Working Days
John Steinbeck
Table of Contents
PENGUIN BOOKS
Title Page
Dedication
Copyright Page
PREFACE
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Epigraph
PART I:
Prelude - (February 1938)
PART II:
The Diary of a Book - (May-October 1938)
PART III:
Aftermath - (1939-1941)
Notes and Annotations:
PENGUIN BOOKS
WORKING DAYS
Robert DeMott is a member of the Steinbeck Quarterly’s advisory board, a former director of San Jose State University’s Steinbeck Research Center, and a recipient of a Burkhardt Prize for his contributions to Steinbeck scholarship. He has published several books, notably Steinbeck’s Reading, as well as many shorter pieces in a wide variety of periodicals including Journal of Modern Literature, Modem Fiction Studies, American Studies, Studies in American Fiction, Ohio Review, and Windsor Review. He teaches American Literature at Ohio University, where he has received both graduate and undergraduate teaching awards. He lives in Athens, Ohio.
Dedicated to Dave Smith: incomparable friend and worker at the impossible
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
First published in the United States of America by
Viking Penguin Inc. 1989
Published in Penguin Books 1990
Copyright © Elaine Steinbeck, 1989
Introduction copyright © Robert DeMott, 1989
All rights reserved
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint an excerpt from “Hotel California” by Don Henley, Glenn Frey, and Don Felder. © 1976, 1977 Cass County Music, Red Cloud Music & Fingers Music. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968.
Working days: the journals of The grapes of wrath, 1938-1941/
John Steinbeck; edited by Robert DeMott.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-440-67452-5
1. Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968. Grapes of wrath. 2. Steinbeck,
John, 1902-1968—Diaries. 3. Novelists, American—20th century—
Diaries. I. DeMott, Robert J., 1943- II. Title.
PS3537.T3234G858 1990
813’.52—dc20 90-37785
Set in Bodoni Book
Watercolor portrait of John Steinbeck by Eugene Gregan
http://us.penguingroup.com
PREFACE
“... home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.”
—Steinbeck, in Travels with Charley (1962)
Judging from both the quality and quantity of his writing from 1936 to 1940, John Steinbeck’s residency in the San Jose, California, suburb of Los Gatos ranks as the most professionally satisfying of his entire life. He published a string of best-sellers, including Of Mice and Men, The Long Valley, Their Blood Is Strong, and The Grapes of Wrath; he witnessed a long-running New York theater production of Of Mice and Men and the brilliant Hollywood film versions of that novel and The Grapes of Wrath; he conducted the necessary travel and research for the nonfictional prose work Sea of Cortez; and he scripted and helped produce a documentary film, The Forgotten Village. Honors, awards, and fame were his for the asking, though lasting personal happiness and a thoroughgoing sense of belonging seemed to elude him during his tenure in Los Gatos.
In spite of his unprecedented artistic success, Steinbeck managed to stay resolutely an outsider in Los Gatos, as unassimilated in his day as he is in ours. Unlike Salinas, his birth place, or the Monterey Peninsula, his spiritual home, Steinbeck never established deep roots in Los Gatos, never imbibed its geographical sense of place. Instead he remained a sojourner, always careful to choose home sites that were increasingly isolated from the town’s center, as though the omniscient tenor of his writing in the late 1930s might be compromised if he approached too closely to the mainstream of suburban society. Although he wrote repeatedly about Salinas and Monterey during his career as a novelist and essayist, he was unusually silent on the subject of Los Gatos. Of course, there are comments about his Los Gatos homes scattered among his private correspondence and recorded frequently in this journal (these houses were the first residential properties that the Steinbecks could afford to buy, and he was uneasy—often embarrassed—about the implications of ownership), but among the books published in his lifetime there are only a couple of entertaining references to Los Gatos in the autobiographical Travels with Charley. Though the notorious effects of success eventually got the better of him, the most significant part of his life during the Los Gatos era was directed inward toward personal and psychological vistas. Steinbeck, it seems, could well have written his greatest novels anywhere at all, so concentrated was his gaze toward the private horizons of his fictional landscape, so intent was he on exposing the enormous cultural contradictions inherent in his fabled native state.
Steinbeck’s effacement has been so well maintained that at least one local history of Los Gatos makes no mention of his ever having lived there. Except for occasional items in the Los Gatos and San Jose newspapers (happily, these are more frequent now; until the mid 1980s there had been nothing substantial on Steinbeck in a decade), and reminiscences by long-time residents, Steinbeck’s relationship with Los Gatos remains uneasy, somehow “vague and insubstantial,” as one old-timer told me. Despite the ample information contained in recent biographical works on Steinbeck, local lore is still limited to a few facts—he lived in two different houses in Los Gatos; he wrote The Grapes of Wrath in one of them (erroneously thought to be the Brush Road house at the Summit); he dressed so shabbily he looked like a laborer; he was sometimes seen on Main Street in the company of Charlie Chaplin, Wallace Ford, and Spencer Tracy (usually, and again erroneously, all at the same time); he and his wife, Carol, were both considered to be radical bohemians; and they kept a well-stocked wine cellar for their wild parties. Some vestiges of his outward existence, then, appear to be all that remain in the current atmosphere of Los Gatos; such hearsay supplies little indication of the depth, complexity, and intensity of Steinbeck’s inner life during his years of residency there. But perhaps that is not so bad, considering the shameless commercial uses to which Steinbeck’s celebrity has been put by some factions of the Salinas and Monterey communities. “Preferably a writer should die at about 28,” Steinbeck quipped to British journalist Herbert Kretzmer in 1965. “Then he has a chance of being discovered. If he lives much longer he can only be revalued. I prefer discovery.”
Among other reasons, discovering the hidden Steinbeck took me to Los Gatos in early 1984. For nearly two full years, I lived more or less inconspicuously in a transients’ apartment complex edging the foothills of the lush Santa Cruz Mountains. The minute I wheeled my Chevy truck, dusty and battered from its journey west over Route 66, onto the main street of that town, I realized the setting was surely one of the most estima
ble in America, and I sensed the Steinbecks’ attraction to the surrounding area (Carol had been born and raised in the Naglee Park section of San Jose). The locale is stunning, the landscape sublime and bounteous, the climate benign and temperate, though as with most things about California, full appreciation of its benefits seemed impossible for a newcomer. Like so many of Steinbeck’s characters, falling into Eden, I discovered, was much simpler than getting out, even when I reminded myself that deferred gratifications might prove better than none at all.
Being an outsider does have compensations, however, for it confers a kind of invisibility and promotes observation rather than participation, understanding rather than acquisition. While the residents of that extravagantly expensive and privileged town (it is a cross between Aspen and New Canaan) seemed to go about their usual economic business, I had the advantage of other rewards. My homely dwelling lay roughly equidistant between the two houses John and Carol Steinbeck inhabited during those years, half a century earlier, when they decided to leave the coastal fogs of Monterey for what they hoped would be the clarifying air of western Santa Clara County. From my narrow front balcony I could face eastward toward Monte Sereno to watch the sun break over the vicinity of the Steinbecks’ first Los Gatos house, on Greenwood Lane, only a couple of miles away. From my cloistered rear walkway I could turn southward and listen, as they did from their second Los Gatos home, near the Summit, to the Route 17 traffic whizzing between San Jose and Santa Cruz—perhaps carloads of families returning from a day’s outing at Sunset Beach, or, in my case, commuters coming back from harried Silicon Valley. Everywhere, the comings and goings of scrub jays, Bullock’s orioles, and myriad species of hummingbirds sparked again the lambent air, but never quite loudly or brilliantly enough to efface the incessant whir of automobiles.
Once, headed home from an excursion of my own in Big Basin, above Saratoga, I parked off Highway 9 and hiked into Greenwood Lane. Beneath a dazzling full moon, I stood among oak and manzanita trees and secretly conjured Steinbeck’s presence—the ghost of a man whose fiercely concentrated will and driven imagination enriched the literature of his time, and redeemed the tag end of a terrifying decade. For an instant I glimpsed the profound simplicity of his purpose: his willingness to risk everything to write the best he could with what gifts he had, and in doing so to reveal, unblinking, the enduring human spirit among the ruthless shapes of paradise. Like most luminous connections this one has remained essentially valid, even though its edges began to fade as soon as I moved back into traffic and heard the opening chords of The Eagles’ song, “Hotel California,” blaring from a passing car’s stereo.
Still, it seems now, as it seemed then, all I could demand of Steinbeck as a writer, and maybe all any of us can ask of our favorite artists. Sometimes, as though this Grapes of Wrath journal weren’t occasion enough, in my mind’s eye, I see Steinbeck as I envisioned him then—solitary, bent to the task, his pen in motion, gathering light from the air around him to “spread a page with shining.” Along with the debts listed below, I think that moment, which is another name for privilege (mine), or maybe for courage (his), is among the best things I experienced in California, and certainly far better than I had any right to expect.
Robert DeMott
Athens, Ohio
June 1988
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Like The Wayward Bus, which Steinbeck once confessed to an interviewer contained an “indefinite number of echoes” from earlier literary masters, this book, too, is a product of numerous echoes and convergences. There are so many, in fact, that it is difficult to isolate their origins, especially where the enormous amount of information on Steinbeck and his times is concerned. Obviously, I am grateful to everyone who has written on The Grapes of Wrath—they have helped this book in ways I cannot fully identify. I am specifically indebted, however, to the following people for facilitating publication of Steinbeck’s journal, though responsibility for use of their contributions, and for the selection of its title, Working Days, rests solely with me.
Elaine Steinbeck encouraged the project from the start, as did Eugene Winick and Julie Fallowfield of McIntosh and Otis, my superb editor, Gerald Howard of Viking Penguin and his assistant, Renée Klock. Without them, this book would still be a neglected manuscript at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas. Jackson Benson stands tall, both in and out of his True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer; his knowledge of Steinbeck is matched only by his propensity for sharing it. Ditto for Preston Beyer, John Ditsky, Warren French, Tetsumaro Hayashi, Carlton Sheffield, and Roy Simmonds—their generosity, knowledge, and support have heightened this occasion. Adam Marsh provided a discretionary award from Ohio University’s Research Committee at a crucial moment. Without the dedicated help of N. Miki Armstrong at San Jose State University and Donna Spencer at Ohio University I would still be gathering notes. Dr. Susan Shillinglaw, Acting Director of San Jose State’s Steinbeck Research Center, cheerfully came to my rescue more times than I can count. I was also aided by Mary Jean S. Gamble of the John Steinbeck Library, Salinas; Joseph Johnson, Reference Librarian, Monterey Public Library; Kathy O’Connor, National Archives, San Francisco branch, San Bruno, California; and Sara Timby and Margaret J. Kimball, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University. Rima O’Connor, Head of Inter-Library Loan, Alden Library, Ohio University, made easier the indispensable microfilm borrowings from the University of Virginia, the University of California, and Columbia University.
I thank Elaine Steinbeck, and McIntosh and Otis, agents for the Steinbeck estate, for permission to quote from Steinbeck’s writings. The unpublished Steinbeck manuscripts and correspondence that I draw upon are utilized through the courtesy of the Berg Collection, the New York Public Library; the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; the Clifton Waller Barrett Library, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Virginia; the Department of Special Collections and University Archives, the Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, California; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, Texas; the John Steinbeck Library, Salinas, California; the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York City; the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.; and the Steinbeck Research Center, Wahlquist Library, San Jose State University, San Jose, California. I am grateful to the administrators and staffs of these exceptional Steinbeck archives for their assistance.
Communications with the late Mrs. William Brown (Carol Steinbeck), Gwyn Steinbeck, and Elizabeth Otis, all conducted for my earlier book, Steinbeck’s Reading, have come into play here as well. And during the several years this project was in the works, I have also benefited from Elizabeth Ainsworth, Bernadine Beutler, Jack Douglas, James Dourgarian, Robert Harmon, Cliff Lewis, Pare Lorentz, Craig Nova, Pauline Pearson, Virginia Scardigli, Thomas Steinbeck, the late Robert Woodward, and Nancy Zane. San Jose State colleagues Hans Guth, Mary Lou Lewandowski, and Nils Peterson repeatedly eased the burden of being a stranger in a strange land. So did Los Gatos neighbors Larry and Adrienne Vilaubi, cronies through thick and thin. Students in my Steinbeck courses at San Jose (especially Greg Moss and friends) and at Ohio (especially Brian Railsback in my graduate seminar), listened attentively to these journal entries and then politely pressed me for helpful annotations. Mark Rollins cajoled me into swapping my typewriter for a word processor, which in turn made creating those annotations considerably easier. My parents, Jim and Helen DeMott, and my daughter, Liz DeMott, were tireless cheerleaders from beginning to end. In them I have been triply blessed.
Best of all, some convergences remain constant—persistent and resonant like familiar music. For me, the ideal audience for this journal of a writer’s life is Dave Smith, who lives it. My gratitude to him surpasses everything else.
INTRODUCTION
Boileau said that kings, gods, and heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can onl
y write about what he admires. Present-day kings aren’t very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor.... But the poor are still in the open. When they make a struggle it is an heroic struggle with starvation, death or imprisonment the penalty if they lose. And since our race admires gallantry, the writer will deal with it where he finds it. He finds it in the struggling poor now.
—Steinbeck, in a self-created interview for Joseph Henry Jackson’s syndicated NBC radio program, April 16, 1939. (Courtesy of Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)
John Steinbeck’s greatest novel, The Grapes of Wrath (New York: The Viking Press, 1939), winner of the 1940 Pulitzer Prize, cornerstone of his 1962 Nobel Prize award, and one of the most enduring works of fiction by any American author, was actually written at the same time as another book. The novel itself Steinbeck finally wrote after a couple of unsuccessful attempts in a sustained burst between June and October 1938. Then there is the accompanying journal of its making, which he composed daily during that same stretch, and—a gratifying bonus—which also includes two other sections he wrote in February 1938, and from October 1939 to January 1941. In the past half century the novel has sold more than 14 million copies (it still sells over 100,000 paperback copies a year), has been translated into nearly every language on earth, and has become an accepted masterpiece of world literature. It is one of those novels with its heart in the right place. Like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, two other novels that humanize America’s downtrodden, The Grapes of Wrath has become required reading across our cultural curriculum. And though The Grapes of Wrath has attained a legendary reputation, and John Steinbeck’s name is recognized worldwide, this three-part journal, containing the personal record of the novel’s creation and fevered aftermath, has until now been virtually unknown. Working Days ought to enhance our understanding of the novelist’s working methods and explain the tangled circumstances from which his greatest writing emerged.
