Working Days by John Steinbeck Read Free Book Online Page B

those forward-looking, enormously gifted men Steinbeck struck up working friendships with in the late 1930s. He had been a movie critic, syndicated political columnist, essayist, short story writer, and documentarian, whose first books, Censorship: The Private Lives of the Movies (with Max Ernst), and The Roosevelt Year: 1933, appeared in 1930 and 1934, respectively. In two years, working as author, director, and producer on relatively modest budgets from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal-inspired Resettlement Administration Lorentz had made a couple of pioneering documentary films. Both The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1937) dealt with human displacement and natural erosion caused by the Dust Bowl and Mississippi Valley floods, themes which were close to Steinbeck’s own. Lorentz, one of the most innovative artists of his age, directed the fledgling United States Film Service from mid 1938 through its demise in March 1940. The most detailed account of Lorentz’s life and art is in Robert L. Snyder, Pare Lorentz and the Documentary Film (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968). Lorentz met Steinbeck for the first time in Los Gatos in February 1938, when Steinbeck was writing ”L’Affaire Lettuceberg,“ a precursor to The Grapes of Wrath. After their initial meeting, the dynamic Lorentz became an increasingly important figure in the novelist’s life, providing everything from practical advice on politics and filmmaking (they never made In Dubious Battle, but he hired Steinbeck to help with the filming of The Fight for Life in Chicago in April 1939) to spirited artistic encouragement, as Steinbeck’s numerous references to Lorentz throughout Working Days indicate. Although Lorentz would not claim influence on The Grapes of Wrath (Pare Lorentz/Robert DeMott, telephone interview, March 22, 1988), Steinbeck thought otherwise, as he told Joseph Henry Jackson, ca. April 1939: ”Where I see the likeness now is in the chapter of the route where the towns are named [Ed.—Chapter 12]. I have little doubt that the Lorentz River is strong in that. But the other [Ed.—interchapters of The Grapes of Wrath ]—maybe influenced by Dos Passos to some extent.... Quoted in Robert DeMott, Steinbeck’s Reading: A Catalogue of Books Owned and Borrowed (New York: Garland, 1984), p. 142. In “Dorothea Lange: Camera with a Purpose,” published in T. J. Maloney, ed., US Camera 1941, Volume 1: “America” (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940), Pare Lorentz stated that Lange’s photographs and Steinbeck’s novel “... have done more for these tragic nomads [Ed.—migrant workers] than all the politicians in the country. It again is a triumph of art over politics; or specifically, another proof that good art is good propaganda” (p. 96).
    5. Steinbeck’s disillusion with his marriage to Carol is graphically revealed in two sources (both so full of venom and convenient lapses that they need to be employed judiciously): a series of confessional letters to his agent Mavis McIntosh, written between May and September 1941, now at the University of Virginia Library; and his second wife’s recollections, “ ‘The Closest Witness’: The Autobiographical Reminiscences of Gwyndolyn Conger Steinbeck,” a 1979 MA thesis at Stephen F. Austin State University, transcribed and edited by Terry G. Halladay from original audio tapes recorded by Gwyn. (NOTE: In late 1941 or early 1942 Gwendolyn changed the spelling of her name to Gwyndolyn; except for those instances where Steinbeck uses the earlier spelling, all references to her in Working Days will be spelled with a y , as she preferred.) See also Benson, True Adventures of John Steinbeck (p. 460), who writes that Steinbeck “... perceived Carol as the cause of his malaise and Gwyn as the one person who could give him peace.”
    6. For background on the Depression, the migrant labor issue and its historical evolvement, the Farm Security Administration