Free Republic

[Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]In 1966, a year before the war that would fundamentally change the country and the region, John Steinbeck arrived.“I want to see everything in Israel,” he told the press.Outraged novels of class warfare like ‘Grapes of Wrath’ had once made the author a favorite of the leftist establishment, but Steinbeck had turned to other topics. He considered his life’s work to be ‘East of Eden’, a retelling of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel in California, which touched on his own...

A Stanford professor explains the importance of why “Murder at Full Moon” should be on bookshelves.Long before he became one of America's most-well known novelists, Monterey County icon John Steinbeck wrote three books that were never published. Two of them he destroyed, but the other has remained in the archives, relatively unknown, until recently. The unpublished novel is titled Murder at Full Moon. It’s a murder mystery involving werewolves. “I was really surprised to discover that it wasn't some unfinished draft or some sort of just just wacky experiment. It was a complete novel,” said Stanford profession Gavin Jones....

For hundreds of years, people have looked up at the hazy peaks of California's Santa Lucia Mountains at sunset and seen tall, cloaked figures staring back. Then, within moments, the eerie silhouettes disappear. These twilight apparitions are known as the Dark Watchers — shady, sometimes 10-foot-tall (3 meters) men bedecked in sinister hats and capes. One famous observer who felt the presence of the Watchers was the American author John Steinbeck. In his 1938 short story "Flight," a character sees a black figure leering down at him from a nearby ridgetop, "but he looked quickly away, for it was one...

If we valued black art, Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer would have been for literature. When will the education system wake up to black creativity? I can’t help thinking that the Pulitzer prize committee missed a trick in their award to the rapper Kendrick Lamar this week. If they had given him the Pulitzer for literature rather than for music it would have elevated his artform and sent a message that would have resonated around the world: that rap is a legitimate form of poetry and should be put on a par with, and treated with the same deference as, Shakespeare and...

Working for Barack Obama can be a career maker, but Hebrew readers have been puzzled by the explanation for the path that one former staffer took. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Michael Slaby, whom the newspaper described as “among the key tech gurus for Barack Obama’s two presidential campaigns,” has founded a startup called Timshel that helps not-for-profits and activist groups use digital tools to increase their analytic capabilities. Sounds good. But where, exactly, does the name Timshel come from? “It’s a reference to [Steinbeck’s] ‘East of Eden’ — the Hebrew word for “Thou mayest” from the Bible [in the...

I am reading that the film "Grapes of Wrath" will be re made. It’s a Dreamworks/Spielberg plan. I am so heartily sick to death of the Hollywood smarmy and criminally skewed interpretation of American life and American history. I don’t even want to think of the Liberal orgy of ‘I hate America’ this will be. All the while they are cashing in and living like royalty for ritually subverting the historical facts. Capitalism works… the inevitable boom and bust cycles are what hard working people save for and the reason that credit should always be avoided like poison. However,...

Libraries in Steinbeck Hometown Endangered Sun Apr 3, 5:01 PM ET Entertainment - AP SALINAS, Calif. - More than a hundred supporters turned out Sunday for the end of a 24-hour "read-in" to help save the libraries in John Steinbeck's hometown. People gathered to hear writers, actors, musicians and activists read passages from their favorites works outside Cesar Chavez library, one of the Salinas libraries facing closure. Facing record deficits, the City Council voted in December to shut all three libraries in the city memorialized in Steinbeck's 1952 novel "East of Eden." If they close, the blue-collar town of 150,000...

Bob Hope London, July 26, 1943 When the time for recognition of service to the nation in wartime comes to be considered , Bob Hope should be high on the list. This man drives himself and is driven. It is impossible to see how he can do so much, can cover so much ground, can work so hard, and can be so effective. He works month after month at a pace that would kill most people. Moving about the country in camps, airfields, billets, supply depots, and hospitals, you hear one thing consistently. Bob Hope is coming, or Bob Hope...

I am almost afraid to even bring this up on FR, knowing a lot of people do not like Oprah. HOWEVER, her new book club is better than the one before. I never got into her old club because I thought all the books were bleeding heart liberal crap. Now I can't call John Steinbeck's East of Eden crap can I? Has anyone ever read this book? She is sticking to the classics this time which I am happy about. I read mostly British Literature BUT I am willing to try. There has to be another FReeper that watches Oprah.

Steinbeck's myth of the Okies by Keith Windschuttle John Steinbeck performed a rare feat for a writer of fiction. He created a literary portrait that defined an era. His account of the “Okie Exodus” in The Grapes of Wrath became the principal story through which America defined the experience of the Great Depression. Even today, one of the enduring images for anyone with even a passing familiarity with the 1930s is that of Steinbeck’s fictional characters the Joads, an American farming family uprooted from its home by the twin disasters of dust storms and financial crisis to become refugees in...