Posted on 07/03/2013 8:16:56 AM PDT by SMARTY
In 1997 the American historian Charles Shindo examined the evidence for Steinbeck’s story. In his book Dust-Bowl Migrants in the American Imagination (University Press of Kansas), Shindo concluded that much of it was false.
John Gardner:
“One trouble with having read nothing worth reading is that one never fully understands the other side of one’s argument, never understands that the argument is an old one (all great arguments are), never understands the dignity and worth of the people one has cast as enemies. Witness John Steinbeck’s failure in The Grapes of Wrath. It should have been one of America’s great books. but while Steinbeck knew all there was to know about Okies and the countless sorrows of their move to California to find work, he knew nothing about the California ranchers who employed and exploited them; he had no clue to , or interest in, their reasons for behaving as they did; and the result is that Steinbeck wrote not a great and firm novel but a disappointing melodrama in which complex good is pitted against unmitigated, unbelievable evil.”
A piece of trashy socrealist propaganda.
Reminds me of my old college professor named McGrath. We teased him unmercifully about The Rapes of McGrath.
ugh. No more remakes!
Well, I suppose it's a "classic" if you're into New Deal socialist propaganda fine-tuned by Hollywood members of the Communist Internationale. I'll give Steinbeck's politics the benefit of the doubt but Hollywood Communists turned his book into a "classic" piece of collectivist crap.
If you have any interest in learning what a Stalinist stooge FDR was, read Diana West's "American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character." It's life-altering.
That book won Steinbeck the Nobel Prize.
“The Nobel Prize for Literature, one of the six international awards administered by the Nobel Foundation, honors outstanding achievement in letters.”
It is NOT given for specific works.
You're right.
From page 915-6 of Benson's Steinbeck biography we have this from the 26 October 1962 New York Times ...
The award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to John Steinbeck will focus attention once again on a writer who, though still in full career, produced his major work more than two decades ago. The award will bring back the vivid memory of the earlier books, the relaxed gaiety of "Tortilla flat"; the stark force of "In Dubious Battle"; the anger and compassion of "The Grapes of Wrath," a book that occupies a secure place as a document of protest.
John Steinbeck will go down in history of one of Earth's greatest writers.
This hasn’t even been made yet. The novel is not propaganda.
I agree with you on the original but the remake is guaranteed to suck
Har!
I didn’t find the novel to be Good Vs Evil at all. Every other chapter is written in highly impressionist modernist prose. It’s not trash at all. It’s as experimental as he got. I’m sure the Russian translation whitewashed this aspect of it.
You do know that Daryl Zanuck and John Ford were conservatives right?
You’re right.
While both Zanuck and Ford were considered politically conservative, Zanuck was definitely concerned that the film would be seen as pro-Communist. He sent investigators to the Dust Bowl who reported the plight of the Okies as valid. How he came to endorse Johnson’s pro-Marxist script is a task for a spiritualist, not me. Tom Joad’s big plea for “social justice” at the end would fit right into a MoveOn rally today. Roger Ebert speculated that America’s alliance with the USSR during WWII probably dulled any “Com-Symp” criticism of the film at the time. But times have changed.
Some literary critics have actually complained that the film dulled the politics of the novel. The final scene of the novel would never have made it onscreen...not then anyway.
Bravo!!!
Your Polish friend captured well the human essence contained in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath
I’m waiting for the remake of “Dude, Where’s My Car?”
I think someone mentioned it in this thread but the film was banned by Stalin because it showed that even the poorest American can afford cars.
Agreed that the novel was toned-down.
The novel was a huge best seller. I’m guessing even people who didn’t line up with leftist politics just read it as the triumph of a single family.
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