Steinbeck Today

Abstract

Kathleen Hicks posed a provocative question in this space last year: “What if Steinbeck just went away?” (206). Since that understandable expression of anxiety, the number of Steinbeck projects completed, undertaken, or announced for the future suggests that Steinbeck will not be going away any time soon. The following summary of recent developments happily confirms how deeply Steinbeck's life, work, and spirit continue to stir and stimulate contemporary readers, writers, artists, and audiences to participate creatively in his fiction, as he hoped they would.Planned by the International Society of Steinbeck Scholars for San Jose, California, the upcoming Steinbeck conference has a primary focus on Steinbeck as an international writer. As the winner of the Steinbeck “in the souls of the people” Award presented last year by the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University reminded those present for the award event, the topic chosen for the 2016 conference could not be more timely. The recipient of the 2014 award, the fourteenth in its history, was the Afghan-born writer Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Hosseini's best-selling novels are set in his native country, where he has established a foundation to aid Afghan women and children with funds from international book sales and movie adaptations of his fiction. The presence of two particular women who embody Steinbeck's sense of social engagement and imaginative empathy enhanced the award event and emphasized Steinbeck's international appeal. One was Jan Sanchez, the San Jose high school teacher who introduced Hosseini to Steinbeck after Hosseini's parents moved their family to America. The other was Najia Karim, an Afghan American activist who wrote a poem in Farsi inspired by The Grapes of Wrath, a reminder of Hicks's report here a year ago that the translation of Steinbeck's works into Farsi, the literary language of Afghanistan and Iran, continues despite the turmoil of war and political controversy (206).The closing months of 2014 brought additional evidence of health in Steinbeck's international reputation and ability to inspire creative work. Written for radio broadcast in 1944, “With Your Wings,” Steinbeck's short story about an African-American airman's homecoming, appeared in print for the first time in The Strand, a literary magazine published in Michigan. The unearthing of this long-forgotten story attracted wide attention and coincided with events involving three artists who were moved by Steinbeck's writing to create new works in unexpected forms. A theatrical treatment of In Dubious Battle by the San Francisco playwright John F. Levin received its first public reading in October, the same month the Pacific Grove writer Steve Hauk completed the manuscript of “Almost True Stories from a Writer's Life,” a collection of short stories based on little-known dramatic events within Steinbeck's lifetime. Meanwhile, music critics were giving rave reviews to Brooklyn Rider Almanac, a recording of new works commissioned by New York's Brooklyn Rider string quartet from a dozen composers celebrating their favorite authors. Bill Frisell, a well-known jazz guitarist with crossover appeal, wrote “John Steinbeck,” the last piece on the CD.In December 2014, SteinbeckNow.com featured Cannery Row historian Michael Kenneth Hemp's account of a revealing letter Hemp received from Steinbeck's Stanford friend A. Grove Day regarding the origin of another Steinbeck story, “The Snake.” In February, the Cannery Row Foundation, Hemp's not-for-profit organization, presented a symposium on Ed Ricketts and Cannery Row at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, a stone's throw from Ricketts's lab. Leading the stellar speaker lineup was Richard Astro, author of John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts: The Shaping of a Novelist. During her remarks, Susan Shillinglaw announced that she would be celebrating Steinbeck's birthday the following week by reading the part of Carol Steinbeck for a John-and-Carol party at a popular San Francisco nightspot called Doc's Lab (formerly the Purple Onion). Before adjourning the symposium, Hemp introduced John and Andy Gregg, businessmen and brothers, who announced plans to purchase the Western Flyer, the fishing boat used by Steinbeck and Ricketts for their 1940 Sea of Cortez expedition, and to restore the deteriorating vessel before returning it to Monterey for permanent installation as a floating classroom to teach Steinbeck, Ricketts, and coastal ecology, the topic of the book Steinbeck and Ricketts wrote about their 1940 adventure. The news that the Western Flyer won't become a piece of restaurant décor, as planned by a previous owner, pleased Steinbeck lovers everywhere.In April, the National Steinbeck Center announced Susan Shillinglaw's acceptance of the board's invitation to become the organization's interim director during a time of transition in its twenty-year history on Main Street in downtown Salinas. Professor of English at San Jose State University and director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies from 1987 to 2005, Shillinglaw has been active as a board member, speaker, and scholar in residence at the National Steinbeck Center since it began. Completion of the sale of the National Steinbeck Center building to California State University Monterey Bay offers the challenged organization a way out of financial difficulties and an opportunity to collaborate with an academic institution built on the site of nearby Fort Ord, where Ed Ricketts worked and Carol Steinbeck volunteered during World War II. Officials in Sacramento have approved purchase terms, and Shillinglaw is optimistic about the future. Her first newsletter as interim director announced plans for the May 2016 Steinbeck festival, plus hopes for a “Sweet Thursdays” evening series. The lecture she gave in April in Pacific Grove on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Sea of Cortez expedition was so successful that it is scheduled to be repeated at the National Steinbeck Center in September 2015.Also in April, William Souder—the biographer of James John Audubon and Rachel Carson—signed a contract with W. W. Norton to write a life of John Steinbeck to be published in 2019. On a Farther Shore, Souder's brilliant book about Carson and the writing of Silent Spring, sounds like an echo of Ricketts; his Pulitzer Prize–nominated biography of Audubon, Under a Wild Sky, also ponders the pitfalls of indiscriminate competition and resource-depletion, issues raised by Ricketts and Steinbeck in Sea of Cortez. But Souder told SteinbeckNow.com that Mad at the World, the working title for his life of Steinbeck, has less to do with Steinbeck's interest in environmentalism than his outrage at social injustice, his complexity of character, and his occasional orneriness: “That's what you want in a subject—a hero with flaws,” said Souder. In December, Souder will speak on Rachel Carson at the Pacific Grove Library, only a block from Holman's department store and the site of Ricketts's first lab. According to librarian Linda Pagnella, Carol Steinbeck worked for a time at the historic library, where a new gallery will be named for Steve Hauk, an expert on the visual arts, and his wife, Nancy, a painter, owners of the home where Ricketts lived before he moved into his lab following the breakup of his marriage.In further refutation of the fear that Steinbeck might just go away, sources have announced three Steinbeck events not to be missed in 2016: the release of James Franco's feature film adaptation of In Dubious Battle; the May 4–6 conference in San Jose on “John Steinbeck as an International Writer”; and the May 6–8 Steinbeck festival in Salinas, “From Salinas to Sea of Cortez: Steinbeck on Land and Sea,” with updates on the Western Flyer restoration and education programs. Make your conference and festival travel plans, take heart in Steinbeck's future, and send your news about Steinbeck activities to williamray@steinbecknow.com.