{"title":"Steinbeck Today","authors":"W. Ray","doi":"10.1353/str.2007.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/str.2007.0013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In the second half of 2017, four works by John Steinbeck dominated references to his life and writing by journalists, productions of his works by theatrical artists, and events in Europe and the United States. His writing and life were examined for evidence of influence and intention by lawyers and scholars, and political conditions in America continued to increase commentary and reflections on his writing about the United States, particularly Travels with Charley.","PeriodicalId":40417,"journal":{"name":"Steinbeck Review","volume":"15 1","pages":"62 - 66"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2018-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/str.2007.0013","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41675632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Steinbeck ReviewPub Date : 2018-06-15DOI: 10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.15.1.0001
Barbara A. Heavilin
{"title":"\"the wall of background\": Cultural, Political, and Literary Contexts of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men","authors":"Barbara A. Heavilin","doi":"10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.15.1.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.15.1.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:While the historical and social contexts are not overtly provided in Of Mice and Men, in \"The Long Valley Ledger\" Steinbeck enticingly suggests there is a \"wall of background\" behind this novel that readers may approach only by subtle indirection. This implied background may be observed in forebodings of World War II and in portrayals of euthanasia, racism, feminist issues, and stereotypes of the mentally handicapped.","PeriodicalId":40417,"journal":{"name":"Steinbeck Review","volume":"15 1","pages":"1 - 16"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2018-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41734736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Steinbeck ReviewPub Date : 2017-11-23DOI: 10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.V
Barbara A. Heavilin, Kathleen Hicks
{"title":"\"A man who was a writer\": John Steinbeck's Enduring Legacy for America","authors":"Barbara A. Heavilin, Kathleen Hicks","doi":"10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.V","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.V","url":null,"abstract":"This is the story of a man who was a writer. He cared about language, and he cared about people. He didn’t want to be famous or popular— he just wanted to write books. But he became both. From among the many serious writers of our time, he became for a great many people, here and throughout the world, the one writer who counted, the one who touched them. He made words sing, and he made people laugh and cry. He also made them think—about loneliness, self-deception, and injustice. And in all that he wrote, he testified to his belief that everything that lives is holy. (ix)","PeriodicalId":40417,"journal":{"name":"Steinbeck Review","volume":"14 1","pages":"v - xi"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48632586","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Steinbeck ReviewPub Date : 2017-11-23DOI: 10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.0131
Kathleen Hicks
{"title":"Steinbeck's Humble Parable: \"He who has ears, let him hear\"","authors":"Kathleen Hicks","doi":"10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.0131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.0131","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the implications of reading John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men as a parable. Through a comparison of the novel's character types and plot events to similar features in the parables of Christ, this article argues that the root cause of Steinbeck's characters' aching loneliness is pride, which prevents them from making meaningful connections with other human beings. The antidote to their pitiable condition, humility, seems out of reach for most of the characters who are unable to overcome their own hubris and self-love in order to establish authentic relationships with others.","PeriodicalId":40417,"journal":{"name":"Steinbeck Review","volume":"14 1","pages":"131 - 150"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46373735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Steinbeck ReviewPub Date : 2017-11-23DOI: 10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.0164
Li Zheng
{"title":"The Human Struggle between Darkness and Light: A Virtue Ethic Study of John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent","authors":"Li Zheng","doi":"10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.0164","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.0164","url":null,"abstract":"With the American psychologist Erich Fromm’s humanistic ethics as a point of reference, this article analyzes The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), John Steinbeck’s final work of fiction. This novel focuses on protagonist Ethan Allen Hawley as he succumbs to the influence of corrupt social values and thereby fails to actualize his primary potentiality for goodness. At the novel’s end, however, as he is on the verge of suicide, he thinks about the innocence of his daughter, Ellen, and experiences an epiphany of light that leads to a realization of love for self and others. Overcoming his sense of alienation from the good, he embarks on a course of active freedom that will enable him to go on with his life. Steinbeck’s exquisite depiction of Ethan’s moral development reflects his own ethical concerns about the well-being of his beloved America.","PeriodicalId":40417,"journal":{"name":"Steinbeck Review","volume":"14 1","pages":"164 - 176"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45110562","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Steinbeck ReviewPub Date : 2017-11-23DOI: 10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.0151
Elisabeth Bayley
{"title":"John Steinbeck's To a God Unknown and Wendell Berry: An Ecocritical View","authors":"Elisabeth Bayley","doi":"10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.0151","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.0151","url":null,"abstract":"John Steinbeck's To a God Unknown actively engages an ecocritical imagination. This article is an ecocritical exploration of Steinbeck's work, in particular this novel. Elements of the human desire to have power over the land, the connection between the physical body and the land, and mystical underpinnings are points of focus. Wendell Berry's agrarian and communal arguments are used alongside these themes to show that Steinbeck may have been questioning how human beings can be connected with the land and with other people in a constructive, rather than a dominating or destructive manner.","PeriodicalId":40417,"journal":{"name":"Steinbeck Review","volume":"14 1","pages":"151 - 163"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45237664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Steinbeck ReviewPub Date : 2017-11-23DOI: 10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.0177
Thomas E. Barden
{"title":"Race in Steinbeck's Novelette Lifeboat","authors":"Thomas E. Barden","doi":"10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.0177","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.0177","url":null,"abstract":"Crooks, the stable hand in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, was the only black character Steinbeck created who was published. He created another black character, Joe, for his novelette Lifeboat, but Joe as Steinbeck wrote him never came before either a reading or movie-going public since his draft story was not used as the basis for the Alfred Hitchcock film.","PeriodicalId":40417,"journal":{"name":"Steinbeck Review","volume":"14 1","pages":"177 - 183"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43492315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Steinbeck ReviewPub Date : 2017-11-23DOI: 10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.0184
Elin Käck
{"title":"\"They fix 'em so you can't win nothing\": Agency in The Grapes of Wrath","authors":"Elin Käck","doi":"10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.0184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/STEINBECKREVIEW.14.2.0184","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:While The Grapes of Wrath highlights specific social and institutional structures that direct the course of action of its main characters, shifting the analysis from structure to agency opens up the novel to new readings. This article considers how Steinbeck's novel problematizes agency and argues that it troubles distinctions between human agency and nonhuman agency. Traditional novels generally rely on the actions of their characters, but in The Grapes of Wrath such action is repeatedly thwarted or fails to lead to the desired outcome. Instead, the characters are acted on through various machines or chains of actors that lead back to a vague and bodiless entity, such as the monster-bank. The novel's emphasis on the tractor, the automobile, the handbill, and the bank provides the basis for my reading, together with more subtle instantiations of material agency as seen in the phonograph, the slot machine, the kerosene, and the sticker displayed on the red truck. Agency has traditionally rested on the notion of free will and intention, but recent theories, such as actor-network-theory, or ANT, highlight material agency and move beyond the subject in favor of networks and distribution of agency. This article uses theories on agency to reread Steinbeck's classic novel, but also attempts to show how Steinbeck's novel can increase our understanding of the concept of agency more broadly.","PeriodicalId":40417,"journal":{"name":"Steinbeck Review","volume":"14 1","pages":"184 - 200"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47055934","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}