America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction (24 page)

In 1950, five years after Cannery Row, reviewers came down hard on him for the play Burning Bright, which was probably the most experimental piece of writing he ever attempted. By this time he was fed up by the unwillingness of the critics to examine this new thing with any objectivity, and in response he wrote “Critics, Critics Burning Bright,” a fairly levelheaded response to what he believed were wrongheaded reactions to his play. Then in 1955 Pascal Covici gave Steinbeck a scrapbook “of all or nearly all the criticisms of a volume of mine” (“Critics—from a Writer's Viewpoint” 20), and he was prompted to reflect, once again, on criticism and critics in general. Steinbeck's sensitivity to criticism did not lead him very often to react to specific critics and their attacks—probably a wiser course to take, as his wife Elaine always advised him. But when he did respond, it was in part out of anger, in part out of fun. “There was a time, a lustier time, when critics were answered and everyone had fun.” Besides, he added, “I like a good fight. I find it healthy” (quoted in Benson 814). The truth of the matter is that most of Steinbeck's novels received largely positive reviews, and even the least popular books had their champions. And on the rare occasion when Steinbeck himself wrote criticism, he did so with fairness and verve.

One thing that Steinbeck was particularly proud of was his invention of the play-novelette form, which he used on three occasions: Of Mice and Men, The Moon Is Down, and Burning Bright. “The work I am doing now,” he wrote to his agents in April 1936 as he was composing Of Mice and Men, “is neither a novel nor a play but it is a kind of playable novel. Written in novel form but so scened and set that it can be played as it stands. It wouldn't be like other plays since it does not follow the formal acts but uses chapter for curtains. . . . Plays are hard to read so this will make both a novel and play as it stands” (Shillinglaw xv-xvi). He expanded on the virtues of this form twice, in 1938 for Stage magazine (in a piece originally titled “The Novel Might Benefit . . . ,” reprinted here as “The Play-Novelette”) and again in his “Author's Foreword” to the novelette publication of Burning Bright.

Like all writers, Steinbeck was fond of books, “one of the very few authentic magics our species has created.” He did not think that the book would disappear, be replaced by “the quick, cheap, easy forms of entertainment,” for as he says in “Some Random and Randy Thoughts on Books,” “No television show is a friend as a book is a friend. And no other form, save . . . music, invites the participation of the receiver as a book does.” He was not, however, a collector of books for their physical selves. “I have never asked for nor wanted an autographed book.” Indeed, he marveled at those willing to pay premiums for rare books or special editions, a willingness that seemed to have little to do with their contents. Pascal Covici, his editor, loved the physical book, and on several occasions during Steinbeck's career he talked the author into letting him publish special editions. In a letter to librarian-critic Lawrence Clark Powell, Steinbeck noted:

 

Steinbeck comes out squarely for the cheap paperback, the “twenty-five-cent book.”

THE BOOK Of Mice and Men was an experiment and, in what it set out to do, it was a failure. The purpose of this article is to set forth the nature of the experiment and to consider whether it might not, with greater care and experience, succeed.

Simply stated, Of Mice and Men was an attempt to write a novel that could be played from the lines, or a play that could be read. The reading of plays is a specialized kind of reading, and the technique of reading plays must be acquired with some difficulty. The tools are a visual imagination and an unconscious awareness of dramatic symbols so complete that the reaction to them is automatic. These two implements are not very widely possessed; or, if they are developable, are not widely developed. The small distribution of plays intended to be read indicates the almost aversion most people have for reading them.

A play written in the physical technique of the novel would have a number of advantages. Being more persuasive than the play form, it would go a great way toward making the play easy to read for people who cannot and will not learn to absorb the play symbols. It is much easier for the average reader to absorb without difficulty the easy “he said” manner of the novel than the “character, colon, parenthesis, adverb, close parenthesis, dialogue” manner of the play.

In the second place the novel's ability to describe scene and people in detail would not only make for a better visual picture to the reader, but would be of value to director, stage designer, and actor, for these latter would know more about the set and characters. More than this, it would be possible for the playwright by this method to set his tone much more powerfully than he can in the limited time, place, scene method of the play. And this tone is vastly important. Shaw, to a certain extent, uses the introduction for this purpose. But the novel form would integrate tone and play in one entity, would allow the reader, whether actor, director or lay reader, a sense of the whole much more complete than he can get from the present play form.

So much for the value of such a method for the drama. But the novel itself would be interfered with by such a method in only one way, and that is that it would be short. Actually the discipline, the necessity of sticking to the theme (in fact of knowing what the theme is), the brevity and necessity of holding an audience could influence the novel only for the better. In a play, sloppy writing is impossible, for an audience will not sit through it. Wandering, discussion, and essay are impossible because an audience becomes restless. It must not be supposed that I am advocating this method for the whole field of the novel. I am not. The novel of contemplation, of characterization through analysis, of philosophic discussion is not affected at all by this form.

The problem is rendered very easy of approach at the present time. For some years the novel has increasingly taken on the attributes of the drama. Thus the hard-finish, objective form which is the direction of the modern novel not only points in the direction of the drama, but seems unconsciously to have aimed at it. To read an objective novel is to see a little play in your head. All right, why not make it so you can see it on a stage? This experiment, then, is really only a conclusion toward which the novel has been unconsciously heading for some time.

The final argument in favor of such a form is a little more difficult to state. For whatever reason, and to state a reason would be to start an argument, the recent tendency of writers has been to deal in those themes and those scenes which are best understood and appreciated by groups of people. There are many experiences which cannot be understood in solitude. War cannot be understood by an individual, nor can many forms of religious experience. A mob cannot be understood by a person sitting alone in an armchair, but it can be understood by that same person in the mob. You rarely see a man listening to a radio broadcast of a prizefight jump yelling to his feet, but he would be doing just that if he were at the prizefight. All the sounds are there, but the thing that is missing is the close, almost physical contact with the other people at the prizefight. A man alone under a reading light simply cannot experience Waiting for Lefty on anywhere near the same plane as he can when the whole audience around him is caught in the force of that play. I remember seeing the Theatre Union in San Francisco improvising. To have read the thing would have been absurd, for it would have consisted of grunts, little cries, and half sentences; but to see it, with other people about you seeing it too, was to feel your skin crawl, and to feel yourself drawn into the group that was playing.

Now if it is true, and I believe it is, that the preoccupation of the modern novelist lies in these themes which are most poignantly understood by a group, that novelist limits the possibility of being understood by making it impossible for groups to be exposed to his work. In the reading of a novel there are involved only the author, the novel, and the reader; but in the seeing of a play there are the author, the play, the players, and the whole audience, and each one of these contributes a vital part to the whole effect.

On such plans, thoughts, and premises the book Of Men and Mice was written. It was a failure because it wouldn't play; and it wouldn't play because I had not sufficient experience and knowledge in stagecraft. The timing was out, the curtains were badly chosen, some of the scenes got off the line, and many of the methods ordinarily used in the novel, and which I used in the book, do not get over on the stage. The book had to be rewritten to play, and I don't know yet whether it will play.

The fact that this experiment was a failure, however, is no proof that such a book as I had wished to write cannot be written. I thoroughly intend to try it again. If it could be successful, certainly there would be an increased interest in the theater among those people who now prefer novels. And if such an experiment could go further than experiment and become a practiced, valid form, then it is not beyond contemplation that not only might the novel benefit by the discipline, the terseness of the drama, but the drama itself might achieve increased openness, freedom and versatility.

I HAVE NEVER written a preface to one of my books before, believing that the work should stand on its own feet, even if the ankles were slightly wobbly. When I was asked to comment on the six short novels of this volume, my first impulse was to refuse. And then, thinking over the things that have happened to these stories since they were written, I was taken with the idea that what happens to a book is very like what happens to a man.

These stories cover a long period of my life. As each was finished, that part of me was finished. It is true that while a work is in progress, the writer and his book are one. When a book is finished, it is a kind of death, a matter of pain and sorrow to the writer. Then he starts a new book, and a new life, and if he is growing and changing, a whole new life starts. The writer, like a fickle lover, forgets his old love. It is no longer his own: the intimacy and the surprise are gone. So much I knew, but I had not thought of the little stories thrust out into an unfriendly world to make their way. They have experiences, too—they grow and change or wane and die, just as everyone does. They make friends or enemies, and sometimes they waste away from neglect.

The Red Pony was written a long time ago, when there was desolation in my family. The first death had occurred. And the family, which every child believes to be immortal, was shattered. Perhaps this is the first adulthood of any man or woman. The first tortured question “Why?” and then acceptance, and then the child becomes a man. The Red Pony was an attempt, an experiment if you wish, to set down this loss and acceptance and growth. At that time I had had three books published and none of them had come anywhere near selling their first editions. The Red Pony could not find a publisher. It came back over and over again, until at last a brave editor bought it for The North American Review and paid ninety dollars for it, more money than I thought the world contained. What a great party we had in celebration!

It takes only the tiniest pinch of encouragement to keep a writer going, and if he gets none, he sometimes learns to feed even on the acid of failure.

Tortilla Flat grew out of my study of the Arthurian cycle. I wanted to take the stories of my town of Monterey and cast them into a kind of folklore. The result was Tortilla Flat. It followed the usual pattern. Publisher after publisher rejected it, until finally Pascal Covici published it. But it did have one distinction the others had not: it was not ignored. Indeed, the Chamber of Commerce of Monterey, fearing for its tourist business, issued a statement that the book was a lie and that certainly no such disreputable people lived in that neighborhood. But perhaps the Chamber of Commerce did me a good service, for the book sold two editions, and this was almost more encouragement than I could stand. I was afraid that I might get used to such profligacy on the part of the public, and I knew it couldn't last. A moving-picture company bought Tortilla Flat and paid four thousand dollars for it. Thirty-six hundred came to me. It was a fortune. And when, a few years later, the same company fired its editor, one of the reasons was that he had bought Tortilla Flat. So he bought it from the company for the original four thousand dollars and several years later sold it to M-G-M for ninety thousand dollars. A kind of justification for me, and a triumph for the editor.

Of Mice and Men was an attempt to write a novel in three acts to be played from the lines. I had nearly finished it when my setter pup ate it one night, literally made confetti of it! I don't know how close the first and second versions would prove to be. This book had some success, but as usual it found its enemies. With rewriting, however, it did become a play and had some success.

There were long books between these little novels. I think the little ones were exercises for the long ones. The war came on, and I wrote The Moon Is Down as a kind of celebration of the durability of democracy. I couldn't conceive that the book would be denounced. I had written of Germans as men, not supermen, and this was considered a very weak attitude to take. I couldn't make much sense out of this, and it seems absurd now that we know the Germans were men, and thus fallible, even defeatable. It was said that I didn't know anything about war, and this was perfectly true, though how Park Avenue commandos found me out I can't conceive.