a work] based on one of my books. I wrote him that I thought Grapes might be a theme for a symphony. . . .” The continued relevance of Steinbeck’s protest against “tyranny of surveillance, arrogance of power, and willful destruction of people and resources” in The Grapes of Wrath is underscored by a reminder that Steinbeck’s title was subversive when it was chosen, despite the veneer of patriotism applied after the fact.

A Guide to Greater Participation in John Steinbeck Books

Since 1969 Bob has taught the great novels of John Steinbeck and other American writers at Ohio University, where he is Edwin and Ruth Kennedy Distinguished Professor of English. It’s a remarkable record of achievement and stability. But as a student in the 1960s Bob says he was lost—until reading John Steinbeck books for the first time changed his life for good. “I had almost no direction at all,” he explains. “My life took a marked turn after my first exposure to Steinbeck’s writing. I gained a second chance, which is one way of defining a writer’s gifted appeal and power. . . .” In Steinbeck’s Typewriter Bob suggests how participating in the great novels of Steinbeck is still possible for readers who feel lost in their lives. True, Bob was prepared by circumstance to enter the world of John Steinbeck books with more ease than some. He was born to Italian-American parents and, until he was 8, lived on the estate of Arthur Szyk, a celebrated Polish-American artist with Jewish roots and outspoken views. Today Bob writes poetry, fly fishes with expertise, and lists the monumental Library of America edition of John Steinbeck books among his academic accomplishments. Not everyone has such a resume.

My life took a marked turn after my first exposure to Steinbeck’s writing. I gained a second chance, which is one way of defining a writer’s gifted appeal and power.

Like the great novels of Steinbeck, however, Steinbeck’s Typewriter displays few signs of distance from the experience of ordinary readers. Quite the opposite. Each essay conveys an aspect of Bob’s palpable affection—for John Steinbeck books, for fellow Steinbeck critics, for the class of Steinbeck students who comprise his imagined audience. Most of all he loves Steinbeck’s characters, empathizing with their struggles and understanding them, as the author intended, in every element of their condition. Here is what he dares to write about the notorious ending of The Grapes of Wrath: “This prophetic final tableau scene—often condemned and misunderstood, but for that no less subversively erotic, mysteriously indeterminate—refuses to fade from view; before the apocalypse occurs, before everything is lost in forgetfulness, Steinbeck suggests, all gestures must pass from self to world, from thought to word, from desperateness to acceptance, from participation to communion.” Bob DeMott’s typewriter, like Steinbeck’s, is an instrument of grace—a means of understanding, a mode of deliverance, a way to participate more fully in life through reading. Use it.

Filed Under: Books, Featured, Steinbeck's Work Tagged With:

The Edward Snowden-John Steinbeck Connection

August 17, 2013 by

John Steinbeck, fiction writer, and Edward Snowden with truth image superimposed

Edward Snowden, former national security technocrat turned NSA whistleblower. John Steinbeck, 1962 Nobel laureate fiction writer and the subject of FBI files published in 2002. Two famous figures—separated by time, talent, and the tools they used to expose the abuse of political power in their era. Books from John Steinbeck mobilized public opinion on behalf of migrant workers. Emails from Edward Snowden exposed electronic surveillance on a global scale. Both the fiction writer and the NSA leaker risked their safety and traveled to Russia. As the Edward Snowden saga plays out, the story behind the FBI files on John Steinbeck is suddenly relevant again. Two respected books about Hoover and the FBI files show why.

Although the controversy over books from John Steinbeck took longer to reach Washington than reaction to Snowden, public response to the fiction writer in 1939 set off tensions in the White House, with Eleanor Roosevelt and J. Edgar Hoover on opposing sides. As Richard Powers points out in The Life of J. Edgar Hoover: Secrecy and Power (Free Press, 1987), FBI files on liberals like Steinbeck had been used to discredit opponents of the administration as early as 1935. But the systematic surveillance of American citizens actually began in 1914 under Woodward Wilson—like Roosevelt, a progressive Democratic president. Notes Powers: “Hoover vigorously represented throughout his life that population of traditional Americans, largely middle-class, Protestant, and Anglo-Saxon, who were frightened by the changes they felt were depriving them of their privileged position in an ever more pluralistic society.” Hoover was a perfect choice when the time to prosecute pluralists arrived.

How Books from John Steinbeck
Ended Up in Hoover’s FBI Files

John Steinbeck was a California schoolboy with German relatives when Wilson laid the groundwork for the American security state. Hoover, an ambitious young Washington insider, was working at an entry-level job cataloging books for the Library of Congress in 1914. Seven years older than the future fiction writer, he was Steinbeck’s mirror opposite. Like Snowden, he was comfortable with data. Unlike Steinbeck, he was a prim, proper puritan, intolerant of dissent and distrustful of non-whites. A born communist-hunter, he sharpened his skills on suspected German sympathizers as a draft-exempt employee of the United States government.

Days after America declared war on Germany in 1917, Wilson authorized the investigation of German aliens suspected of anti-American sentiment. According to Powers, 4.5 million Americans of German or Austro-Hungarian descent ended up on government lists by the time the war ended. Hoover, a budding bureaucrat with friends in high places, was hired to collect data on potential deportees. As America’s first Red Scare reached its peak following the war, he rose rapidly, becoming acting director of the agency in charge of domestic spying on suspected communists in 1924. When the modern FBI was created in 1935, Hoover was put in charge.

Hoover vigorously represented throughout his life that population of traditional Americans, largely middle-class, Protestant, and Anglo-Saxon, who were frightened by the changes they felt were depriving them of their privileged position in an ever more pluralistic society.

By 1939, with another world war looming, books from John Steinbeck included In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath, the three greatest labor novels by any American fiction writer. The Grapes of Wrath provoked animosity from interests with ties to Washington; neither Steinbeck’s growing celebrity nor Eleanor Roosevelt’s public support was enough to protect the fiction writer from Hoover’s FBI. A first-class flatterer, Hoover provided a daily flow of information to President Roosevelt about his political enemies. Political friends like John Steinbeck frequently got caught in the stream.

Lessons from Hoover’s Secret War
On America’s Famous Fiction Writer

How did Hoover win his fight for Roosevelt’s heart? A personal note to the president, penned by Hoover in 1940 at the height of the smear campaign against John Steinbeck, reads like a love letter to the head of a modern totalitarian state. It isn’t hard to imagine how a fiction writer with Steinbeck’s spirit would have reacted if he’d read Hoover’s ass-kissing words to Roosevelt: “In noting the vast contrast between the Leader of our Nation and those of less fortunate nations, I feel deeply thankful that we have at the head of our Government one who possesses such sterling, sincere, and altogether human qualities.” (It’s chilling to consider that Edward Snowden’s present safety depends on a Russian leader surrounded by flatterers like Hoover.)

John Steinbeck and Franklin Roosevelt met for the first time in the fall of 1939. Hoover vetted important visitors for the president, so the FBI files on John Steinbeck  probably began as preparation for that meeting—though Hoover denied their existence until the day he died. Yet nothing before 1942 appears in FBI files on the fiction writer. Did Hoover destroy documents to protect Roosevelt? That’s the inference of Top Secret: The FBI Files on John Steinbeck, edited by Thomas Fensch (New Century Books, 2002). What survives from the FBI files on Steinbeck is revealing nonetheless, obsessing about the author’s habits, friends, and beliefs. Books from John Steinbeck were scoured for clues to the writer’s character. Except for references to FBI training in the plot of Steinbeck’s last novel, the FBI files on John Steinbeck say nothing meaningful about the content of  his fiction. They attack his motives but ignore his message.

In noting the vast contrast between the Leader of our Nation and those of less fortunate nations, I feel deeply thankful that we have at the head of our Government one who possesses such sterling, sincere, and altogether human qualities.

Those who make Edward Snowden’s motivation the issue rather than the abuses he revealed are following the same playbook today—distraction. That’s why it’s important to examine the FBI files assembled on John Steinbeck under five American presidents for parallels to the present. Roosevelt was no Putin. Nor was Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, or Johnson. Ironically, only Richard Nixon managed to reduce Hoover’s power, perhaps because Nixon understood Hoover better than his predecessors in the White House. Remember: Deep Throat—the source of information that helped bring down Nixon’s presidency in 1974,—was a disaffected employee of Hoover’s FBI. Hoover died in 1972, and Deep Throat started talking.

Like John Steinbeck and Edward Snowden, Hoover embodied a personality type found in every era. Steinbecks and Snowdens value liberty over security and elevate the individual above the state. The Hoovers of the world are born authoritarians, gravitating instinctively to power and jealously guarding the status quo. Hoover achieved unprecedented control  by collecting secret information, using it to hurt the natural enemies of his peculiar species, including Steinbeck. This conflict for dominance continues in our time, connecting Steinbeck’s story with Snowden’s and Hoover’s FBI with the NSA.

Read more in What the FBI FIles Reveal about Hoover’s War on Steinbeck.

 

 

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Featured Tagged With: ,

What FBI Files Reveal about Hoover’s War on Steinbeck

August 17, 2013 by

John Steinbeck, fiction writer, photo

As books from John Steinbeck became popular in the 1930s, Europe armed for war. Like Woodrow Wilson in 1914, Franklin Roosevelt was secretly preparing for America’s entry into international conflict by authorizing domestic surveillance in the name of national security. J. Edgar Hoover was only a foot soldier in Wilson’s campaign against German sympathizers in 1917. By the time Roosevelt issued his secret surveillance authorization order in 1936, Hoover was a veteran of the hunt for German sympathizers and the campaign against suspected communists following the end of the war. By 1935, when he was appointed director of the FBI, Hoover had developed a delicate nose for Americans with German or leftist associations. John Steinbeck had both.

As Roosevelt’s chief domestic spy, Hoover believed in fishing with a big net. He understood the benefits of secrecy, data, and dragnet tactics, and Roosevelt’s executive order authorizing secret domestic surveillance allowed him to exercise his talents in all three areas.  As Richard Powers explains the situation in The Life of J. Edgar Hoover: Secrecy and Power, “the domestic intelligence apparatus Hoover assembled for Roosevelt [was] part of the president’s covert preparation against the possibility of war, a secrecy made necessary because of the public’s resistance to any attempt to make it realize the true danger of the international situation.”  According to Powers, Hoover became “Roosevelt’s effective, loyal, and indispensable agent.” Steinbeck was devoted to the progressive policies of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Hoover was loyal to the pragmatic president in a more personal and practical way.

Fiction Writer vs. Spy in Chief

The FBI files on John Steinbeck—a fiction writer who upset people without really trying—reflect the differences already noted between Hoover and Steinbeck. Hoover equated patriotism with morality and always wore a suit. Steinbeck dressed and lived casually. Hoover never married. Steinbeck had three wives during his lifetime, and according to FBI files the first registered as a communist in 1937.  Steinbeck was pro-labor and always sympathized with the underdog. Hoover was anti-union and gravitated to authority. If Hoover read The Grapes of Wrath when Steinbeck’s novel was published in 1939, he probably didn’t like it. The FBI files document his disapproval of the author’s lifestyle.

Do you suppose you could ask Edgar’s boys to stop stepping on my heels? They think I’m an enemy alien. It’s getting tiresome.

In 1942 Steinbeck wrote the letter that made Hoover an enemy for life. Four years earlier California elected the liberal Cuthbert Olson as governor—the state’s first Democratic chief executive since 1895—and Olson named progressive activists like Steinbeck’s ally Carey McWilliams, author of Factories in the Field, to his new administration. Steinbeck’s sense of political progress in California and America, along with his growing reputation as a fiction writer, helps explain the tone of the note Steinbeck sent to Livingston Biddle, Roosevelt’s attorney general and Hoover’s nominal boss, shortly after Pearl Harbor. Steinbeck wanted an Army commission and someone was getting in his way.

Steinbeck’s note to Biddle named Hoover: “Do you suppose you could ask Edgar’s boys to stop stepping on my heels? They think I’m an enemy alien. It’s getting tiresome.” Like Steinbeck, Hoover was a celebrity, and Steinbeck had visited the White House. As a fiction writer with an eye for character and an ear for speech, he might have predicted Hoover’s response to the attorney general: “I wish to advise that Steinbeck is not being and has never been investigated by this Bureau. His letter is returned to you herewith.” Like James Clapper’s public denial of massive electronic surveillance by the NSA, Hoover’s private answer to Biddle was a lie.

The FBI Files Exposed

Hoover interacted at the highest level with military intelligence and never forgot an insult. His hand in keeping Steinbeck out of the Army is revealed in the FBI files on the author. Although the field agent who investigated Steinbeck concluded that the fiction writer was qualified for a commission, this judgment was overridden by the head of military intelligence. Coincidentally, that secretive group had the James Bondian title G-2—one digit away from the name of the intergovernmental economic group meeting soon in Russia. The Obama White House says that Vladimir Putin’s refusal to extradite Edward Snowden won’t prevent the president from attending G-20. John Steinbeck’s reputation as a fiction writer failed to prevent Hoover’s involvement in the verdict of G-2.

Hoover’s retaliation didn’t stop end in 1942. As the FBI files show, books from John Steinbeck and reviews by unfriendly critics were scoured for signs of disloyalty, beginning with The Grapes of Wrath and ending with the author’s last novel, The Winter of Our Discontent..  Agency-inspired citizen-complaint letters contained in FBI files cited Steinbeck’s visits to Russia—both before and after World War II—in impugning the author’s patriotism. Anything remotely connected to Steinbeck’s past went into the FBI files, including fictitious findings by the American Legion Radical Research Bureau, a right wing organization founded during the Red Scare following World War I. Steinbeck was one fiction writer who avoided the reach of McCarthy’s paranoid committee on un-American activities, but he never dropped off the radar screen of Hoover’s FBI.

I wish to advise that Steinbeck is not being and has never been investigated by this Bureau. His letter is returned to you herewith.

J. Edgar Hoover’s private war on America’s foremost fiction writer—a paper war fought with letters, memos, and clippings—was eventually exposed in Top Secret: The FBI Files on John Steinbeck, edited by Thomas Fensch and published in 2002. Hoover died without achieving anything more damaging to Steinbeck than keeping the author out of the Army. In its 75th year, The Grapes of Wrath remains an international icon. Forty years after his death, Hoover has congealed as a symbol of government secrecy and non-judicial overreach detestable to generations of dissenting Americans, beginning with John Steinbeck and continuing in Edward Snowden.

To paraphrase Disraeli on Darwin, Steinbeck was on the side of the whistle-blowers, both as a fiction writer and as a citizen. How Steinbeck would envision the ending of Snowden’s saga is of course unknowable. Given the author’s distrust of Russian dictators, however, it’s safe to assume he wouldn’t like the middle part of the story as it’s unfolding. How we participate in Snowden’s narrative—to paraphrase the fiction writer—is entirely up to us.

Read more in Steinbeck, Snowden, and the Future of America.

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Featured Tagged With: ,

Steinbeck, Snowden, and the Future of America

August 17, 2013 by

Adbusters magazine coverSinclair Lewis, a Nobel Prize-winning fiction writer admired by John Steinbeck for his dissection of contemporary American life, envisioned a future fascistic America in a novel published the same year J. Edgar Hoover became director of the FBI. Released in 1935, It Can’t Happen Here is a more realistic if less convincing depiction of dictatorial government than George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949. Books from John Steinbeck about totalitarianism during this turbulent period consist of a slender play-novelette, The Moon Is Down—and it involves enemy invasion, not domestic dictatorship. But based on FBI files and recent events, I believe government surveillance on an Orwellian scale would attract Steinbeck as a subject if he were writing today. His story might start with Hoover.

Fiction Writer Question: What Would Steinbeck Say?

Also created in 1935, Hoover’s FBI left a blueprint for the kind of American police state imagined by Lewis in It Can’t Happen Here. By blending secrecy, efficiency, and independence from oversight, Hoover built a hidden system of government surveillance years before digital data mining and other tools of the NSA. Hoover’s first speech to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, delivered in 1925, reads like the mission statement for a future NSA security state: “The mighty, irresistible current of world-wide, cosmic forces, have created the necessity and impetus for the inception and growth of an organization which will serve to centralize and crystallize the efforts of those who would meet the exigencies of our changing times by a pooling of all of the wisdom and power of the guardians of civilization, the protectors of Society.”

The differences between Steinbeck and Hoover—in personality, politics, and lifestyle—have already been covered. Richard Powers’ biography, The Life of J. Edgar Hoover: Secrecy and Power, documents Hoover’s deep attachment to moralistic beliefs and dictatorial behavior. Top Secret: The FBI Files on John Steinbeck, edited by Thomas Fensch, demonstrates how easily personal conflicts became public crusades in Hoover’s FBI. If Hoover were still in charge today, Edward Snowden would be caught between deadly opposing forces with identifiably authoritarian faces. Putin or Hoover? Which would be worse for a fugitive like Snowden? Only Richard Nixon rivaled Hoover at creating fear in diissenters, and by 1974 both men had left the stage. Of their odious personality type, only Putin and North Korea’s little caesar remain as players on the international stage.

The mighty, irresistible current of world-wide, cosmic forces, have created the necessity and impetus for the inception and growth of an organization which will serve to centralize and crystallize the efforts of those who would meet the exigencies of our changing times by a pooling of all of the wisdom and power of the guardians of civilization, the protectors of Society.

As noted in Top Secret: The FBI Files on John Steinbeck, America’s foremost fiction writer blew the whistle on Hoover in a private letter to Roosevelt’s attorney general. The immediate consequences to Steinbeck were personal, but they passed. Edward Snowden exposed the NSA’s Orwellian overreach in public, on a global scale, and his consequences are ongoing. Congress is making noise, President Obama says he’ll investigate, and mainstream journalists in America persist in challenging Snowden’s character. To readers of the FBI files on John Steinbeck this all sounds too familiar. It wouldn’t surprise the fiction writer. His experience was similar.

Steinbeck would certainly fear for Snowden’s safety going forward. While he liked Russians, America’s foremost fiction writer hated Stalinism and disliked authoritarians, at home or abroad. He was passionate about democracy but thought the cold war was a political power game threatening human survival. He supported his government in periods of real war but opposed its excesses in times of uneasy peace. Like William Faulkner—another American fiction writer who exalted individual freedom—he gave a Nobel acceptance speech that’s as relevant today as it was it was it was delivered .

For the Answer, Check the FBI Files on the Author

Steinbeck’s speech in 1962 presents an individualist’s answer to authoritarians like Hoover. Steinbeck’s words in his acceptance speech constitute a plausible opening for the anti-totalitarian novel he never wrote: “Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life and death of the whole world of all living things. The danger and the glory and the choice rest finally in man. The test of his perfectibility is at hand.”

In the half-century since Steinbeck delivered his speech, technology and terrorism have intervened in ways that would have horrified the fiction writer. Today the consequences of poking Big Brother in the eye are more serious—and the dimensions of surveillance greater—than he could ever imagine. It required a fiction writer with George Orwell’s direct experience in colonial law enforcement to envision a system of state surveillance anything like today’s NSA. Orwell was supervising an extensive system of domestic surveillance in the British colony of Burma in 1924, the year Hoover became acting director of investigation for the U.S. Department of Justice.

An article in a recent issue of Adbusters magazine speculates that the Orwellian NSA data mining program disclosed by Edward Snowden is only the tip of an iceberg—one that threatens to sink democracy as definitively as the ghastly surveillance system imagined in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Employing the same pastoral image used by Orwell and Steinbeck to portray evil despoiling innocence in fiction, the magazine warns Americans to wake up before escapist slumber becomes actual, existential hell: “America has truly become a nation of sheep . . . . Trust the shepherd. He’ll lead us to pasture.” Overstatement? Only if you think nightmares never come true. If that’s a challenge, try this for size:

Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator denounced by John Steinbeck, was an ex-church seminarian who murdered millions of his people. Vladimir Putin, Snowden’s ominous host, formerly ran the KGB, the bloody successor to Stalin’s secret police. Steinbeck’s political hero Roosevelt cooperated with Stalin during World War II. Barack Obama, Snowden’s chief critic and a progressive like Roosevelt, visibly dislikes Putin—but plans to attend Russia’s G-20 conference anyway. Where all this is going is anybody’s guess. John Steinbeck became a hero for exposing economic inequality and injustice in his day. Edward Snowden may become a martyr for revealing massive surveillance in ours. However uncertain the outcome, the connections are clear. Steinbeck’s story suggests history will take Snowden’s side.

William Ray, the editor of five books and former editorial director at New Wedding Planet, is the author of articles on John Steinbeck and the founder of SteinbeckNow.com.

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Featured Tagged With: ,

Why John Steinbeck, Novel Writer, Still Rocks

August 17, 2013 by

James Ci, artist, self-portraitThe famous writers of romantic novels still believe in love at first sight. As a visual artist, I have a different perspective from the authors of books of like these. It usually takes at least a second date for me to fall in love with anything, even a novel writer. John Steinbeck was no exception. Three years ago I encountered him for the first time since high school on the shelf of a Goodwill store near my college campus. There it was, a dog-eared copy of East of Eden, waiting for me among castoffs from the authors of books about dating, dieting, and how to use a computer. I remembered reading the novel writer back in high school, so I thought I’d reintroduce myself to the author whose distinctive face presents little challenge for artists who like to  paint the famous writers in their particular line of work. I prefer to paint from life, as my self-portrait shown here shows. That’s probably why I fell in love with East of Eden.

The famous  writers of autobiographical works like East of Eden really open themselves up for inspection. Even a novel writer like Steinbeck, who disliked public exposure, seems to invite readers into his soul when he writes about his own life. Authors of books like Steinbeck’s The Pearl, the entry point into Steinbeck Land for middle school students, seem like easy enough reading when you’re only 14. Of Mice and Men, where the novel writer is less obvious, was a bit harder to understand when I read it in senior high. My reaction to East of Eden in my twenties was a much better experience. The current college crowd favors Fitzgerald and Palahniuk, authors of books worth reading I agree, but the famous writers of Fight Club and The Great Gatsby just don’t have Steinbeck’s depth. As a novel writer for unconventional readers like me, John Steinbeck still rocks where other authors just roll.

East of Eden grabbed me by the hair and shook me from page one. The story of Adam Trask is true fiction—specific to a man who never existed in history, yet symbolic of every sensitive person’s journey through the realities of life. Steinbeck’s unflinching portrayal of Adam’s loneliness and pain is, to me, a portrait of the artist as young man who grows old before my eyes. Adam may not be a hero in the classical sense, but he comes as close as a real human being can. Other authors of books about loss and sacrifice like Adam’s just aren’t as convincing. Real people struggle with daily failure, and Adam fails repeatedly, up until his final utterance—“timshel”—to his surviving son Caleb. After becoming so attached to East of Eden, I picked other books by the novel writer I’d now learned to love. To a God Unknown is probably my favorite, displacing placing Dostoyevsky’s The Devils as an existential portrayal of man at his most spiritual core. Joseph Wayne dies on a rock. Dostoyevsky’s Devils just roll.

Filed Under: Featured, Your Life Tagged With:

The Literary Music of The Grapes of Wrath

August 17, 2013 by

James Welch, organist, photoAs I was writing my book about the life of Richard Purvis—a California contemporary of John Steinbeck who composed literary music for the organ with a colorful, cinematic character—I was reminded how hard the task faced by writers of books really is. It certainly was for Steinbeck, one of my favorite writers of books on any subject. Steinbeck’s language has always sounded like literary music to my ears, but I wasn’t sure why that was before reading about the background of The Grapes of Wrath. I knew Steinbeck wrote the novel in Los Gatos, not far from Palo Alto, where I live. Recently I learned that he listened to Bach’s Art of the Fugue as he wrote. No wonder the literary music of Steinbeck’s masterpiece conveys such convincing counterpoint. He had Bach’s masterpiece in his head as he was wove the literary music of the Joads, California, and Depression-era America into his great verbal fugue.

As a concert organist, I’m used to practicing my art long hours each day. Most writers of books do as well, but Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath at an incredible pace. Two- to three-thousand words at a sitting is extraordinary, a fact I came to appreciate when I was writing my biography of Purvis. I couldn’t help speculating that certain subjects of Purvis’s literary music, particularly his “Night in Monterey” for organ, would have appealed to the author of The Grapes of Wrath. After all, the literary music of Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” inspired Steinbeck’s title and was reproduced on the endpapers when the book was published.  How many other writers of books ever paid similar homage to a specific piece of music?

I read about how Steinbeck liked listening to Bach in Working Days, the collection of daily journal entries Steinbeck made to warm up before resuming work on The Grapes of Wrath. It occurred to me that, for writers of books, this process is like organists running through scales and arpeggios at the piano before beginning daily organ practice. To make music on the organ—or create literary music at a desk—requires limberness, dexterity, and well-developed skill. So I wasn’t surprised to hear from the organist at Steinbeck’s Episcopal church in Salinas that the author of The Grapes of Wrath took piano lessons as a boy and sang in the children’s choir. Though he attended Stanford University 50 years before I did, Steinbeck and I have much in common. We both like science, enjoy travel, and love Bach and the beach. We’re both from California, a state that has produced distinctive literary music, from Richard Purvis to the Beach Boys, over the years. Other writers of books hailed from sunny California, but for me, none was a literary music maker quite like the author of The Grapes of Wrath.

Filed Under: Featured, Steinbeck's Music Tagged With:
« Previous Page
Next Page »