ENTRY #52
Joe and Charlotte. Writer, editor, and critic, Joseph Henry Jackson (1894—1955), and his wife, Charlotte, carried on a lively intellectual and artistic household in Berkeley, across the Bay from San Francisco where Jackson reigned for a quarter of a century (from 1930 until his death) as the influential and judicious Book Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, and the originator of a weekly Pacific Coast radio program, “Bookman’s Guide.” Jackson had a particularly strong interest in the literature and lore of California, about which he wrote and/or edited several books, among them an anthology, Continent’s End: A Collection of California Writing (New York: McGraw Hill/Whittlesey House, 1944), which included a selection from In Dubious Battle. The Jacksons and the Steinbecks had been friends and traveling companions for several years. Jackson’s book, Mexican Interlude (New York: Macmillan, 1936; rev. ed., 1937), includes a brief scene, in Chapter XV, of the Steinbecks in the market at Huejotzingo. Inscribing a copy of the first edition, Jackson wrote: “For John and Carol Steinbeck, who helped us see Mexico. Especially to John for the kind things he said about this book, and for his graciousness in accepting without comment his appearance as an actor in its pages....” Quoted in DeMott, Steinbeck’s Reading (p. 59). Steinbeck’s “kind words” occurred in one of the only book reviews he ever wrote, “A Depiction of Mexico, by an Author with No Pattern to Vindicate,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 31, 1936, Section D, p. 4. Although Steinbeck grenerally disliked critics and reviewers, he trusted and admired Lewis Gannett (New York Herald Tribune), Wilbur Needham (Los Angeles Times), and Jackson. In response to Jackson’s essay, “John Steinbeck: A Portrait,” Saturday Review of Literature, 16 (September 25, 1937), 11—12; 18—one of the first serious national exposures for Steinbeck—the novelist said: “It’s a nice article, Joe, but what pleases me more than the article is that around it and through it is the feeling that you genuinely do like us and that is very important to us.” (John Steinbeck/Joseph Henry Jackson, letter [October 1937]; courtesy of Joseph Henry Jackson Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley). Jackson not only reviewed Steinbeck’s books favorably, but—drawing on his familiarity with Steinbeck’s personal and intellectual life—also wrote informative introductions to the two-volume The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Limited Editions Club, 1940), and to The Short Novels of John Steinbeck (New York: The Viking Press, 1953). His widow recalled that Steinbeck was always pleased with her husband’s work (Charlotte Jackson/Robert DeMott, telephone interview, July 17, 1980).
ENTRY #53
Thesis. Merle Danford, a graduate student at Ohio University, was planning a master’s degree thesis on Steinbeck. Her English Department advisor, C. N. Mackinnon, wrote ahead to see if Steinbeck would mind being interviewed for the thesis. In reply, Steinbeck wrote: “Let your young woman write, but let her beware. I’ll lie—not because I want to lie, but because I can’t remember what is true and what isn’t. I’m reasonably sure that my biography, particularly when it is autobiography, is the worst pack of lies in the world. And the awful thing is that I don’t know which are lies and which aren’t. Compensation maybe, I don’t know. It’s so bad that my wife, who is a truthful person, really likes the truth, I mean, and puts some store in it, is all confused, too. For years she struggled to keep her head above water, but she is sinking finally. I’m really sorry about this, but your candidate will just have to take her chance. I’m not trying to be funny—this is a tragic truth” (John Steinbeck/C. N. Mackinnon, letter, ca. late July 1938). Armed with this caveat, Danford sent Steinbeck a five-page questionnaire which he managed to fill out without being very specific or informative. Steinbeck’s answers are appended to Danford’s “A Critical Survey of John Steinbeck: His Life and the Development of his Writings” (Ohio University, 1939), and reprinted, with commentary by Robert DeMott, “ ‘Voltaire Didn’t Like Anything’: A 1939 Interview with John Steinbeck,” Steinbeck Quarterly, 19 (Winter-Spring 1986), 5-11.
ENTRY #54
Chaplin. Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977), writer, director, actor, romantic and screen legend, was one of the most celebrated and entertaining men in the world. Charles Chaplin, Jr., in My Father, Charlie Chaplin (New York: Random House, 1960), claims Chaplin “was fascinated by Steinbeck’s books and used to drive around the countryside where his stories were laid, trying to place the characters in the books in their proper locations” (p. 185). With Dan James, Chaplin drove up from his home in Pebble Beach, south of Carmel, to visit and to discuss politics, filmmaking, and social issues. Their friendship was immediate—“ spontaneous, generous, gabby, confidential”—as Alistair Cooke said of Chaplin in Six Men (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1977), p. 250. Of these excursions Chaplin himself recalled that he and Steinbeck disagreed about communism (one of Chaplin’s infatuations), and that “The Steinbecks had no servants; his wife did all the housework. It was a wonderful menage and I was very fond of her.” See My Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964), p. 389. Sometime during their three 1938 visits (see Entries #56 and #84 below) Steinbeck and Chaplin discussed publishing the script for his Hitler satire, The Great Dictator (1940), then in planning stages. In early 1939 Steinbeck reported to Elizabeth Otis, “I haven’t heard from Charlie so don’t know whether he has thought more about The Dictator as a book or not. But ... I wrote to him, reminding him of the discussion, saying I thought it important to edit, preface or any damn thing just so it got out.” In Shasky and Riggs, eds., Letters to Elizabeth (pp. 11-12). Jackson Benson, True Adventures of John Steinbeck (pp. 383—84, 393-95, 464—65) is quite helpful on the Steinbeck/Chaplin connection.
ENTRY #55
Great trouble. The parallels with his writing life of two and three years earlier kept striking Steinbeck forcefully during this difficult stretch. At worst they aroused his self-pity; at best they reminded him that he was capable of overcoming enormous obstacles when his discipline was fully engaged. His current preoccupation with the Biddle place called up memories of a former “test”—trying to write Of Mice and Men while the Greenwood Lane house was being erected. (Again, from his unpublished Long Valley/Of Mice and Men ledger book; courtesy of Steinbeck Research Center, San Jose State University.)
ENTRY #60
Abramson. Ben Abramson (1898-1955), one of Steinbeck’s earliest champions, owned the Argus Book Shop in Chicago, and, in Steinbeck’s words, “made it for me” (See Entry #103 below). Besides being personally responsible for introducing Pascal Covici to Steinbeck’s books in 1934, Ben Abramson wrote the very first bibliographical appreciation of Steinbeck, which appeared in the inaugural issue of his monthly review of rare and recent books, Reading and Collecting, I (December 1936), pp. 4—5, 18. Abramson worked zealously to create an audience for Steinbeck’s books, and on several occasions tried Steinbeck’s patience and indebtedness by prevailing upon the novelist to sign first editions of his work. Steinbeck, who disliked most book merchants, usually complied with Abramson’s requests, even when it meant signing 150 copies of Of Mice and Men the year before, or, this time, 75 copies of the forthcoming Long Valley. But in 1940 a breach occurred when Abramson agreed to act as broker for Harry T. Moore and sell the private correspondence Moore received from Steinbeck when he was writing The Novels of John Steinbeck. (See Entry #29 above.) To Steinbeck, it was a betrayal of the first order; he never communicated with Abramson again. See D. B. Covington’s The Argus Book Shop: A Memoir (West Cornwall, CT: Tarrydiddle Press, 1977), pp. 108-14, for his daughter’s somewhat antiseptic account.
ENTRY #61
John Collier. John Collier, Jr. (b. 1913), was a commercial photographer in San Francisco, who—on the suggestion of his close friend Dorothea Lange—later joined the staff of documentary photographers working for Roy Emerson Stryker, Director of the Historical Unit of the F.S.A. in Washington.
ENTRY #62
Pounding. Years later, a more settled, less frenetic Steinbeck wrote in his East of Eden diary: “Today the house is full of pounding. I remember in the Grapes
of Wrath book how I complained about the pounding.... I always felt that [it] was definitely designed to disturb me.” See Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters (pp. 13—14).
ENTRY #63
The chapter. Because of the many recent distractions Steinbeck had been working since August 18 on what would become Chapter 20. The chapter covered fourteen handwritten pages; at the end of it, on page 109, he wrote, “long son of a bitch too.”
Marvelous title. Carol’s discovery of the title, in Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” (1862), was cause for rejoicing. Within a few days Steinbeck wrote to Louis Paul, Elizabeth Otis, Annie Laurie Williams, and Pascal Covici about the discovery. Otis may or may not have known about Mary Harriott Norris’s The Grapes of Wrath: A Tale of North and South (Boston: Maynard, 1901), or Boyd Cable’s novel, Grapes of Wrath (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1917), which, according to Morrow, John Steinbeck: A Collection of Books & Manuscripts Formed by Harry Valentine (p. 34), reprints lyrics of Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” at the beginning of its text. In any event, in a return letter Otis did nothing to discourage Steinbeck’s choice. On September 10 Steinbeck fired back: “About the title—Pat wired that he liked it. And I too am glad because I like it better all the time. I think it is Carol’s best title so far. I like it because it is a march and this book is a kind of march—because it is in our own revolutionary tradition....” In Steinbeck and Wallsten, eds., Steinbeck: A Life in Letters (p. 171).
ENTRY #64
House is sold. On September 16, 1938, the Los Gatos Mail-News ran the following notice: “John Steinbeck’s home on Greenwood Road has been sold to Miss Barbara Burke of the Burke Finishing School in San Francisco, it was announced ... by Effie Walton. realtor through whose office the sale was made. Steinbeck has purchased the old Biddle home on the road to Montezuma School. The noted author is seeking greater seclusion” (p. 11). Local lore held that the Steinbecks vacated immediately for the new owners, but that is erroneous, as his next entry reveals.
ENTRY #65
111—112. Steinbeck abandoned the division of the novel into books. Beginning with this entry Steinbeck filled in the number of the manuscript pages he had finished that day. Here, he had just completed the first two pages of “Ch. 10,” eventually to become Chapter 22 in the published version.
New house. From the outset of their negotiations for the Biddle ranch the Steinbecks knew that building a new house on the property would be more practical and less expensive than restoring the dilapidated original homestead. Lawrence Smith, a local contractor, poured the new foundation and built the house to John and Carol’s specifications. Steve (last name unknown), a local carpenter, did finish and trim work, and took care of the grounds. (See Entry #103 below.) Steinbeck bought a portable generator so the contractors would have electricity. By November—the new house and the new typescript of the novel still unfinished—the Steinbecks camped in a few rooms of the old house. In 1974 Carol told Marjorie Pierce, “I cooked over a wood stove; there were no floors, no inside water and at night the rats ran back and forth in the attic....” Quoted in Ludmilla Alexander, “John Steinbeck, The Los Gatos Years,” Los Gatos Weekly, October 17, 1984, p. 16.
ENTRY #68
Admission Day. September 9 is a state holiday, commemorating California’s entry into the United States in 1850 as the thirty-first state.
Letter. Probably in response to a note Steinbeck had sent: “D—r R. & T.: H-w h-v- y-- b--n. W- -r- f-ne. H-p- y-- a-e f-ne t-o. Haven’t heard from Ed for a long time. Should have his store teeth by now. You must come up as soon as the people are off and see our new ranch. It is beautiful. You will love it.... Write us a note how you are, huh?” (John Steinbeck/Ritch and Tal Lovejoy, postcard, [early September 1938]; courtesy of Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley).
Valuable Ma. Steinbeck’s determination to show Ma Joad in cooperative relationship with society suggests the influence of anthropologist Robert Briffault’s The Mothers: The Matriarchal Theory of Social Origins (New York: Macmillan, 1931), which Steinbeck had read several years earlier (John Steinbeck/Carlton Sheffield, letter, June 30, 1933; quoted in DeMott, Steinbeck’s Reading, p. 18). Carol Steinbeck later claimed Ma Joad was “pure Briffault.” (Quoted in Astro, John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts, p. 133). Consult Warren Motley, “From Patriarchy to Matriarchy: Ma Joad’s Role in The Grapes of Wrath,” American Literature, 54 (October 1982), 397-412, for a discussion of the subject.
ENTRY #69
Hitler. Adolph Hitler was expected to close the German National Socialist Party Congress, convened a week earlier in Nuremberg, with a speech outlining the Nazi plan for resolution—by war, if necessary—of the Sudeten German/Czechoslovakian problem. (After annexing Austria in March 1938, Hitler wanted Czechoslovakia as well, where three million people of German origin lived in the Sudeten area.) His speech was defiant but noncommittal; Hitler pledged aid to the Sudetens, but gave no specific plan. On September 15 Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany to convince Hitler to avert war (see Entry #72 below), and, with the aid of France—but without consultation from the Czechs (Steinbeck rightly suspected a “double cross”)—to propose a peaceful solution by directing Prague to hand over to the Third Reich all sections of the country with 50 percent or more German population. The result was the Munich Agreement (September 30, 1938), signed by Germany, Great Britain, France, and Italy, which temporarily avoided war by giving in to Hitler’s demands for annexation of Sudetenland (see Entries #80 and #82 below). The agreement proved futile—within a year Hitler took what remained of Czechoslovakia, invaded Poland, and precipitated World War II.
ENTRY #70
Toilet paper scandal. Toilet paper was scarce in the government camps. For this comic scene in Chapter 22 (“ ‘Hardly put a roll out ’fore it’s gone. Come right up in meetin’. One lady says we oughta have a little bell that rings ever’ time the roll turns oncet. Then we could count how many ever’body takes’ ”), Steinbeck borrowed directly from Tom Collins’ reports, especially this entry, under “Bits of Migrant Wisdom”: “We were discussing with two women how best to cut down on the use of toilet paper in the women’s sanitary units. One suggested sprinkling red pepper through the roll. The other suggested a wire be attached to the roll so that every time a sheet was torn off the big bell placed on the outside of the building for the purpose would ring and let every one know who was in the sanitary unit and what she was doing. Note: We have followed neither suggestion thus far.” Thomas Collins, Kern Migratory Labor Camp Report for Week Ending May 2, 1936, p. 15. (Facsimile courtesy of Steinbeck Research Center, San Jose State University.)
ENTRY #72
Adamic. Louis Adamic (1899-1951), Yugoslavian-born author, historian, social critic/observer, and liberal journalist, known to Steinbeck for his 1931 narrative of labor violence in America, Dynamite (see DeMott, Steinbeck’s Reading, p. 3). A few months earlier, Adamic had published My America, 1928-1938 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1938), an enormous 680-page compendium of narrative, interview, and exposition—part autobiography, part travel book, part history (a section on the rise of the CIO)—about his anxious quest to get “the feel of things” (p. xiii) in Depression America. Like Steinbeck, he distrusted drawing room theory, and rejected ideology for experience; like Steinbeck, he sought a type of radicalism consonant with the American sensibility and democratic traditions.
Time trouble. Planning the termination of Rose of Sharon’s pregnancy to coincide with late winter floods.
ENTRY #74
Covarrubias. Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957), Mexican artist, and caricaturist (especially for Vanity Fair). He was also an ethnologist, whose Island of Bali had appeared the year before, and an illustrator of a modern edition of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1938). He was in San Francisco arranging details for a large mural of the Pacific Islands he had been commissioned to paint for the Golden Gate Exposition, to be held the following y
ear. It is not known whether Steinbeck ever met Covarrubias again, so the following anecdote, recollected by Steinbeck in February 1957, might stem from this visit at the Jacksons’ home. When Covarrubias’ father was dying “... the holy water brought him to and he jumped up and chased the priest out of the house ... [where] ... he died in the middle of the street in his long night gown. Now there’s a proper death for you! And Miguel said that he winged the priest with brass spitoon as he flew out the door.” See Robert DeMott, ed., Your Only Weapon Is Your Work: A Letter by John Steinbeck to Dennis Murphy (San Jose: Steinbeck Research Center, 1985), [p. 14].
Noah down ... river. Steinbeck had to account for Noah Joad’s desertion at the Colorado River, when the rest of his family crossed into California from Arizona. Prior to starting on manuscript page 127 (the opening of Chapter 24 in the published version), Steinbeck wrote thirty-three lines (roughly 500 words) explaining Noah’s willful action; Steinbeck then inserted the new, but unnumbered, page between manuscript pages 87 and 88 (Chapter 18 of the published version).
ENTRY #79
I AM. The Great I Am movement, an intensely patriotic spiritual cult founded in the early 1930s by Guy W. Ballard (who fancied himself the reincarnation of George Washington). In 1940 two dozen of its leaders were indicted by a Federal Grand Jury in Los Angeles for mail fraud. A sensational and thoroughly biased expose is available in Gerald B. Bryan, Psychic Dictatorship in America (Los Angeles: Truth Research Publications, 1940).
Francis. Francis Whitaker, a blacksmith, metal sculptor, and political radical from Carmel, was a member of the John Reed Club. According to Jackson Benson, in True Adventures of John Steinbeck (p. 225), Whitaker “worked hard during the early and mid thirties to convert” the Steinbecks to socialism.
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