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Citizen Steinbeck: Giving Voice to the People

2017; Penn State University Press; Volume: 14; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/steinbeckreview.14.1.0095

1754-6087

Thomas E. Barden,

American Literature and Culture

In the introduction to Citizen Steinbeck: Giving Voice to the People, Robert McParland writes that Arthur Miller once commented about John Steinbeck that no other American author, “with the possible exception of Mark Twain, so deeply penetrated the political life of the country” (ix). This is a good quotation to keep in mind as one reads McParland's book, because it helps to clarify its overarching purpose, which at times is not so easy to grasp. In some ways the book is a critical biography, in some ways it is a thesis-driven argument, and in some ways it is a casebook for students and Steinbeck fans who want a basic introduction to the writer's works. The theme that Steinbeck was politically and civically engaged as an artist is the one thread that holds the book's three approaches and uses together.The structure of the book lends itself well to the third use. After an introduction that lays out the title concept of Steinbeck as a “citizen” writer throughout his career, a twenty-page biographical sketch is followed by a chapter devoted to the writer's early fiction. This chapter surveys his quest to capture the language and social scene of everyday people, but also to depict heroic/mythic figures such as the pirate Henry Morgan and the wizard Merlin. By the end of this chapter McParland has convincingly demonstrated that Steinbeck found his voice by foregrounding literary and social realism—and sometimes naturalism—but also by including mythic and symbolic layers in his works. Curiously, he gives Tortilla Flat very little attention here even though it was Steinbeck's breakthrough work—the book that brought him his first national recognition and his first financial success. The story of Danny and his wine-guzzling knightly paisanos does get some attention later, but not until chapter 8, where it is lumped in with the other “shorter novels.”Starting with the third chapter, on In Dubious Battle, McParland concentrates on the “Steinbeck as citizen” thesis and examines his commitment to social justice, his New Deal liberalism, and his speaking out for fellow citizens who were increasingly disenfranchised by the Great Depression, especially in California. To me, this chapter is especially good because McParland lays out the case for the other side, the merchants, large-scale farmers, and ordinary California citizens who were frightened and angered by the large numbers of Okies and other displaced workers streaming into “their” state and matriculating in “their” children's public schools. He not only investigates their legitimate concerns but also points out that in the 1950s Steinbeck also came to understand them to a certain extent. He quotes an interview with the Voice of America in 1952 in which Steinbeck says, “I had been filled with anger at people who were doing injustices to other people…. I realize now that everyone was caught in the same trap” (85).The next chapters shift from the social issues of the 1930s to the overwhelming issue of the 1940s, the world at war, while also including a chapter on Steinbeck as marine biologist and environmentalist as disclosed in his travels with Ed Ricketts in Sea of Cortez. Next, McParland gives a rudimentary examination of the short novels (including Tortilla Flat, as I mentioned) before going deep into the long book that Steinbeck considered his magnum opus, East of Eden. Here he returns to the question of myth versus realism to argue, effectively in my opinion, that East of Eden was the work in which all three core strains of Steinbeck's vision—mytho-religion, literary realism, and moral philosophy—came together.The final chapter, “America and Americans,” is named after Steinbeck's 1966 collection of essays by the same name. That book was originally conceived of as a set of photographs that would have captions written by Steinbeck. The request to participate in the project came from Steinbeck's Viking Press publisher Thomas Guinzburg. In this chapter, subtitled “Steinbeck in the 1960s,” McParland returns to student casebook mode to give summaries of Steinbeck's two major works of this period, Travels with Charley in Search of America and The Winter of Our Discontent. McParland concludes that they are both works of moral philosophy that grapple with the ethics of postwar America. In both books, Steinbeck depicted a society awash in material plenty but losing its grounding in values such as honesty, a strong work ethic, and “putting in more than it takes out.”Interestingly, McParland relates Steinbeck's angst about America's direction in the post–World War II era to our current political atmosphere by making several thinly veiled references to (then) Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, although he never mentions him by name. He refers to demagogues using fearmongering and xenophobia, and even mentions the idea of building a border-long wall to keep out Mexicans. The book went to press before the 2016 election, so the fact of Trump's win was not available to McParland. However, one cannot help but surmise from his overall tone that he would have expanded this aspect of his book if he knew what we all know now.When he turns to America and Americans McParland chooses to focus on the essays' ecological dimension and, following Steinbeck scholar John Timmerman's lead, makes the case that, in the 1960s, Steinbeck came increasingly to understand and appreciate the deep connection between good citizenship and good stewardship of the land.The America and Americans chapter rushes to a close with three subsections titled “‘Letters to Alicia’ and Writing for L.B.J.,” “Steinbeck in Vietnam,” and “World Citizen.” The first two of these explore what Jackson Benson in his biography called Steinbeck's “last battle.” Steinbeck was an unabashed admirer of Lyndon Baines Johnson, and he and his wife, Elaine, were frequent guests at the White House after he took office. So, as American public opinion began to turn against the president's conduct of the war in Vietnam, Steinbeck's close relationship with LBJ created a dilemma that remained unresolved when he died in 1968. The dilemma was how he could support his friend and President while acknowledging the increasingly problematic issue of Vietnam. The answer was that he ignored the problems and supported the war, at least publicly.McParland somewhat misrepresents the circumstances of this last period of Steinbeck's life, saying that President Johnson “offered him the opportunity” (198) to go to Vietnam. In fact, Steinbeck rejected LBJ's offer and stated publicly that he did not want to go “as Johnson's man.” He went as a correspondent for Newsday, the Long Island, New York, daily newspaper, and sent his dispatches directly to its publisher, Harold Guggenheim, saying he could do whatever he liked with them. He called them “Letters to Alicia,” just as he had the first series of dispatches he wrote in 1965 as he traveled in Europe and the Middle East. The “Alicia” in the title is Alicia Patterson Guggenheim, Guggenheim's recently deceased wife and the founding editor of Newsday,McParland also states that there has been little “enthusiasm about collecting Steinbeck's Vietnam dispatches, although a book of them has recently been issued by the University of Virginia Press” (194). In fact, that book was published in 2012, was widely reviewed and discussed (including review in Steinbeck Review), and was issued in paperback in 2014. Full disclosure: I am the editor of that volume, and I was a bit surprised that Steinbeck in Vietnam: Dispatches from the War was not included in McParland's bibliography or his notes to this chapter. He conjectures that the lack of interest in Steinbeck's Vietnam dispatches may be due to “concern that they may affect Steinbeck's reputation” (194). I could not help but feel that he shares some of that concern and tried to avoid going into this fraught subject too deeply.In the last subheading of this section, “World Citizen,” McParland returns to his comfort zone, restating his thesis that Steinbeck's lifetime of writing created a grand vision of hope, mercy, and social justice, and that this vision lives on and continues to affect our strife-torn country and world. It provides a satisfying end to a book that readers of Steinbeck Review will want to read and own. And, like all of Rowman & Littlefield's books, it is a well-made and handsome physical object.