The Library of America published three volumes filled with John Steinbeck's works. The first volume included: The Grapes of Wrath, The Long Valley, The Log from the Sea of Cortez, and The Harvest Gypsies. The second volume included: The Pastures of Heaven, To a God Unknown, Tortilla Flat, In Dubious Battle, and Of Mice and Men. Now, the most recent volume includes some of Steinbeck's most beloved works: The Moon is Down, Cannery Row, The Pearl, and East of Eden.
The works in the third volume begin to explore new frontiers in his writing, as he takes us to Europe, to Mexico, and then back home to his California. It's an unforgettable experience, one that's riddled with bizarre and interesting characters, with new Edenic landscapes and richly green seascapes. Steinbeck's focus is ever on the beauty and horror of human nature, what we do to each other for good or evil in the contexts of war and everyday experience.
War Fiction: The Moon is Down
Pearl Harbor marked a turning point in Steinbeck's fiction. With The Moon is Down (1942), Steinbeck creates the story of a close-knit community that is forced to face the brutal realities of Nazi occupation. The book was inspired by European refugees, and it is a bit of Steinbeck's propaganda during the early days of World War II. While some American critics faulted the novel for its sympathetic portrayals of Nazi soldiers, the book was widely popular in Europe. The Moon is Down was distributed by the resistance fighters in Europe, and was even banned in Italy. The penalty for reading the book was death.
As Dr. Winter and Joseph talk about time, occupations, and machines, Dr. Winter says, "They hurry toward their destiny as though it would not wait. They push the rolling world along with their shoulders." Only one of the soldiers has ever experienced war before, and even Colonel Lanser is under the illusion that he will avoid the inevitable terror of war-time occupation.
War Fiction: The Moon is Down
Pearl Harbor marked a turning point in Steinbeck's fiction. With The Moon is Down (1942), Steinbeck creates the story of a close-knit community that is forced to face the brutal realities of Nazi occupation. The book was inspired by European refugees, and it is a bit of Steinbeck's propaganda during the early days of World War II. While some American critics faulted the novel for its sympathetic portrayals of Nazi soldiers, the book was widely popular in Europe. The Moon is Down was distributed by the resistance fighters in Europe, and was even banned in Italy. The penalty for reading the book was death.
As Dr. Winter and Joseph talk about time, occupations, and machines, Dr. Winter says, "They hurry toward their destiny as though it would not wait. They push the rolling world along with their shoulders." Only one of the soldiers has ever experienced war before, and even Colonel Lanser is under the illusion that he will avoid the inevitable terror of war-time occupation.
"Lanser had been in Belgium and France twenty years before," Steinbeck writes, "and he tried not to think what he knew--that war is treachery and hatred, the muddling of incompetent generals, the torture and killings and sickness and tiredness, until at last it is over and nothing has changed except for new weariness and new hatreds."
In his fast-paced, dialogue-ridden, play-like style, Steinbeck creates a hopeless situation. The soldiers gradually go mad, or they die mysterious deaths as they go out alone, searching for human companionship and kindness. It becomes obvious to the villagers that resistance is not futile. As their collaborative hatred grows, and as martyrs are made of their most-beloved citizens, the people become a force.
Dr. Winter says, "all invaded people want to resist." And Mayor Orden says, "I am a little man and this is a little man, but there must be a spark in little men that can burst into flame." It's much more than about simply living or dying, winning or losing. The book forces the reader to reevaluate conceptions of humanity and justice.
The Place & Time: Cannery Row
With Cannery Row (1945), Steinbeck returned to California, a land which had inspired the novels: The Pastures of Heaven (1932), To a God Unknown (1933), Tortilla Flat (1935), In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), The Long Valley (1938), The Grapes of Wrath (1939), and his classic story: "The Red Pony" (1945).
In his fast-paced, dialogue-ridden, play-like style, Steinbeck creates a hopeless situation. The soldiers gradually go mad, or they die mysterious deaths as they go out alone, searching for human companionship and kindness. It becomes obvious to the villagers that resistance is not futile. As their collaborative hatred grows, and as martyrs are made of their most-beloved citizens, the people become a force.
Dr. Winter says, "all invaded people want to resist." And Mayor Orden says, "I am a little man and this is a little man, but there must be a spark in little men that can burst into flame." It's much more than about simply living or dying, winning or losing. The book forces the reader to reevaluate conceptions of humanity and justice.
The Place & Time: Cannery Row
With Cannery Row (1945), Steinbeck returned to California, a land which had inspired the novels: The Pastures of Heaven (1932), To a God Unknown (1933), Tortilla Flat (1935), In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), The Long Valley (1938), The Grapes of Wrath (1939), and his classic story: "The Red Pony" (1945).
With Cannery Row, Steinbeck once again depicts life in all its variety: the joviality of parties, alternating with suicide and other darker experiences. He picks through his memory to recreate the people and places he had enjoyed while living there. And, along the way, he offers mini-tales about a gopher and sailors. His way of writing the book was very simple: "to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves." How else do you tell a story about "the stink and the grating noise--the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream"?
In the "Note on the Texts," Robert DeMott explains that Steinbeck wrote Cannery Row in "a six-week period in the summer of 1944." It was, as Steinbeck said, "a kind of nostalgic thing... for a group of soldiers who had said to me, 'Write something funny that isn't about the war.'"
The novel was dedicated to Steinbeck's friend and mentor, Ed Ricketts, who had been such a driving force in the development of his style in his earlier works. Ricketts was killed after a serious car accident just a few years later, in 1948. At the time of Ricketts' death, Steinbeck wrote, "there dies the greatest man I have known and the best teacher. It is going to take a long time to reorganize my thinking and my planning without him."
In the "Note on the Texts," Robert DeMott explains that Steinbeck wrote Cannery Row in "a six-week period in the summer of 1944." It was, as Steinbeck said, "a kind of nostalgic thing... for a group of soldiers who had said to me, 'Write something funny that isn't about the war.'"
The novel was dedicated to Steinbeck's friend and mentor, Ed Ricketts, who had been such a driving force in the development of his style in his earlier works. Ricketts was killed after a serious car accident just a few years later, in 1948. At the time of Ricketts' death, Steinbeck wrote, "there dies the greatest man I have known and the best teacher. It is going to take a long time to reorganize my thinking and my planning without him."
In many ways, this novel has helped to keep the memory of Ricketts alive. The millions of readers who have read Cannery Row have come to know some part of the man who was Steinbeck's valued friend. But we also get to see, smell, hear, and feel Cannery Row--with all the people, the buildings, and that other (almost indescribable) part of a place that makes it somehow memorable: "Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses."
