The sun went down with his Wrath
Paul Foot
JOHN STEINBECK: A BIOGRAPHY by Jay Parini Heinemann, f20, pp. 604 John Steinbeck's great novel about the migrant workers of the American depres- sion, The Grapes of Wrath, was published in May 1939. The original print was 19,804. By the end of 1939 it had sold 430,000. Every year since then, Jay Parini tells us, the novel has never sold less than 50,000.
At the time, not everyone rejoiced. The `Okies' who fled or were evicted from the dustbowl were hard-working, puritanical farmers who were meant to be beneficia- ries of the American dream. Yet the wonderful American economic system had treated them with cruel disdain. The people who profited most from that system were outraged that its shortcomings should be so eloquently exposed. Congressman Lyle Boren of Oklahoma made an angry speech to his constituents:
I say to you and to every honest, square- minded reader in America that the painting Steinbeck made in his book is a lie, a black infernal creation of a twisted, distorted mind.
In the Palace Hotel, San Francisco a public luncheon was held to denounce the novel. In his office at the Federal Investigation Bureau, J. Edgar Hoover stepped up his campaign to root out what he assumed was yet another red author cashing in on the Depression. FBI agents set to work in Monterey, where John Steinbeck lived. They successfully turned the hearts and minds of the local bourgeoisie against the stunningly successful writer in their midst. Eight years later, Steinbeck was still being refused office space. His gas supply was suddenly and inexplicably cut off. Even his attempt to get credited as a war correspon- dent met with opposition from a Hoover front organisation called the American Legion Radical Research Bureau, which pointed out that Steinbeck had written articles for 'red' publications.
The witch-hunters were wrong in strict fact — Steinbeck never joined a socialist organisation, let alone a Communist one. His suspicions about party members and their threat to individuality are set out strikingly in some of his most radical works, in particular his novel about a migrant let- tuce workers' strike, In Dubious Battle (1936). But in principle, his right-wing detractors were on target. The outstanding quality of Steinbeck's writing in the later 1930s is his 'feel' for the lives, thoughts and aspirations of ordinary people. The Grapes of Wrath is the outstanding example, but the lesser works which ran up to it and established Steinbeck's reputation — Of Mice and Men, Tortilla Flat — are inspired by the same enduring compassion for men and women who were alien and threaten- ing to the literati.
John Steinbeck was born into a prosper- ous bourgeois family who Were always happy to provide for him. Even in the years after the Great Crash, when he had no money and grew his own food, he lived in his father's seaside cottage. But he was always happiest and most at ease among truck drivers, migrant fruit-pickers and unemployed Okies.
He found it hard to cope with the fame and fortune which followed The Grapes of Wrath. Gradually, the ties which bound him to his talent were loosened. He had no political party — only a loose and ingratiat- ing allegiance to important Democrats. His first wife, Carol, had had a profound politi- cal and literary influence on him. She took him to socialist meetings, argued strongly for a more ideological approach to the problems of the day and even gave him his best title: The Grapes of Wrath. Frightened, perhaps, of her influence, he refused to contemplate a child, and insisted on an abortion, which led to a hysterectomy and permanent childlessness. After that the relationship disintegrated, and the couple parted. A new, younger, more politically pliable wife proved a disaster. In politics Steinbeck drifted down the drain, from Adlai Stevenson (whose campaign speech- es he wrote, earnestly wishing he could use more violent language) to Kennedy (whom he adored) to Lyndon Johnson. During the McCarthy witch-hunts in the early 1950s, of which he could easily have been a victim, he prevaricated. When his friend Arthur Miller was indicted for refusing to testify to the Senate Committee on Unamerican Activities, Steinbeck reflected ruefully: 'If we had fought back from the beginning instead of running away, perhaps these things would not be happening now.' He defended Miller against the 'safe and pub- lic patriotism which Dr Johnson called "the last refuge of scoundrels" ', yet a decade or so later he provided an intellec- tual prop for the 'last refuge' patriotism of the scoundrel Lyndon Johnson and his war in Vietnam.
Jay Parini's enormous biography strives mightily to protect its subject from the age-old criticism that he lost his bite when he made his fortune. The plain truth is, however, that Steinbeck never again wrote anything half as good as The Grapes of Wrath. His wit and his lean, terse style never left him, but his roots were systemati- cally torn up by too many nights in luxury hotels, by nannies and houseboys and fawn- ing Presidents. Only when he returned to his old stamping grounds, in particular when he wrote the script for the Elia Kazan film on the Mexican revolution, Viva Zapa- ta!, did he recapture any of his former glory. Parini's biography, so desperate to defend its hero in almost every particular, so keen to cram in random criticism of every work, often loses the thread; and as a result, John Steinbeck emerges unfairly as a rambling, rather unattractive loner, searching only to satisfy himself at the expense of others.
Still, there are many gems here, most of them gleaned from Steinbeck's wise, dry, atheistical journalism. 'What can I say about journalism?' he asked his friend John McKnight. We journalists would do well to learn the answer by heart:
It has the greatest virtue and the greatest evil. It is the first thing the dictator controls. It is the mother of literature and the perpe- trator of crap. In many cases it is the only lit- erature we have, and yet it is the tool of the worst men. But over a long period of time and because it is the product of so many, it is perhaps the purest thing we have. Honesty has a way of creeping in even when it was not intended.
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