John Steinbeck's bitter fruit

[xchrom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/21/melvyn-bragg-on-john-steinbeck

I read The Grapes of Wrath in that fierce span of adolescence when reading was a frenzy. I was all but drowned in the pity and anger John Steinbeck evoked for these people, fleeing Oklahoma to seek work but finding nothing save cruelty, violence, the enmity of immoral banks and businesses, and the neglect by the state of its own people in the Land of the Free. The novel was published in 1939 and delivered a shock to the English reading world.

But for years I did not read him. Earlier this year, when asked to make a film about Steinbeck for the BBC, I went back with apprehension. The peaks of one's adolescent reading can prove troughs in late middle age. Life moves on; not all books do. But 50 years later, The Grapes of Wrath seems as savage as ever, and richer for my greater awareness of what Steinbeck did with the Oklahoma dialect and with his characters. It is just as alive, with its fine anger against the banks: "The bank – the monster – has to have profit all the time. It can't wait … It'll die when the monster stops growing. It can't stay in one place."

We started filming with a small crew in Oklahoma, near the spot where the novel begins. This summer there was another drought, as there had been in the 1930s. They farm land better now, but even so, many farmers are going bust. The resonances with contemporary America were powerful: the working and middle classes have once again been holed by the big banks. Once again, the protests have started up, as Americans scan their continent for work. As in the 1930s, there is a powerful feeling that the promised land promises nothing, not even hope.

In Steinbeck's day, this was part of the American dust bowl. "Every moving thing lifted the dust into the air," he wrote in The Grapes of Wrath. "A walking man lifted a thin layer as high as his waist. An automobile boiled a cloud behind it." Archive footage of the time shows dust storms swirling across the flat lands like tornadoes.

[unionworks]

1. history repeats itself

I love Steinbeck

[ewagner]

2. I also read it when I was young

I think it was part of our "required" reading list...

did you notice that schools don't do that anymore?

did you notice that kids don't have the same collective memory as our generation?

maybe they should know this is an on-going struggle...unchecked capitalism has always been lurking just over the horizon

[Stuckinthebush]

5. My 9th grader just finished it

It was required reading for her. I know many schools around here do...and this is Alabama.

[ewagner]

6. I'm impressed!!!

Around here (Wisconsin) it is not universally required reading...maybe AP classes

[Stuckinthebush]

9. It was a pre-AP class

so....maybe that is why. :)

[ananda]

3. John Steinbeck . . .

The greatest author of all time.

[StopTheNeoCons]

4. Yes, he is, and purely American...nt

[ananda]

7. So true.

The expats never grabbed me the way Steinbeck did.

I cried all the way through Grapes of Wrath more than once.

I used to teach The Pearl, Of Mice and Men, The Red Pony, and
"Flight." These are such teachable works, and the students always
responded well. We would all cry through the last chapter of The
Pearl, and we all loved it.

[earthside]

8. i don't know about "all time" ...

... but I think he is one of the greatest American writers.

Deeply American especially for regular, working folks. That's what makes his work more real and impacting -- as opposed to Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

In addition to "Grapes of Wrath" there is also "In Dubious Battle" -- one or both ought to be required reading in high school, in my opinion.

Frankly, not enough classics are required reading in public school anymore. Everyone graduating ought to have been exposed to Shakespeare, for instance.

[malthaussen]

10. I rather liked

... The Winter of our Discontent. Yes, it was topical, but it is a great foreshadowing of the ethical pit into which our culture has fallen since the '50s.

-- Mal