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Title: America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction by John Steinbeck, Susan Shillinglaw, Jackson J. Benson ISBN: 0-670-03062-7 Publisher: Viking Books Pub. Date: 31 January, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Great American Novelist reports...
Comment: Steinbeck, as he and the annotator in this book repeatedly declare, let his interests range freely in his choice of nonfiction subjects. The whimsical pieces darn near steal the show. There's an affectionate account of his old Model T, and how its radiator happened one day to spew hot oatmeal all over his mother while riding in downtown L.A. There's a self-deprecating sports article, in which he proposes the sport of oak tree racing. There are some quite funny and surprisingly touching dog stories. The man could make *anything* a joy to read!
But the meat of the "selected nonfiction" section is the 1930s reportage of the California migrants, which would later become the basis of his Depression novels. It is a searing experience even seventy years later, being made to watch formerly solid American citizens being ground into the mire by poverty, malnutrition, and hopelessness.
Even his much-denounced Vietnam coverage has unmistakably Steinbeckian passages of humanity. He goes for a combat patrol in an AC-47, a "Magic Dragon", and frankly confesses his fear. He flashes back to conversations with combat journalists and ordinary soldiers, who were killed very shortly thereafter. He accurately contrasts the omnipresent threat of guerrilla attacks with the more formal setpiece battles of previous wars--and portrays the confusion this arouses in the public back home.
The final bit is the republished _America and Americans_, which is one long cry of "Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?" Perfectly understandable for someone of his age and background encountering the Sixties for the first time... But even here his native American optimism refuses to let him despair. He concludes, "We have failed sometimes, taken wrong paths, paused for renewal, filled our bellies and licked our wounds; but we have never slipped back--never."
Rating: 4
Summary: Classic Prose Addressing a Classic Question
Comment: There are people who truly reflect their time, or at least a period within their life, and what they believed about it. Steinbeck is one of those people. This book presents some of his best work. It also shows a change in the times and the man. Steinbeck's time, at least the time he addressed in his best writing was the depression, World War II, and some of the fifties. Unfortunately, he did not quit then, and some of his later work is the writing of a man grown disillusioned and sad.
This book takes us through many years, and many places. Much of it is well known. It's really great when the topic is a personal friend, or an unsuspecting stranger (the article written after the death of Ed Ricketts, or the article about a French village in the Alps shortly after World War II). It gives a consistent voice to the views of one man and his reaction to the world around him. Much of it has been popular from time to time, and much of it has always been unpopular with a certain group of people. It would be easier to pick out the 'good' from the 'bad' is they were arranged chronologically, but they are not. If you are a fan of good writing, the whole book is 'good.' If you want to admire what Lee (in East of Eden) called 'clean thinking' skip the end. By the time I got to the middle of 'America and Americans' (about the last quarter of the book) it was getting old, and frankly I love Steinbeck's fiction so much that I could not finish it. By that time, it had become a litany of the complaints of my father, and the music was gone.
Critics argue about how great a writer Steinbeck was. One of their greatest criticisms was that he was too popular, or that he wrote for a popular following. That may be a valid criticism, and it may be one of the best reasons for reading his work. Which ever it is for you, it is here in abundance. The intimate details, the exacting prose, and the popular viewpoint. Whatever else we think, there is a Steinbeck voice that is unique, and worthy.
The strongest point in Steinbeck's writing is the sense of place. This book of non-fiction presents the land and the people. The real people and places who became Joad's, or Trask's, or sheriff's, are here in vivid detail. The Salinas of his youth, New York, France, Italy, traffic in Rome, and seaside villages are all vivid and inviting.
If you have read "The Harvest Gypsies" "The Log From the Sea of Cortez" "The Grapes of Wrath" or "East of Eden" many of the things in here will be familiar. If you have not, read this book. It may make them more appealing.
Rating: 4
Summary: Uneven collection of character-driven Steinbeck nonfiction
Comment: John Steinbeck (1902-68) wrote newspaper columns for two years during the 1950s in addition to reporting on the 1956 presidential nominating conventions and stints as a war correspondent during World War II and the Vietnam War. He also wrote some articles for magazines and the ruminations on America for a book of photographs that was his last book (and which fills about a quarter of this collection).
Always he wrote about his impressions, primarily of people. The best pieces in this collection are not accounts of foreign wars but of people in distinct places. Like Steinbeck's life, the book begins with Salinas, California, continues through San Francisco and New York City to Sag Harbor on Long Island, where Steinbeck lived in the 1950s and 60s. In the "Journalist Abroad" section there are strong pieces on people in Positano and Ireland. And there is a section on friends (all male, of course) including a long memoir of his idol and naturalist mentor, Ed Ricketts, and short but very illuminating memoirs of the popular WWII correspondent Ernie Pyle and the photographer Robert Capa (who accompanied Steinbeck on his Russian visit), plus concise tributes to Adlai Stevenson as an orator and to Henry Fonda as an actor.
The section "On writing" is regrettably short, and the selections of WWII colums from _Once There Was a War_ (a book which is in print) are mystifyingly missing the best ones, which Steinbeck wrote during the invasion of Italy. The Vietnam reports are unconvincing propaganda from what he presented as a war against Mao. (Brezhnev, perhaps, but not Mao!)
Many of the pieces are entertaining in the mock heroic Steinbeck manner of _Tortilla Flat_ and _Travels with Charley_ and some are moving. The text "America and Americans" had little impact. It certainly has not supplanted Tocqueville's analysis of democracy in America, but is not without interest. As generally for Steinbeck in fiction or nonfiction, the description of particular individuals is more interesting than the generalizations.
The editors provide useful introductions to the sections, but must think that Steinbeck's ideas and craft of the 1960s was the same as those of the 1930s. It is difficult but not impossible to find out when a particular piece was published but this vital information is not included in either the table of contents or with the title of the pieces.
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Title: Travels With Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck ISBN: 0140053204 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 1980 List Price(USD): $9.00 |
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Title: The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication (Twentieth Century Classics) by John Steinbeck ISBN: 0140187499 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Steinbeck: A Life in Letters by Elaine Steinbeck, Robert Wallsten ISBN: 0140042881 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 1989 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Winter of Our Discontent (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by John Steinbeck ISBN: 0140187537 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Burning Bright: A Play in Story Form (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) by John Steinbeck ISBN: 0140187421 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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