Steinbeck and Covici, The Story of a Friendship by Thomas Fensch

Abstract

154 Western American Literature The sections on Green and Lowry have many flashes of brilliance, but are not as fully sustained as the section on Lawrence. Nevertheless, the book treats an interesting trio of English novels written between 1920 and 1940 in what George Woodcock calls “the Mexican adventure in the English novel. . . .” As such, Veitch’s contribution is a valuable, though somewhat specialized one in criticism. ROBERT B. OLAFSON, Eastern Washington University Steinbeck and Covici, The Story of a Friendship. By Thomas Fensch. (Middlebury , Vermont: Paul S. Eriksson, 1979. 248 pages, $12.95.) In 1935, a Chicago bookstore owner named Ben Abramson urged Pascal Covici, a former Chicago bookseller and publisher who had recently started his own publishing firm in New York, to read John Steinbeck’s The Pas­ tures of Heaven. Covici did so, was impressed, and arranged to publish Steinbeck’s next book, Tortilla Flat, which had been rejected by over a dozen publishers. The novel was Steinbeck’s first commercial success, and from then until Covici’s death in 1964, Covici was Steinbeck’s editor, first at Covici-Friede, and from 1938 on at the Viking Press. In Steinbeck and Covici, Thomas Fensch has collected and published much of the Steinbeck-Covici correspondence, together with connecting com­ mentary of his own. Many of the letters have already been published in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters and in journal of a Novel-. The East of Eden Letters, but others are printed here for the first time, and in any case, it is useful to have all the Steinbeck-Covici material brought together. Fensch notes the profound influence of sensitive and sympathetic editors upon their star authors, but such influence was usually and primarily liter­ ary. Covici, on the other hand, seems to have done very little with Stein­ beck’s prose or the structure of his fiction; instead, he served as friend, analyst, and father confessor. Malcolm Cowley states that Covici “would never be one of the editors who prescribe minutely what an author should do. Instead he simply encouraged the author to do his best, then grandly appreciated what he had done. . . . He was their friend, their first audience, their protector, almost their father, and he held their loyalty over the years because he gave them loyalty.” Marshall Best adds that Covici wras not the sort of editor who helped the author write or edit his copy; instead he was “such a good person with the author that he makes the author feel better and gives him the possibilities of feeling freer to express himself in his writing.” As the head of Viking said, “Covici didn’t work on books, he worked on people.” Reviews 155 With Steinbeck, Covici was humane, understanding, patient, and en­ couraging when the author became depressed by rejection by his former Monterey friends, by divorce, by the death of Edward Ricketts, by attacks on his being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962. It is a pity that their earlier correspondence did not survive the liquidation of the Covici-Friede firm; only 31 letters from Steinbeck and two from Covici prior to 1944 have sur­ vived. But in 1948, when he was undergoing a profound depression after the breakup of his second marriage, Steinbeck wrote Covici practically every day, and Covici somehow found time to answer. Again, during the writing of East of Eden, Steinbeck wrote regularly to Covici as a way of thinking through his novel. But from 1952 to 1954, he seems to have broken off the correspondence, perhaps because he was then happily married and did not need Covici to sort out his emotional and psychological problems. There­ after, their correspondence was sporadic. Steinbeck’s letters are often selfanalytical , and Covici’s responses usually analyzed Steinbeck to himself. Accordingly, we learn little about Covici himself except as a sounding board for Steinbeck. Nevertheless, the letters do indeed provide a detailed picture of the friendship. Unfortunately, Fensch’s commentary linking the letters is too often obvious, and he has the irritating practice of summarizing letters before he quotes them, for example, “This letter is another example of Covici as psychologist, interpreting Steinbeck,” and the letter follows, or “Later, Steinbeck’s...