His home town, Salinas, was also the site of a camp for workers in the nearby fields. In 1936, he wrote a less famous novel called In Dubious Battle, inspired by the California agricultural strikes that had been going since 1933. And even though the book was written in a rapid fury, it had had a long genesis.Īs that letter to his agent implies, Steinbeck had known about the sufferings of migrant workers for years. But like plenty of legends, it doesn’t tell the whole truth: Steinbeck backed up his burst of creativity with a period of careful and calmer editing. This furious effort has since passed into legend not least because the urgency Steinbeck dedicated to his craft is so clearly replicated in the sincerity and passion of The Grapes of Wrath. On 26 October 1938, he wrote: “I am so dizzy I can hardly see the page.” Mercifully, later on that same day, he added: “Finished … and I hope to God it’s good.” I wish that.” And then: “I’m afraid this book is going to pieces. And then: “My nerves are going fast … I wish I could go to a furnished room some place where I know no one and just disappear for a while. “I hope I’m not heading for a nervous breakdown,” he wrote. “For the first time I’m working on a real book that is not limited … It will take every bit of experience and thought and feeling that I have.” I haven’t any choice,” he confided in the diary he kept while writing. “This must be a good book, it simply must.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |