Working Days (28 page)

 

 

Criticism.
It is difficult to ascertain whether Steinbeck is taking a cavalier attitude toward what he imagines will be adverse post-publication criticism of the novel, or whether he is reacting to contemporary responses to his manuscript, perhaps Louis Paul’s dislike of the title, or the fact that Chaplin might not have been as moved as Steinbeck hoped he would be.

 

 

Mary and Bill.
The Dekkers, Steinbeck’s younger sister (1905—1965), and her husband (d. 1943), a scion of the Bemis Bag Corporation in San Francisco. They were living in Carmel, where William Dekker had an insurance business. Steinbeck’s posthumous
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights,
ed. Chase Horton (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976) is dedicated to Mary, “who for gentle prowess had no peer living.”

 

 

Fill out.
When he reached the top of manuscript page 151, Steinbeck finished the last 22 lines of Chapter 26 (9 lines of manuscript), and, without breaking stride, he filled out the remainder of his ledger page with the complete general Chapter 15 (27 in the published version).

 

 

Sis.
Sarah “Sis” Reamer was an agricultural union organizer whom Steinbeck had known since 1934, according to Benson,
True Adventures of John Steinbeck
(p. 297).

La Follette people.
From 1936 to 1940 Senator Robert La Follette (R, Wisconsin), chaired the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee, a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, which was empowered to investigate violations against labor’s right to organize and bargain collectively. Although the committee did not actually conduct full hearings on California’s embattled agricultural labor situation until a year later (at which time the veracity of
The Grapes of Wrath
was established beyond doubt), during October and November of 1938 “... a small contingent of La Follette Committee staff members conducted a limited inquiry [into the Associated Farmers’ vigilante activities], which the exhaustion of funds abruptly terminated.” See Jerold S. Auerbach,
Labor and Liberty: The La Follette Committee and the New Deal
(Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1966), p. 178.

 

 

Carl.
Finnish-born Carl Wilhelmson was another of Steinbeck’s Stanford classmates and English Club cronies. During the winters of 1926—27 and 1927—28, when Steinbeck was living in the caretaker’s cabin at the Brigham estate in Lake Tahoe, Wilhelmson visited briefly, but in such close quarters the two got on each other’s nerves. Wilhelmson’s “nervousness” created “a like nervousness in me,” Steinbeck told Carlton Sheffield (letter, February 25, 1928; courtesy of Stanford University Library). Wilhelmson published one novel,
Midsummernight
(New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1930), which Steinbeck admired, but had then gone into other ventures in San Francisco. See Benson, True
Adventures of John Steinbeck
(pp. 119—22), and DeMott,
Steinbeck’s Reading
(p. 119).

 

 

Louis.
Next day Steinbeck responded: “Many thanks for your letter. I’m glad it holds interest. I don’t want to hear criticism now—until I am finished and then I want to hear all of it” (John Steinbeck/Louis Paul, postcard, October 18, 1938; courtesy of University of Virginia Library).

 

 

Chapter.
Covici refused all magazine requests for excerpts of the novel except
The Saturday Review of Literature,
which previewed Chapter 2, “No Riders,” in its April 1, 1939 issue (pp. 13-16). Steinbeck himself never allowed magazine serialization or abridgment of
The Grapes of Wrath.

McWilliams.
A man of renaissance capacities, Carey McWilliams (1905—1980) was a Los Angeles lawyer, activist, author, and dedicated humanist whose vigorous, timely, and perceptive articles in the mid- 1930s (for
The Nation and Pacific Weekly)
on the abuse of foreign and American migrant workers in California’s industrialized “farms” made him a respected authority. His research and field investigations culminated in a landmark book,
Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1939), which appeared a few months after
The Grapes of Wrath,
and which (like Steinbeck, with whom he is frequently linked) made him an enemy of large-scale corporate agriculture. Steinbeck held
Factories in the Field
in the highest regard: “It is a complete and documented study of California agriculture past and present. It should be read by those people who are confused by the liars and lobbyists who have covered this situation for years,” he told Elizabeth Otis on July 30, 1939 (Quoted in DeMott,
Steinbeck’s Reading,
p. 73). Here, McWilliams contacted Steinbeck either in regard to the La Follette staff inquiry (see Entry #91 above), which McWilliams campaigned for, or in regard to activities of the Steinbeck Committee to Aid Agricultural Workers (see Entry #34 above), which McWilliams chaired. Later that year, when Democrat Culbert Olson was elected Governor, he appointed McWilliams California’s Commissioner of Immigration and Housing (1938—1942). Ironically, for all the coincident aspects of their careers, McWilliams and Steinbeck never met. See Carey McWilliams, The
Education of Carey McWilliams
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), p. 78.

 

 

Over sell.
Still not convinced about the importance of his book, Steinbeck repeated his concern about Covici’s enthusiasm to Elizabeth Otis: “... Pat was here. We went to S.F. Friday night and got him and went bowling. Had fun and it was a good rest and I am full of a deep-rooted tiredness so could use the change. I expect to finish my first draft this week and Carol is back at typing.... Let me implore you not to let Pat over sell you on this ms. You know how he is. He hits the ceiling easy and the cellar almost as easy. So when he talks, just don’t listen.” In Shasky and Riggs, eds.,
Letters to Elizabeth
(p. 9). After reading Carol’s typescript Covici felt it was neat enough to be the final draft. Steinbeck’s cynicism neither dampened Covici’s enthusiasm for the novel nor dissuaded The Viking Press from laying out $10,000 on an aggressive prepublication advertising campaign, and printing 50,000 copies of the novel’s first edition. See Steinbeck and Wallsten, eds.,
Steinbeck: A Life in Letters
(p. 177), and Goldstone,
John Steinbeck: A Bibliographical Catalogue
(p. 44).

Enemies.
There was nothing fabricated about Steinbeck’s fear of reprisal or bodily harm. “The Associated Farmers have begun an hysterical personal attack on me both in the papers and a whispering campaign. I’m a Jew, I’m a pervert, a drunk, a dope fiend,” Steinbeck lamented to Elizabeth Otis in late August 1939. See Shasky and Riggs, eds.,
Letters to Elizabeth
(p. 19). Saddened, Steinbeck defended his German-Irish background and responded to criticism that
The Grapes of Wrath
was “Jewish propoganda” [sic] in a letter to Reverend L. M. Birkhead, National Director of the Friends of Democracy in 1940 (Steinbeck and Wallsten, eds.,
Steinbeck: A Life in Letters,
pp. 203-204). Years later, in 1957, Steinbeck recalled to Chase Horton that after The
Grapes of Wrath
was published, “a lot of people were pretty mad at me. The undersheriff of Santa Clara County was a friend ... [who warned] ... ‘don’t stay in a hotel room alone ... [because] ... the boys got a rape case set for you. You get alone in a hotel and a dame will come in, tear off her clothes, scratch her face and scream and you try to talk yourself out of that one. They won’t touch your book but there’s easier ways.’ ” Quoted in Steinbeck and Wallsten, eds.,
Steinbeck: A Life in Letters,
(p. 187). An excellent summary of the sordid effects of
The Grapes of Wrath’s
success is recorded in Benson,
True Adventures of John Steinbeck
(pp. 418-25).

Snapped up.
In late July 1939 Steinbeck complained to his agent: “Let me tell you how bad it has got. Little presses write to ask me for manuscripts and when I write back that I haven’t any, they write to ask if they can print the letter saying I haven’t any. And I think that is going a little bit too far. I mean it’s going beyond my ability to think.” In Shasky and Riggs, eds.,
Letters to Elizabeth
(p: 18).

John Cage.
Already a notable avant-garde musician, then teaching at the Cornish School in Seattle, Cage (b. 1912) was married to Xenia Kashevaroff, Natalya Lovejoy’s sister. A month earlier the reconciled Steinbecks had fled Los Gatos and driven to the Northwest, where they visited the Cages and journeyed with them to Vancouver. Like some other projects during this period, the proposed musical theses were never written, probably because—at a moment when Steinbeck wanted to embark on a new direction—they represented, thematically anyway, a return to older work, notably his “Argument of Phalanx,” and “Case History,” two unpublished pieces from the mid-1930s.

 

 

Pipe play.
“The God in the Pipes” began as a straight dramatic play, which became so unwieldy he threatened to “burn” it: “I feel freed from an incubus in kicking it out.” (John Steinbeck/Elizabeth Otis, letter [October 5, 1940]; courtesy of Stanford University Library.) In mid-1941 he was ready to begin rewriting it from the beginning. He conceived it as a “playable novel” of “39,000 words” not intended to be submitted to The Viking Press (John Steinbeck/Elizabeth Otis and Mavis McIntosh, letter [June?], 1941; courtesy of University of Virginia Library); it was to be “another little story in technique” like
Of Mice and Men,
“a small novel that can be played” (John Steinbeck/Elizabeth Otis, letter [August 9, 1941]; courtesy of Stanford University Library.) The manuscript was never finished and has been lost or destroyed.

 

 

Picture.
Earlier in the year Steinbeck hosted screenwriter Eugene Solow in Los Gatos while they made final adjustments on the script of
Of Mice and Men.
“It is amazingly good and doesn’t change the story at all.... I think the picture will be better than the play” (John Steinbeck/Elizabeth Otis, letter [February 9, 1939]; courtesy of Stanford University Library). Later that summer Solow and producer Lewis Milestone came to Los Gatos for a final conference with Steinbeck. The powerful, poetic film version, starring Burgess Meredith (George) and Lon Chaney, Jr. (Lennie), opened in Hollywood on December 22, 1939. After seeing a preview on the fifteenth, Steinbeck told Elizabeth Otis, “... it is a beautiful job. Here Milestone has done a curious lyrical thing. It hangs together and is underplayed.” In Steinbeck and Wallsten, eds.,
Steinbeck: A Life in Letters
(p. 195). Benson,
True Adventures of John Steinbeck
(pp. 407—408), records some amusing anecdotes about Steinbeck and Milestone. For a discussion of the film version, consult Millichap,
Steinbeck and Film
(pp. 13—26). See also Entry #110 below.

Joe ... Ray.
The Steinbecks retained both men. Joe Higashi was hired to be a combination grounds keeper, general handyman, security agent, servant, and cook. “Good” Joe had the uncanny ability of screening the Steinbecks’ calls and letting through only the ones they wanted. (John Steinbeck/Joseph Henry Jackson, letter [spring 1940]; courtesy of Joseph Henry Jackson Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley). Ray (last name unknown) was “an Okie boy” hired for outdoor work because “he needs the money so dreadfully,” Steinbeck told Carlton Sheffield in July 1940. In Steinbeck and Wallsten, eds.,
Steinbeck: A Life in Letters
(p. 208).

 

 

Hand book.
Steinbeck was working in Monterey at Ricketts’s Pacific Biological Laboratory on the “San Francisco Bay Guidebook.” It was designed to reveal the ecological aspects of the Bay littoral (rather than the strictly taxonomic aspects). The book was abandoned in March for the Gulf of California venture. See Joel Hedgpeth,
The Outer Shores: Part I , Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck Explore the Pacific Coast
(Eureka, CA: Mad River Press, 1978), pp. 31-41; and Benson,
True Adventures of John Steinbeck
(pp. 427—30).

 

 

The Fight for Life.
Pare Lorentz’s first feature-length documentary for the United States Film Service spelled the end of his plans to make
In Dubious Battle.
It was based on Dr. Paul de Kruifs book of the same name (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1938). The film’s subject was infant mortality in the context of social unemployment, city slums, and disease. The idea for a film on health problems had been suggested to Lorentz by President Roosevelt. Carol’s information about Roosevelt’s reaction was apparently erroneous. Robert L. Snyder, in
Pare Lorentz and the Documentary Film
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), says that the film’s private screening at the White House on New Year’s Eve 1939, elicited approval from Roosevelt (p. 112), a point confirmed by Lorentz himself (Pare Lorentz/Robert DeMott, telephone interview, March 22, 1988). The film’s reviews were uniformly excellent.

 

 

Tracy.
Film star (he had acted in nearly forty films by this time and had won two Oscars) Spencer Tracy (1900-1967) was “very enthusiastic,” Steinbeck told Elizabeth Otis on December 15, 1939, about making a nonprofit film (to be directed by Victor Fleming) of
The Red Pony,
which would benefit local children’s hospital wards in cities where the film would be shown. See Steinbeck and Wallsten, eds.,
Steinbeck: A Life in Letters
(pp. 195-96). The project fell through, as did Tracy’s attempts to get a boat for the upcoming Steinbeck/Ricketts expedition to Sea of Cortez, and a little later—because of legal difficulties with his employer, MGM—his narration for Steinbeck’s documentary film,
The Forgotten Village.
(Burgess Meredith eventually spoke the narration.) Tracy did, however, star as Pilon in MGM’s production of
Tortilla Flat
(1942).