BY FEBRUARY 1937, THERE seemed to Steinbeck a good chance that he and Carol would become wealthy as a result of Of Mice and Men. The novel had been selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club, a sign that it would appeal to large numbers of readers. Covici had done a good job of promoting the book before publication as well. At first glance the story seemed too slight to be an important piece of fiction, but Covici had put out the word that John Steinbeck had written a masterpiece of simplicity. In a small frame, Steinbeck told a large story. That story’s background—economic conditions, the life of the migrant, farming, the land itself—was implied by Steinbeck in a handful of paragraphs scattered through the book like stage directions. Everything else was in the foreground of the novel, all dialogue and movement. Interest in the dramatic rights to Of Mice and Men began to mount before the book was published. Covici increased the size of the first printing and still had to return to press quickly to print enough copies to meet demand. Of Mice and Men was published in March, and within its first few weeks sold more than a hundred thousand copies. Dramatic rights were acquired for a large sum. The play was set to open in the fall, under the supervision of George S. Kaufman, perhaps the brightest name in American theater at the time.
Steinbeck was stunned. He claimed that he could not comprehend wealth beyond the few dollars he might have in his pockets at any given time. He feared that money would disrupt his life, perhaps beyond repair. Along with the money came increasing celebrity. Already he was being recognized on the streets of San Francisco. The attention sickened him. His mail increased daily; there was no hope of answering it all. The changes in his life affected his work. “L’Affaire Lettuceberg” was giving Steinbeck great difficulty. He could not bring the book under control. Steinbeck wanted to write movingly about the plight of the migrants, a big book with a big theme. Instead, he found himself producing a short satire, bitter and sophomoric. Finally he put the manuscript aside. Wealth might cause problems, but at least he could now afford to indulge his love of travel. He could get away from his desk. In April, Steinbeck and Carol sailed to New York on board a freighter.
The attention Steinbeck had begun to attract in San Francisco was nothing compared to the reception he found in New York. John Steinbeck was a famous man. He was no star on the order of a motion picture actress or a baseball player, but as a successful novelist Steinbeck was beset with requests for autographs, photographs, interviews. He did not tolerate the requests with good grace. Steinbeck carried a bottle of liquor to a press conference and during the questioning drank openly from it. He wanted to show his contempt for the press but ended up only creating more notoriety for himself Carol was drinking heavily as well. They pursued what distraction they could with a New York shopping spree, but after two and a half weeks the Steinbecks had had their fill of the city. They were, in fact, planning to leave the country altogether. In May, Steinbeck and Carol boarded the SS Drottningholm, bound for Scandinavia.
Sea voyages always refreshed Steinbeck. In Scandinavia he encountered an attitude toward his work that was equally rejuvenating. Steinbeck met many people who knew his name, but unlike Americans they also knew his books. It was the books that people wanted to talk about, not how much money their author earned or how much he drank or what his marriage was like. Steinbeck began regaining some perspective about his work and its importance. He felt a renewed interest in ideas and decided to visit the Soviet Union. Two decades had passed since the Russian Revolution that brought Communists to power. Steinbeck wanted to see how the Soviet government and the Russian people might exemplify his theories about group-man and the collective society. Visiting Moscow and Leningrad in July, Steinbeck discovered that economic conditions in the Soviet Union were even more frightful than those in the United States. Nor had the Soviet government achieved the creation of anything but a state in which the individual spirit—of which group spirit must be composed—was extinguished wherever it appeared. Without individuality, the collective has no soul, Steinbeck realized. He made up his mind that he would someday visit the Soviet Union again, for a longer period of time, and more diligently pursue his initial insights. By late summer Steinbeck and Carol were back in New York.
The excitement surrounding Steinbeck had not abated. Of Mice and Men was still selling well. The dramatic version was progressing quickly under Kaufman’s control. There was also interest in the dramatic rights to Tortilla Flat. While he was overseas, Steinbeck had had another book published. Covici had been after him for some time to continue the story of the Tiflin family begun in “The Red Pony.” Steinbeck had written a third story in the series before he left California, but he had urged Covici to wait until a fourth story was written before publishing the series in a single volume. Covici had other plans. With Steinbeck’s grudging permission, the publisher took the three Tiflin family stories and produced a slim, beautifully designed and manufactured book for collectors. The book was priced at ten dollars, twice the price of the more than one thousand page Gone With the Wind. Nevertheless, The Red Pony in its first, expensive book incarnation sold out its entire edition. Collectors wanted to own every item that Steinbeck published. Steinbeck was disgusted.
He had tried to get started on “L’Affaire Lettuceberg” on the voyage back from Scandinavia. The book went no better than it had in California. For a time after his return Steinbeck retired to George S. Kaufman’s farm to work with Kaufman on adapting Of Mice and Men for the stage. Steinbeck hated the process: it was too much like being part of a committee. Unlike writing novels where on the page he could do whatever he wished, Steinbeck discovered that the playwright must take any number of technical considerations into account. Where would the actors stand when they delivered his speeches? How would the set be lighted to best display Steinbeck’s truths? How might the pace of certain scenes be picked up to better serve not only dramatic tension but also audience interest? In the onslaught of such questions and considerations, Steinbeck worried that the truth of his story might be lost completely. Finally he decided to leave the adaptation in the hands of Kaufman and other theatrical professionals. Over their protest he bought a car and set out to drive across the country. Stopping only in Chicago to visit his uncle, Joseph Hamilton—so proud now of the nephew who had once turned down an advertising career in order to be free to write books—Steinbeck set himself a steady pace. He was eager to be back at his small place near Los Gatos.
Once he got there in early fall, Steinbeck discovered that the lovely private spot had lost its isolation as a result of its owner’s new fame. Tourists, autographs seekers, Hollywood producers, and people who never read books but enjoyed meeting authors—all paraded past his home in growing numbers. The daily mail had become a deluge of requests for money and advice. Young writers wrote to enlist Steinbeck’s help in getting published. His success was also affecting Steinbeck’s relationship with some of his oldest friends. He felt estranged from people he had known and been close to throughout his adult life. Some of the members of the writing group from his Stanford days now were openly jealous of Steinbeck and his achievements. He was accused of selling out his talent and ideals. It was an accusation that particularly stung Steinbeck; success was cutting him off from his own past.
No less painful was the fact that he was just as cut off from his own work. He began his novel of vigilante violence once more from the beginning, but broke off after only a little work. Steinbeck wanted to do more firsthand research. On his cross-country drive he had seen mile after mile of roadway along whose sides camped the destitute and the homeless. Steinbeck got in touch with Tom Collins again to arrange a new tour of migrant camps. For a time Steinbeck planned to trace the route of migration all the way back to Oklahoma. His novel would be about “Okies,” as the migrants were derisively called. At the time it was a term as hateful as “nigger” or “kike.” Steinbeck did not make the complete journey to Oklahoma, but he did visit several camps and stopped to speak with people fighting for survival at roadside. Steinbeck took it all in, seeking ways to turn the mass migration into the background of his book. He wanted to focus upon the conflict between successful large farmers and the migrants they exploited and terrorized. He tried as much as he was able to share the migrants’ fears and hopes. Steinbeck did not want his new success to interfere with a truthful telling of what he saw. By November he was back in Los Gatos, ready to resume the writing of novels.
There was one more large interruption. Of Mice and Men was set to open at Broadway’s Music Box Theater on November 23. Steinbeck was under some pressure from George S. Kaufman and others to return to New York for opening night. Steinbeck refused to make the journey. Kaufman’s displeasure offended and annoyed Steinbeck, who angrily wrote his agents that he would not travel all the way across the United States to witness the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Of Mice and Men, even without its creator present, opened very successfully to good reviews. The play was a hit with audiences from the moment the first curtain rose. During the premiere, Pat Covici sent Steinbeck a telegram after every act. Following the final curtain call, his agents telephoned Steinbeck and told him over a tenuous cross-country connection that Of Mice and Men promised to be as large a smash on stage as it had proved in the bookstores. Even Steinbeck, whose recalcitrance had ruffled so many feathers during the development of the play, admitted to suffering from transcontinental stage fright on opening night. By way of celebrating this latest success, Steinbeck purchased his very first brand-new typewriter. He used the machine to write letters, taking delight as always in the functioning of a well-made piece of machinery. Fiction, though, required one of his familiar ledgers. As though certain the new novel would require little revision, Steinbeck worked in ink rather than pencil.
He would dip the pen in blood, if he could. Where the vigilante novel had been satirical in the “L’Affaire Lettuceberg” draft, the book now became ugly. Steinbeck boasted of his new work’s nastiness and expressed a regret that he could not make the story nastier still. His characters would be a gallery of grotesques, his incidents as brutal and graphic as he could make them. The events of the past year and the pressures of success had built up in him. Steinbeck was going to hit back with a frightful book. He worked hard at it through the early months of winter and on into the new year. He was not even distracted by the New York premiere of the dramatic version of Tortilla Flat. Of Mice and Men had been transformed into a fine, strong play that was a genuine contribution to American theater. Tortilla Flat had not even been turned into a good entertainment. It was a show, not a play, and it was a bad show. Carol traveled East early in January to be present on Tortilla Flat’s opening night. The play was poorly written and turned Steinbeck’s life-loving paisanos into tawdry drunks. Poorly acted and incompetently directed, Tortilla Flat was an embarrassment that opened and closed in less than a week. On the other hand, Of Mice and Men was entering its third month of capacity houses. Kaufman’s adaptation was generating substantial revenues. Steinbeck received large checks virtually every week.
Writing a novel whose purpose was to disgust was the hardest work Steinbeck had undertaken. The anger he had to rouse as he sat to his ledger each morning carried over into the hours after he stopped working. He and his wife were fighting more frequently. Carol’s trip to New York had cheered her for a while, but as winter deepened and Steinbeck’s involvement with the novel became complete, she grew unhappy. The Los Gatos house and grounds on which they had both worked so hard now seemed cramped and constrictive. Carol began looking for another, larger piece of property where they could build a more suitable home. Heavy, constant rains made February even more bleak.
The rains flooded California’s rivers. Tens of thousands of migrants tried to survive days mired in mud. No fruits or vegetables remained to be found by scavengers. Ragged clothing hung sodden against clammy skin. No cardboard home could stand up to the rains. Starvation, the constant specter on the edge of the migrant worker’s life, now became a reality. Hit hardest, as always, were the children. Whole families were dying, the youngest first. Government aid moved slowly at best. The corporate farmers did nothing to alleviate a situation that was to their best interest—a large, demoralized work force meant that it was easy to fill the fields during harvest and planting times. Life magazine wanted coverage of the tragedy and commissioned Steinbeck to accompany a photographer on a tour of the flooded areas. He was glad to have the chance to turn the angry themes of his novel into an angry piece of journalism. He wrote the article for Life quickly, telling of the euphemism “malnutrition” on the death certificates of children who had starved. Steinbeck informed his audience of the ease with which a doctor could be summoned to lie on a death certificate, the impossibility of finding a physician who would treat an illness. The article was as blunt as he could make it.
It was too blunt for Life’s editors. They rejected the piece when Steinbeck was unwilling to soften the language in which he described the dying migrants, the government’s failure, the corporations’ greed and indifference. Nor would California newspapers publish the piece, which Steinbeck called “Starvation Under the Orange Trees.” Only after months of being turned down by magazines and newspapers was Steinbeck able to place the piece. It appeared in a small Monterey paper but attracted larger attention. California’s Simon J. Lubin Society—named for one of the state’s first advocates of the rights of migrant farm laborers—wanted to reprint Steinbeck’s “Harvest Gypsies” articles in pamphlet form. The pamphlet would be called Their Blood Is Strong. Steinbeck contributed “Starvation Under the Orange Trees,” slightly revised to make it a suitable epilogue to his earlier pieces. He hoped the pamphlet would arouse the public.
Steinbeck was trying to reach the same end with his novel. By the first of May he was done with the book’s new draft. It was a short novel of about twice the size of Of Mice and Men. Covici was eager to get the manuscript, planning to bring it out quickly. His publishing firm was in financial difficulty, despite the income produced by Steinbeck’s work, and Covici needed another successful book as soon as possible. Steinbeck surprised Covici by declining to submit the manuscript as it stood. The book was too ugly, too grotesque. It had not accomplished what Steinbeck wanted and was successful neither as fiction nor as political argument. He would have to try again. A bright note came late in the month when Of Mice and Men won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, being named the best American play of the preceding year. Covici planned a large collection of Steinbeck short stories, hoping to capitalize at least a bit on his prize author’s continued success and acclaim.
Steinbeck spent most of May getting ready to approach his novel once more. He was spending a good amount of time in Monterey with Ed Ricketts. Pacific Biological Laboratories had encountered financial difficulties, from which it was rescued when Steinbeck bought into the company and quietly became Ricketts’s partner. They talked of expanding the firm’s operations, of mounting expeditions in search of scientific knowledge and marine specimens. Steinbeck and Ricketts continued their philosophical discussions. Steinbeck wanted his next attempt at a novel based upon the migrant experience to be philosophical in tone, where the previous versions had been satirical and brutal in turn. He put aside the idea of structuring the novel around an episode of vigilante violence. Steinbeck needed a larger form for the story he now wanted to tell. Steinbeck was going to write an American epic. He would tell the story of a long and arduous trek—a quest—embarked upon by a family, the Joads, who were bereft of anything other than hope of a promised land at journey’s end.
By early summer he was well into the new draft, a bit frightened by the ease with which the book was appearing on the pages of his ledger. Nothing could break his concentration, although there were plenty of distractions. Carol was negotiating for a fifty-acre tract near Los Gatos—she wanted to build a new house where she and Steinbeck might recover some of their lost privacy. Word came from New York that Pat Covici had gone bankrupt. Works Covici had under contract—including, of course, Steinbeck’s—were seized by a printer as collateral against Covici’s debts; other creditors froze money meant for royalty payments. Steinbeck held out hope for Covici to reach an accommodation with his creditors but worried about who would publish his new book. Once it was clear that Steinbeck’s publisher had gone under, McIntosh & Otis began receiving letters of inquiry from most of America’s publishing houses. Each was eager to add Steinbeck’s name to its lists, although Steinbeck did not like the idea of starting all over again with a new publisher. Steinbeck’s social circle was widening as well: during the summer he became close with Charles Chaplin. Steinbeck was seeing more and more people who were wealthy, powerful, influential. As one of America’s best-selling young novelists, Steinbeck found that those same words applied to him. As if all the other demands and requests upon his time were not enough, Steinbeck found himself caring for Carol during an extended bout with strep throat and a subsequent tonsillectomy.
Yet the book was coming too quickly and too well to be stopped. By August he had written a hundred thousand words and estimated that he was halfway through his story. He had known all summer that this would be a long book and that it would sprawl out in many directions, against all accepted ideas of proper novelistic form and structure. Steinbeck was breaking the rules once more. The centerpiece of the book was the story of the Joads, their journey to California, their discovery of the true nature of the promised land. Narrative and characters came together almost perfectly. But Steinbeck was not restricting himself to narrative. He interleaved his narrative chapters with shorter, more impressionistic chapters. In these sections Steinbeck used an astonishing range of voices and techniques. Some of the passages read as though they were sociological reports, others as though transcriptions of people’s innermost thoughts, a technique known as stream of consciousness. In some of the short interchapters Steinbeck seemed to come directly on stage, lecturing the reader. In others he was completely absent, a dispassionate narrator making a scientific report.
The novel was able to support such a variety of techniques because its central story was so strong. Steinbeck knew the Joads as well as he knew himself He had met families like the Joads, had talked with them as they sought escape from the incessant rain and mud, had comforted them as they spoke of the children they had lost, had tried to encourage them as they shivered in fear of their own future. He was putting all of this on the page now. He created characters some of whose aspects were as grotesque or animalistic as any he’d ever created. But there was also a great deal of love in the book, and a great deal of insight. Tom Joad, back from prison in time to find his family setting out from a home that they had lost, gave the novel a strong central character. Ma Joad provided the novel with an emotional heart. Tom’s sister, Rose of Sharon, swelling with new life, riding across country in the back of a truck trying only to care for the baby within her served Steinbeck well both as a character and also as a symbol of the renewal of the human spirit and the human race. Steinbeck was putting everything he had in this novel. He would build his story to a series of peaks and, after each one, insert an interchapter in which he addressed in more general terms the Joads’ problems, which were also the world’s problems:
“One man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car creaking along the highway to the west. I lost my land, a single tractor took my land. I am alone and I am bewildered. And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat on their hams and the women and children listen. Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here ‘I lost my land’ is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate—‘We lost our land.’ The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first ‘we’ there grows a still more dangerous thing: ‘I have a little food’ plus ‘I have none.’ If from this problem the sum is ‘We have a little food,’ the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the sidemeat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It’s wool. It was my mother’s blanket—take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from ‘I’ to ‘we.’
“If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into ‘I’ and cuts you off forever from the ‘we.’ ”
As the novel progressed, all other distractions fell away. Pat Covici went to work as a senior editor at the Viking Press, carrying Steinbeck’s contracts with him. Viking would publish the collection of Steinbeck stories called The Long Valley and would repay any royalties lost during Covici’s bankruptcy. For the first time Steinbeck had a publisher whose financial resources were not stretched dangerously thin. Steinbeck and Carol purchased the fifty-acre farm and began construction of a new house. While the house was being built, they lived in one of the property’s older structures, a ranch shack that they planned eventually to renovate. Steinbeck also commissioned the installation of a swimming pool for Carol. The pool was intended as a present to show Steinbeck’s appreciation for Carol’s years of support and belief They both hoped that in the new house they would be able to repair their marriage.
In September 1938, The Long Valley was published by Viking. The short story collection contained the stories of the Tiflin family, as well as almost all of Steinbeck’s other short pieces. The Long Valley sold well, establishing itself for a time on the nation’s best-seller lists. Steinbeck, preoccupied with his long novel, barely noticed his collection’s success. He was pushing hard on the story of the Joads and anticipated completing the book before the end of the year. Not even the chaos surrounding the construction of the new house could slow the pace of the book’s composition. Carol began typing clean pages from Steinbeck’s ledger. She quickly caught up with Steinbeck and was typing pages as soon as he finished writing them. Carol was as delighted with the new novel as was Steinbeck himself The same month The Long Valley was published, Carol came up with the perfect title for her husband’s new novel. The book would be called The Grapes of Wrath.
As he neared the conclusion of the novel, Steinbeck brought all of the book’s elements—migration, nature, homelessness, injustice, courage, anger, and hope—together for a climax that would, he knew, prove controversial. Tom Joad, preparing in the name of self-preservation to take flight from his family, delivers a speech to his mother that would become one of the most famous speeches in American literature. In his speech Tom Joad gives voice to Steinbeck’s thoughts not only about the economic and emotional crisis that gripped the world, but also to the larger question of the nature of the collective human soul:
“Tom laughed uneasily. ‘Well, maybe . . . a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but only a piece of a big one—an’ then’ ”
“ ‘Then what, Tom?’ ”
“ ‘Then it don’ matter. Then I’ll be aroun’ in the dark. I’ll be ever’where—wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat. I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there . . . why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there. See?’ ”
Tom leaves his family, fleeing unfair prosecution. Steinbeck did not end the book with Tom’s departure, however. He brought the book to a close on a note whose controversy would far exceed that prompted by Tom’s speech or by any of the other elements in the novel. With Tom gone, the remaining members of the family are beset by violent weather and personal tragedy. Rose of Sharon, abandoned by her husband, loses her child. In a heavy rainstorm the Joads encounter a starving man. The stranger’s plight is more hopeless even than that of the Joads. Rose of Sharon, on the book’s final pages, takes the stranger to her breast to nourish him with the milk for which she has no child other than her fellow human beings. It was a risky, passionate, powerful, symbolic note on which to end so large and ambitious a novel. Steinbeck was enormously proud of the scene, and of The Grapes of Wrath.
His pride would not allow him to hold out large commercial hopes for the novel, however. Steinbeck worried that Covici’s plans for a large first printing would result in embarrassment and financial loss. In November 1938, not long after Steinbeck finished the book, Covici visited California. The editor did what he could to convince Steinbeck that The Grapes of Wrath would be the biggest success yet. All else had been prelude to this, Steinbeck’s greatest novel. A month later Elizabeth Otis arrived in California to work with Steinbeck on some of Viking’s requests for moderation of the novel’s strong language and brutality. Steinbeck was unyielding. He could not take words, however obscene they might be considered by some, out of the mouths of characters for whom such language was not foul but completely natural and appropriate.
He was equally inflexible about the book’s final scene, which Covici felt was too symbolic, too abrupt. The novel did not end on a strong note after a careful resolution. It just stopped. Steinbeck tried to explain that he had no interest in literary niceties. His purpose in writing The Grapes of Wrath had been to stir readers from their complacency. The breast-feeding scene that ended the novel was, he wrote Covici in some annoyance, true to reality and history, no matter how improper it seemed as a literary device. Rose of Sharon became in the final scene the mother of all the earth, renewing the world with her compassion and love. If readers wanted any more resolution than that, they would have to provide it themselves. Steinbeck was not going to wrap up all of the novel’s loose ends just to keep readers and critics happy. Life itself, he reminded his editor, does not often provide neat and satisfactory endings. Neither would John Steinbeck. Covici scheduled the book for publication in March 1939.
Early in the year Steinbeck was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, whose small and carefully chosen membership was composed of the finest and most influential American writers. The election reminded Steinbeck of his high public profile as well as his high level of achievement. He was famous now, and that fame would grow wildly as a result of The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck reconciled himself as best he could to the attention. Pat Covici was using all of Viking’s resources to promote the novel and its author. While Steinbeck insisted on having a hand in the physical design of the book—he had Covici publish the complete lyrics of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” on the endpapers inside the book’s front and back covers—he would not help with the publicity. Occasional interviews were painful enough for Steinbeck. Any sort of promotional tour involving autographs and appearances would overwhelm him. The Grapes of Wrath must stand or fall on its own strengths.
That the long novel which Steinbeck had written so swiftly could stand very well on its own became clear throughout the spring of 1939. The Grapes of Wrath was published in March and shot instantly to the top of all best-seller lists. Viking was shipping copies by the tens of thousands, unable to keep up with booksellers’ orders. Within the first two months more than eighty thousand copies were sold. Film rights to the story were purchased by Twentieth Century Fox for close to a hundred thousand dollars. Book review pages were filled with Steinbeck’s name. The early reviews applauded The Grapes of Wrath as a work of social and political realism, but also expressed the anticipated reservations about Steinbeck’s sense of structure. Few reviewers cared for the symbolic ending. The literary reviews, which appeared later than those in newspapers and large-circulation magazines, surprised Steinbeck by endorsing his novel as a work of art. North American Review, which had first published Steinbeck’s stories, compared The Grapes of Wrath to Moby-Dick and Don Quixote, and their alumnus to Melville and Cervantes.
The novel was popular, but it was also controversial. Book review sections might endorse the book’s success, but many editorial pages attacked the novel and its author. Some editorialists damned Steinbeck’s realism as radical and inflammatory. Negative reaction was particularly severe in California’s agricultural areas and in many of Oklahoma’s cities. People in both states felt that Steinbeck had maligned them. Some California farmers’ groups worked to have the novel banned from schools and public libraries. Steinbeck’s language, and his novel’s blunt approach and presentation of sexuality, also sparked outrage. The Grapes of Wrath was condemned in many churches and civic meetings as impure and immoral. Across the country, movements started to have the book prohibited. Many librarians, unwilling to take a firm stand and forbid the book from their shelves, simply refused to purchase copies. An outraged California society woman, Ruth Comfort Mitchell, wrote a novel herself to rebut Steinbeck’s horrid novel. Mitchell’s book was called Of Human Kindness and did not sell well. Behind the public attacks on Steinbeck flowed a current of malicious innuendo and gossip, aimed at ruining Steinbeck’s name. Steinbeck’s book, though, had impressed far more people than it offended. In early summer the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, used her newspaper column to issue a public statement calling The Grapes of Wrath “an unforgettable experience in reading.” Mrs. Roosevelt even went so far as to praise the novel’s final scene as beautiful.
By summer Steinbeck knew that the excitement created by his novel was not going to fade quickly. Sales were increasing toward ten thousand copies a week. His mail was simply stacked and ignored; there was no way Steinbeck could answer every letter and appeal even if he wanted to. The ranch offered less privacy than he and Carol had hoped. The excitement of working together as The Grapes of Wrath was being written had worn off. The new house and pool, the vast sums of money coming in, the freedom to travel widely and indulge whims—none of the benefits of Steinbeck’s success could ease the tension between himself and his wife. He and Carol fought constantly and bitterly. Carol was drinking heavily. Sometimes Steinbeck also looked for distraction in alcohol, often in the company of Ed Ricketts. He spent long hours in Ricketts’s laboratory, studying scientific texts and listening to selections from the biologist’s large collection of classical music albums. Steinbeck and Ricketts spoke of getting away from Monterey, of losing themselves in the hard work of a scientific expedition.
When Steinbeck did get away it was to Hollywood. Two films based on his books were in production there. The Grapes of Wrath was being filmed under the direction of John Ford. The motion picture would star Henry Fonda, who had been Steinbeck’s own preference for the role of Tom Joad, although the studio had first wanted Tyrone Power to play the part. Of Mice and Men was also in front of the cameras, with Lewis Milestone directing. Burgess Meredith played George, and Lon Chaney, Jr.—not yet typecast as a horror film star—played the giant, mentally deficient Lennie. Steinbeck took an apartment in Hollywood, ostensibly to help with the screen adaptations of his books, but also to escape from the tensions of his failing marriage.
Steinbeck hoped to use his Hollywood isolation as a period of recuperation and revitalization. His circle of Hollywood friends expanded. In addition to Charles Chaplin, Steinbeck became close with Henry Fonda, Burgess Meredith, and Spencer Tracy. Steinbeck did not often socialize outside his apartment. Since completing The Grapes of Wrath he had been in nearly constant pain as a result of inflamed nerves in his legs. Some days he could barely walk. Steinbeck purchased a diathermy machine, which he used to apply heat to the most painful areas. Steinbeck’s friends worried about him, and about the wisdom of his trying to treat the neuritis himself Acquaintances and friends took to dropping by the apartment to offer what cheer they could. Sometimes they brought guests whom they thought the author would enjoy meeting. One such guest was Gwendolyn Conger, an attractive, twenty-year-old woman. Steinbeck found himself drawn to Gwyn, as she preferred her name to be spelled. She was embarked upon a not very successful career as a singer and actress and was full of enthusiasm for life. Steinbeck and Gwyn saw each other frequently during the summer of 1939, but Steinbeck restrained himself from a serious romance. Too many questions were unsettled in his marriage.
Things were getting no better at the ranch near Los Gatos. Carol’s moods had become more and more unpredictable. One day she might work hard and with focused concentration on investing the money they were earning, the next day she would return to her drinking and gleefully paint a piano bright pink. Steinbeck had dedicated The Grapes of Wrath in part to Carol and in part to Thomas Collins, who had helped him with research in the migrant camps. His debt to Collins was paid now, but he could not escape the larger responsibility he owed the woman who had for so long believed in him. As fall neared, he tried to spend more time with her. He felt that if he could impose some order on his life, and upon the success that was disrupting it, he might be able at least to make an environment in which Carol could come to grips with her emotional problems. Steinbeck was not yet ready to end the marriage.
He was less certain about his career as a novelist. For nearly a year he had been the most successful member of that profession in the world. As Christmas approached the sales figures for The Grapes of Wrath continued to rise. Newspapers, magazines, and public gatherings were no less filled with Steinbeck’s name than when the book was first published. An ongoing national debate raged around The Grapes of Wrath. The book was formally banned in East St. Louis, Illinois, and copies publicly burned there. Immorality and vulgarity remained the charges most frequently aimed at the novel. Even the praise for the book and the quickly completed motion picture missed the point, Steinbeck felt. Everyone focused upon the social realism and criticism. The motion picture ended with Henry Fonda’s stirring rendition of Tom load’s final speech, followed by a moment of sentimental Hollywood hopefulness. Despite the false note at the end, the motion picture was true to Steinbeck’s spirit and brought huge numbers of new readers into contact with his work. Most of those readers responded to the plight of the migrants, of the Okies cast from their homes.
Steinbeck had written, however, not about that plight alone. Few readers or reviewers gave any indication of having perceived the philosophy that lay beneath the surface of Steinbeck’s novel. The Grapes of Wrath reflected its author’s concern for society, but it also represented his largest attempt yet to give literary form to his theories of the phalanx. Steinbeck felt that he had to attack the subject once more, yet was not certain how to go about it. In the year since he completed the novel, he had written nothing of lasting value, and very little other than letters. Now it seemed to him that since he could not stop the attention that The Grapes of Wrath had provoked, he must simply learn to ignore it. He had work to get on with and was impatient about the time he was wasting. He began gathering his energy and determination. His thoughts seemed to grow more calm. As 1939 ended, the most famous novelist in the world felt that he had completely written himself out of fiction. His only hope of continuing to function as a writer was to find a whole new way of writing.