Reviews - Reflections

## REFLECTIONS
### *Longer Essays on Writers, Books, and the Writing Life*

Below is the first of a series of reflective essays — deeper, longer explorations of the authors and works that have shaped my reading, my writing, and my thinking.

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## **STEINBECK IN RETROSPECT: The Man and His Work**
*By Eric J. Drysdale*

FEATURED REFLECTION

John Steinbeck: Writing with the Grain of the Human Heart

John Steinbeck once wrote that a novelist should “try to understand men, and if he does not try, he is no writer.” It is a deceptively simple statement — almost plainspoken — yet it contains the whole architecture of Steinbeck’s creative life. What he asks of the writer is not brilliance, nor stylistic fireworks, nor even originality, but an enduring effort to know the human condition from the inside.

Steinbeck’s moral vision was grounded not in grand theory but in lived empathy. His characters move through hardship, dignity, humour, and frailty with a kind of plain truthfulness. They are never engineered symbols; they breathe. Even when he wrote of systemic ruin — poverty, exploitation, dislocation — he kept his attention fixed on the people caught in the machinery, the way their hopes bend but do not quite break.

At the heart of Steinbeck’s craft lies a belief that a writer’s task is to stand beside the reader and say, in effect, “Look — this is who we are. This is what we do to one another, and what we owe.” His novels are built from a profound attentiveness: to voices, to landscapes, to the quiet, unrecorded moments that shape a life. He writes with the grain of the human heart, never sanding it smooth.

For anyone who cares about storytelling as moral enquiry, Steinbeck remains a steady companion. He shows that compassion need not soften a book, nor righteousness harden it. When the writing is honest — when it seeks to understand rather than judge — it becomes a kind of illumination.

Steinbeck reminds us still: literature is not merely words on a page, but a continuous conversation about what it means to be human.

STEINBECK IN RETROSPECT

The Man And His Work

Eric J Drysdale

On the 20th of December 1968 John Steinbeck died of a heart disease. It was the end of an era the final laying down of a pen that had brought forth some of the finest writing in the history of American literature.

The criticism had been voluminous: both for and against, just and unjust. But now, in the final analysis, the criticism did not matter. What did matter was that he had done the best of which he was capable, and had honestly reproduced the kaleidoscope of life that had passed before his eyes.

His own evaluation of a man’s worth can be applied here:

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too – in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well – or ill?

John Ernst Steinbeck was born on 27th February 1902 in Salinas Valley. His parents were of Irish, German and American descent, and his father was miller and once Treasurer of Monterey County. He was the only son. During school holidays he worked on farms in the neighbourhood, and with his maturing years there grew a love for the valley. But this was not a blind love; he loved the valley as he later loved America, perceptive of both good and bad, tender and harsh aspects of the land and its people.

After graduation from school, where science was an early interest, he worked for a year as assistant chemist in a sugar beet factory near Salinas, before enrolling at the not too distant University of Stanford in 1920. This he attended intermittently for five years, then left without a degree, and went to New York. Achieving no literary success he returned to a job as a caretaker on an estate by Lake Tahoe in the Californian Sierras. It was here that he completed his first published novel, CUP OF GOLD, a historical romance that excited little interest. This was his fourth book, two he had destroyed and the other had been rejected.

In 1930 he married Carol Henning and moved to Pacific Grove on a monthly allowance of $25 from his family. He tried to sell short stories, fashioned a new novel, and formed a firm friendship with Ed Ricketts.

1931 was the beginning of his life-long association with his literary agents, McIntosh and Otis. Many authors switch agents in mid-stream once they become successful, but Steinbeck was not one of these, and over the years Elizabeth Otis is mentioned frequently with affection and as a long-time friend.

CUP OF GOLD, THE PASTURES OF HEAVEN (1932), a collection of related short stories, and TO A GOD UNKNOWN (1933) had had combined sales of less than 3,000 copies when TORTILLA FLAT was published in 1935. This was well received and sold to Hollywood, a medium in which he then had no interest. On the contrary, he was somewhat perturbed by his success.

IN DUBIOUS BATTLE, his next novel, won a prize for the best Californian novel of 1936, and on the strength of this he was hired by The San Francisco News to write about California’s migrant labour camps. He drove to Oklahoma, where he joined a group of migrant workers, living and working with them as they travelled to California.

OF MICE AND MEN appeared in February 1937, and with this he attained national prominence. It was taken up by the Book-of-the-Month Club, won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for the best play of 1937, and was filmed in 1940.

THE LONG VALLEY was next, and came out in 1938. A collection of short stories set in the California he knew so well, most of them had been published before TORTILLA FLAT, but they comprise some of his finest writing, and some foreshadow the themes of work to come.

His most unusual sale was THE SNAKE, one of the stories collected here. In 1935 the Monterey Beacon, a ‘little magazine’ run in conjunction with a stable, ‘paid’ him six months’ use of a big bay hunter. Not having had a horse in years, Steinbeck was utterly delighted with the trade.

The articles on the migrant workers were collected in a volume called THEIR BLOOD IS STRONG. From his experiences and emotional involvement emerged a book, but he withdrew it and stated in a letter to both his agent and his publisher:

“This book is finished, and it is a bad book and I must get rid of it. It can’t be printed. It is bad because it isn’t honest. I’m not telling as much of the truth as I know.”

By the end of 1938 a book embracing the same subject had been written. THE GRAPES OF WRATH, which is usually looked upon as the culminating work of his career, and his best novel, appeared on the book shelves in April 1939.

Apart from being a passionate and vivid picture of the dispossessed farmers, and the inhumanities to which they were subjected, it takes on a broader and more universal aspect, which is found in much of Steinbeck’s work.

THE GRAPES OF WRATH was a national controversy, it was eagerly read by millions, and urged on friends and public authorities. On the other side of the coin it was banned, it was denounced as sensationalism, propaganda, obscenity, and – in Oklahoma – as a vile defamation of a fine sovereign state of the union.

Symbolism is an integral part of Steinbeck, and he enhances this by lucid description and constantly appealing to the five senses.

Share farming is no longer economical; one tractor can replace a dozen families, so they have to go. The tractors plough up the fields, and the cold steel ploughs through their homes, slicing their lives and churning them into the dying earth. And he tells how their ancestors fought for the land, and died for it, and are buried in it. And they have to go.

When they reach the Californian paradise they find that they are the victims of an economic monster, the source of cheap labour, slave labour, for avaricious farmers. They have been tricked. Their families starve in tattered tents, and thousands of them scrabble in the dust for every hour’s work. And some are lucky and get paid a pittance. But the farmer owns a store, and by exorbitant charges he extorts the money back again. And they work to eat, to work to eat.

Towards the end of the book he describes the lengths to which the owners will go to keep the prices up, and how they are devoid of any consideration for the starving thousands.

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Car-loads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit – and kerosene sprayed on the golden mountains.

And the smell of rot fills the country

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And the coroners must fill in the certificates – died of malnutrition – because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

And in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

It is a book about desolation, hardship and death, but in the powerful closing chapter the harsh tone is tempered and Steinbeck implies that the life force will always predominate, that man will go on, and that if there is a little charity to one another the going on may be a little easier.

Conditions were even worse than Steinbeck depicted, and early in 1938, while he was caught up in the plight of the dispossessed, he wrote to his agents:

I must go over into the interior valleys. There are five thousand families starving to death over there, not just hungry, but actually starving… In one tent there are twenty people quarantined for smallpox and two of the women are to have babies in that tent this week… Talk about Spanish children. The death of children by starvation in our valleys is simply staggering… I’ll do what I can... Funny how mean and how little books become in the face of such tragedies.

When Life magazine offered to send him into the field with a photographer to write about the migrants, he informed his agents that he would accept no money other than expenses. I am sorry but I simply cannot make money on these people… The suffering is too great for me to cash in on it.

By autumn of 1938 THE GRAPES OF WRATH was in its final stages, but the growth of the book had taken its toll on him, and he wrote: I am desperately tired, but I want to finish. I feel as though shrapnel were bursting about my head. I only hope the book is some good. Can’t tell yet at all.

On completion Steinbeck was exhausted. He was confined to bed for some weeks and forbidden on doctor’s orders to read or write.

In THE WIDE WORLD OF JOHN STEINBECK, Peter Lisca says of The Grapes: No other American novel has succeeded in forging and making instrumental so many prose styles. Even a cursory reading will reveal that this is not only true, but that each prose style is ideally suited to the mood of the particular chapter. Lisca states further that the book is made up of three major parts: the drought, the journey, and California, and that these parts correspond to the oppression in Egypt, the exodus, and sojourn in the land of Canaan. Like the structure of the novel, the philosophical passages also have their roots in the Old Testament.

The title is taken from The Battle Hymn of the Republic, (He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored).

His days of anonymity were over and he complained in 1939: I am so busy being a writer that I haven’t time to write.

The book won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize and was made into a great film by John Ford with the young Henry Fonda in the lead role.

He was firmly established as one of the major figures on the literary scene.

SEA OF CORTEZ, an account of the expedition with his friend Ed Ricketts, came out in 1941. Later that year he wrote the film script for THE FORGOTTEN VILLAGE.

Early in 1942, THE MOON IS DOWN, both novel and play, received a mixed reaction, but it became very popular among resistance movements throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, and the King of Norway thought enough of its effectiveness to decorate Steinbeck for it.

Later in the year he produced the propaganda book BOMBS AWAY: The Story of a Bomber Team for the Air Force. This was bought by Hollywood for $250,000, but Steinbeck turned over all royalties to the Air Forces Aid Society Trust Fund.

He and his wife had separated in 1941. After the divorce was granted in 1943 he married Gwyn Conger (Verdon), who became the mother of his two children, Thom and John. Shortly after his marriage he was in Europe as a war correspondent for The New York Herald Tribune. These graphic reports were later collected under the title ONCE THERE WAS A WAR.

If the reception of THE MOON IS DOWN had been mild, considerably more enthusiasm greeted his film script for Hitchcock’s LIFEBOAT, which was a hit on release in 1944.

Returning from the War he quickly wrote CANNERY ROW. This was published in 1945 and he wrote the script for A MEDAL FOR BENNY the same year.

With his second marriage he had moved to New York, a move the critics felt adversely affected his fiction.

The following two years he produced THE PEARL, the screen play for this, and THE WAYWARD BUS, and the summer of 1947 found him abroad again, this time in the company of photographer Robert Capa on a trip to Russia. From this came his text for A RUSSIAN JOURNAL.

In 1948 he worked on the film script of his four related short stories, THE RED PONY, which had been collected in the extended version of THE LONG VALLEY. His second marriage ended in divorce the same year, and on another final note, his friend Ed Ricketts was killed in a railway crossing smash.

From the end of ’48 through to early 1950 he was occupied with the story and script of VIVA ZAPATA. He also wrote a memorial sketch to supplement the book about his and Ed Ricketts’ expedition, changing the title to THE LOG FROM THE SEA OF CORTEZ.

BURNING BRIGHT, the third and least successful of his play-novelettes, was published in 1950, and in December of that year he married Elaine Scott, who had been divorced from movie actor Zachary Scott. This was reputed to be the happiest marriage, a fact which is borne out ten years later in TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY, and even more so in STEINBECK – A LIFE IN LETTERS, which Mrs. Steinbeck co-edited and published posthumously in 1975. This large book covers selections of letters written by Steinbeck from 1926 to 1968. In their entirety these offer an insight into the man; an autobiographical self-analysis and a montage of his adult life.

He was an unwilling celebrity all his life, shunning ceremonies and interviews as much as possible. He lived simply and inconspicuously, in a nondescript brownstone on New York’s Upper East Side, and in the mid-1950s he bought a country cottage at Sag Harbor, Long Island, as well.

On Lincoln’s birthday, 12th February, 1951, he started writing his next book, which was initially entitled ‘Salinas Valley’, and was to become EAST OF EDEN. He had been preparing and researching for years and was finally ready. In a large note book supplied by his friend and editor. Pascal Covici, he kept a work diary on the left hand side and wrote the text of the novel on the right. The diary, a sort of arguing ground for the day’s work, was addressed to Covici, and has now been published posthumously. This is invaluable in that it reveals a great deal about both the author and the man.

In discussing the book at the beginning he says: This book will be the most difficult of all I have ever attempted. Whether I am good enough or gifted enough remains to be seen. I do have a good background. I have love and I have had pain. I still have anger but I can find no bitterness in myself.

EAST OF EDEN was published in 1952. The sagas of the Trasks and Steinbeck’s maternal relations, the Hamiltons, are woven into the tapestry of the development of Salinas Valley, and throwing their shadows across the scenes are religious parallels relating to Cain and Abel. With such a broad canvass his knowledge of, and love for, the valley is shown to full advantage.

The Salinas Valley is in Northern California. It is a long narrow swale between two ranges of mountains, and the Salinas River winds and twists up the center until it falls at last into Monterey Bay.

On the wide level acres of the valley the topsoil lay deep and fertile. It required only a deep winter of rain to make it break forth in grass and flowers. The spring flowers in a wet year were unbelievable. The whole valley floor, and the foothills too, would be carpeted with lupins and poppies.

That was how he remembered it, and it is interesting to note the change he sees when he visits his valley in 1960.

I find it not one thing but many – one printed over another until the whole thing blurs. What it is is warped with memory of what it was and that with what happened there to me, the whole bundle wracked until objectiveness is nigh impossible. This four-lane concrete highway slashed with speeding cars I remember as a narrow, twisting mountain road where the wood teams moved, drawn by steady mules. This was a little little town, a general store under a tree and a blacksmith’s shop and a bench in front on which to sit and listen to the clang of hammer on anvil. Now, little houses, each one like the next, particularly since they try to be different, spread for a mile in all directions.

When analysing the religious parallels of EAST OF EDEN it is found that they center around the first sixteen verses of the fourth chapter of Genesis. The title itself is taken from the sixteenth verse: And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. Adam Trask has two sons who bear the names Caleb and Aron, and who symbolize Cain and Abel. They both have the blood of the evil Cathy in their veins, but it is Cal who has to fight to suppress his hereditary influence. In the end, when Adam is dying, he forgives Cal, and the book closes by reverting to Genesis.

He was a great writer, and a writer of great diversity, and although he was at his best as a regional writer, and his ear was truest when he reproduced the speech of semi-literate migrant workers, or uncultivated people, he explored many fields. Hollywood also owes him a debt, for his list of screen plays, and works adapted to the screen, number over a dozen.

SWEET THURSDAY, originally conceived as an extension of CANNERY ROW in the form of a musical play, was on the shelves in 1954. The musical version, by Rodgers and Hammerstein appeared on Broadway in 1955 under the title of ‘Pipe Dream’. It was a tender and nostalgic memory of his friend Ed Ricketts, but the critics were harsh, feeling that it was a come-down from EAST OF EDEN.

A husky six-footer, with brown, and later grey hair, he preferred sweaters and baggy trousers to conventional attire. Although he avoided publicity he had a small circle of friends who were always welcome at his home.

In the 1950s he wrote considerably for magazines, including Holiday and Saturday Review. THE SHORT REIGN OF PIPPIN 1V, an intellectual comedy set in contemporary Paris, was published in 1957, and while he was writing this the previous year he took time out to cover the National Conventions for the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Once he had finished ‘Pippin’ he began researching a work that had been in the back of his mind for over three decades: the story of King Arthur. Over the next twelve years until his death he worked on it, put it aside, wrote other books, and worked on it some more. Now, eight years after his death, twenty years after his quest began, and with the efforts of his friend Chase Horton, it has finally been published under the title of THE ACTS OF KING ARTHUR AND HIS NOBLE KNIGHTS.

The next book to be published was THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT in 1961. Set in New England, it is his only first person novel. It is an indictment of modern society with its trivial and materialistic pursuits, and traces the ascent of Ethan Allen Hawley from the impoverished descendant of local aristocracy to new heights of affluence and importance. The novel begins on Good Friday of 1960 and ends just after American Independence Day. These dates are significant because the theme of corruption is explored on both a religious and patriotic level.

Symbolism is again apparent: Ethan represents Judas, only here it is the betrayer who experiences the passion and the resurrection; his wife, Mary, is the Virgin Mary; and Margie Young-Hunt (hunting for her youth) is Mary Magdalene.

THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT represented a return to power, and as a result of it he was requested to receive the 1962 Nobel Prize.

He was the sixth American author to achieve this highest point of literary fame, and it was later revealed that he had been regularly considered for almost a decade. In the words of the Swedish Academy the reason for the award was:

For his realistic as well as imaginative writings, distinguished by a sympathetic humour and a keen social perception.

Anders Osterling, Permanent Secretary of the Academy, stated at the presentation:

Among the masters of modern American literature who have already been awarded this prize – from Sinclair Lewis to Ernest Hemingway – Steinbeck more than holds his own; independent in position and achievement.

In his acceptance speech Steinbeck expressed his appreciation and stated how he felt about writing and the writer’s responsibility:

“Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed.

The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.

TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY had already been published when he received the Nobel Prize; a travelogue of sorts, it was a journey of rediscovery through the America he loved.

American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash – all of them – surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered with rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if in no other way, we can see the wild and reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index.

In another observation he comments on hunters and hunting: We have inherited many attitudes from our recent ancestors who wrestled this continent as Jacob wrestled the angel, and the pioneers won. From them we take a belief that every American is a natural-born hunter. And every fall a great number of men set out to prove that without talent, training, knowledge, or practice they are dead shots with rifle or shotgun. The result is horrid.

Somehow the hunting process has to do with masculinity, but I don’t quite know how. I know there are any number of good and efficient hunters who know what they are doing; but many more are overweight gentlemen, primed with whisky and armed with high-powered rifles. They shoot at anything that moves or looks as though it might, and their success in killing one another may well prevent a population explosion. If the casualties were limited to their own kind there would be no problem, but the slaughter of cows, pigs, farmers, dogs, and highway signs makes autumn a dangerous season in which to travel.

The radios warned against carrying a white handkerchief. Too many hunters seeing a flash of white have taken it for the tail of a running deer and cured a head cold with a single shot.

Thomas Guinzburg, his publisher, said of his post-Prize activities: The Prize did terrible things to John’s ability to create fiction. He felt vastly frustrated and he wouldn’t fool around with an entertainment or something light to break the tension. And this was no doubt the reason his remaining efforts were journalistic or documentary.

AMERICA AND AMERICANS, a social and political analysis, with the text by Steinbeck, and photos by dozens of noted photographers, was published in 1966, and here again one finds the power, directness, and simplicity that is his hallmark:

America did not exist. Four centuries of work, of bloodshed, of loneliness and fear created this land. We built America and the process made us Americans – a new breed, rooted in all races, stained and tinted with all colors, a seeming ethnic anarchy. Then in a little, little time, we became more alike than we were different – a new society; not great, but fitted by our very faults for greatness.

In 1966 and ’67 he became a roving reporter again, reporting on the war in Vietnam, and running a syndicated column. However, in 1968 his health began to fail. He rallied in the last week, but died during the late afternoon of Friday 20th December, 1968. He was cremated in New York, and his ashes were taken for burial in his beloved Salinas Valley.

In his eloquent afterword to AMERICA AND AMERICANS he proves once and for all where his loyalty lies, and that his prime concern is man’s continuing survival with dignity. This was the last book he wrote, and it is fitting to close with his final words:

Now we face the danger which in the past has been most destructive to the human: success – plenty, comfort, and ever-increasing leisure. No dynamic people has ever survived these dangers. If the anaesthetic of satisfaction were added to our hazards, we would not have a chance of survival – as Americans.

From our beginning, in hindsight at least, our social direction is clear. We have moved to become one people out of many. We have failed sometimes, taken wrong paths, paused for renewal, filled our bellies and licked our wounds; but we have never slipped back – never.

***

LIST OF PRIZES AND MEDALS:

1934 THE MURDER (short story) O. Henry Prize

1935 TORTILLA FLAT Commonwealth Club Award

1936 TORTILLA FLAT California Literature Medal Award

General Literature – Gold Medal

1937 IN DUBIOUS BATTLE California Literature Medal Award

General Literature – Gold Medal

1937 OF MICE AND MEN New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award –

Best play of the year

1940 THE GRAPES OF WRATH National Book Award

1940 THE GRAPES OF WRATH Pulitzer Prize

1940 THE GRAPES OF WRATH California Literature Medal Award

General Literature – Gold Medal

1946 THE MOON IS DOWN King Haakon Liberty Cross (Norway)

1948 Elected to the Academy of Arts and Letters

1962 Nobel Prize

1964 TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY Paperback of the Year Award

From Bestsellers Magazine

1964 Presidential Medal of Freedom

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF SOURCES OF QUOTES AND EXTRACTS

These are shown in italics

Title Approx. No. Words

AMERICA AND AMERICANS 175

EAST OF EDEN 230

THE GRAPES OF WRATH 225

TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY 375

THE WIDE WORLD OF JOHN STEINBECK 125

By Peter Lisca

*****

Footnote:

August 2022.

I have been a keen admirer of John Steinbeck since the early 1960s when I was a teenager. Having read over 5,000 books he remains my favourite writer of the twentieth century. In the early 1970s I wrote a radio feature on him, which was broadcast in New Zealand, and soon after, a biographical article which was published in The Mark Twain Journal in America.

Now, 53 years after he died on 20 December 1968, just short of his 67th birthday, and roughly 50 years since I wrote the radio feature and the article, on rereading the article I feel many readers will find it an interesting examination of the man and his work. At the time it was the most comprehensive piece written on Steinbeck, not the longest, but one that covered the span of his 66 years. This is something you can read at a sitting, and, if you are caught by even a small portion of my enthusiasm, you will cross to the bookshelf to select a preferred title. If he is new to you select titles that appeal to you from my descriptions and immerse yourself in the depiction of times, places and people now long gone by a true master of the language. If you want to learn more about the man, his life and times I cannot recommend Jay Parini’s excellent biography JOHN STEINBECK: A BIOGRAPHY too highly.

Below is a current Bibliography and Filmography so you can access the most up to date information.

Bibliography

Filmography

· 1939: Of Mice and Men—directed by Lewis Milestone, featuring Burgess Meredith, Lon Chaney, Jr., and Betty Field

· 1940: The Grapes of Wrath—directed by John Ford, featuring Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell and John Carradine

· 1941: The Forgotten Village—directed by Alexander Hammid and Herbert Kline, narrated by Burgess Meredith, music by Hanns Eisler

· 1942: Tortilla Flat—directed by Victor Fleming, featuring Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr and John Garfield

· 1943: The Moon is Down—directed by Irving Pichel, featuring Lee J. Cobb and Sir Cedric Hardwicke

· 1944: Lifeboat—directed by Alfred Hitchcock, featuring Tallulah Bankhead, Hume Cronyn, and John Hodiak

· 1944: A Medal for Benny—directed by Irving Pichel, featuring Dorothy Lamour and Arturo de Cordova

· 1947: La Perla (The Pearl, Mexico)—directed by Emilio Fernández, featuring Pedro Armendáriz and María Elena Marqués

· 1949: The Red Pony—directed by Lewis Milestone, featuring Myrna Loy, Robert Mitchum, and Louis Calhern

· 1952: Viva Zapata!—directed by Elia Kazan, featuring Marlon Brando, Anthony Quinn and Jean Peters

· 1955: East of Eden—directed by Elia Kazan, featuring James Dean, Julie Harris, Jo Van Fleet, and Raymond Massey

· 1957: The Wayward Bus—directed by Victor Vicas, featuring Rick Jason, Jayne Mansfield, and Joan Collins

· 1961: Flight—featuring Efrain Ramírez and Arnelia Cortez

· 1962: Ikimize bir dünya (Of Mice and Men, Turkey)

· 1972: Topoli (Of Mice and Men, Iran)

· 1982: Cannery Row—directed by David S. Ward, featuring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger

· 1992: Of Mice and Men—directed by Gary Sinise and starring John Malkovich and Gary Sinise

· 2016: In Dubious Battle—directed by James Franco and featuring Franco, Nat Wolff and Selena Gomez

THE END

Visit my Goodreads Author Page for additional reviews and reflections.

Author’s Note:

This page combines my personal reflections and book reviews originally written for my Goodreads Author Page — where over fifty titles are discussed — together with selected essays on writers who have shaped my creative outlook, including “Steinbeck in Retrospect: The Man and His Work.”

Quotations from the reviewed books and related literary commentary are included for educational and critical purposes under accepted fair use principles. All works remain the copyright of their respective authors and publishers.

— Eric J. Drysdale, November 2025

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Transitional Note

Much of what I admire in John Steinbeck — the moral inquiry through human fate, the compassion for ordinary lives, and the elegance of prose — also resonates in the writers whose work follows below. The reviews that form this section reflect not only a lifetime of reading but also the writers who have influenced and enriched my own creative journey.

BOOK REVIEWS

(Alphabetical by Author Surname)

Pat Conroy – The Prince of Tides
I first found The Prince of Tides in the late 1980s and immediately was taken with the quality of Conroy’s prose, and, as I moved into the book, the depth of the complex, layered and human characters. I have since read it various times and also seen the 1991 Barbra Streisand, Nick Nolte movie four times.
This is a book constructed with care, dedication and a deep, abiding love of the language. It is a book to surrender yourself into and feel completely safe knowing you are guided by one of the finest writing craftsmen of the second half of the 20th Century.
Tom Wingo loses his job as a high school English teacher and football coach in South Carolina. The problems keep mounting when he is advised his twin sister, Savannah, has tried yet again to commit suicide, and he has to leave his wife and three daughters to go to New York to try to help her. In addition, he finds his wife, Sallie, has been having an affair.
Once in New York he meets Susan Lowenstein, Savannah’s psychiatrist, who asks him to provide background on the dysfunctional Wingo family and traumatic events from the children’s formative years in the hope she may be able to steer Savannah back to some degree of normalcy.
With this foundation Conroy provides the reader with a rich feast and some of the very best descriptions I have read of life in the South.
Happy reading, Eric.

Allen Drury – Advise and Consent
Allen Drury spent 15 years in Washington for various newspapers, most significantly in the 1950s for The New York Times, reporting on the body politic, its failings and illnesses. With these experiences as background he produced his first novel, Advise and Consent, published in 1959, which spent 102 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller List and won the 1960 Pulitzer Prize. In my opinion, and many others, this, and the five books in the series that followed, form the definitive novels on Washington.
Advise and Consent is set in the United States Senate where a controversial member has been nominated for Secretary of State. It follows a broad range of characters, exceptionally well defined, who either support or denigrate him. I found this and its sequels a fascinating body of work, exploring those who seek to secure power on the world stage, what they will do to retain it, and what their enemies will do to bring them down.
Interestingly, as an aside, Drury died on his 80th birthday (September 2, 1918 – September 2, 1998), probably the second most famous person to die on their birthday in the 20th Century, the other being Ingrid Bergman (29 August, 1915 – 29 August, 1982).
Happy reading, Eric.

Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me...”
Most serious readers will be as familiar with the first paragraph of Rebecca as they are with “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
I first read Rebecca in my mid-teens and have re-visited it many times over the intervening 60-plus years, including an excellent audio edition narrated by Anna Massey. In addition I have watched the 1940 Hitchcock classic starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine eleven times, most recently when Norma and I watched it on 28 April 2020.
This is a perennial favourite for me in both forms. No doubt du Maurier’s best and most successful book. Remarkably she establishes the sense of uncertainty and menace in the first couple of paragraphs and maintains it over the entire novel.
The innocent, naïve un-named heroine (I prefer “female lead”), who early on becomes Mrs. Maxim de Winter, struggles to find her footing in her new world of wealth and power, to cope with the secrets behind the walls of Manderley, her troubled new husband, the menace of Mrs. Danvers, and the all-pervasive presence of Rebecca, Maxim’s first wife.
Happy reading, Eric.

R. J. Ellory – A Quiet Belief in Angels
As many of you know I believe strongly that the quality of our life and the pleasure in our days is immeasurably enhanced by our exposure to and appreciation of books, movies and music. There is great joy in finding the book, movie or piece of music that resonates with you and even takes your breath away.
This happened for me in August 2015 with R. J. Ellory’s masterly A Quiet Belief in Angels. I was immersed in Roger’s prose within the first few paragraphs and couldn’t believe my good fortune when it just kept going page after page. Rarely have I read a book that evoked the time, place, and people so beautifully.
Twelve-year-old Joseph Calvin Vaughan is growing up in rural Georgia in 1939. His young life is assaulted by the death of his father and the murder of a young girl — the first of many.
The book is told from Joseph’s viewpoint, and his struggle to come to grips with his radically impacted home and community life provides the basis for the symbolic title.
This is the best book I have read in 20 years. Remarkably it has vaulted into the top half-dozen in a lifetime of reading and over 5,000 books read. This is right up there with The Grapes of Wrath, The Egyptian, The Prince of Tides, Look Homeward, Angel and Plough the Sea.
Happy reading, Eric.

William Humphrey – Home from the Hill

One of the Great Ones

I first read this wonderful novel in 1968, at which time it established itself in my top ten favourites, where it has remained ever since — even after reading over 5,000 books. Ten years later I read it again and decided to write to William Humphrey. In those days, long before emails, it was an air-mail letter from the Antipodes to America.

In that first letter I made the observation that I could not help but draw comparisons between him and James Agee: both grew up in small rural American communities (he in Clarksville, East Texas; Agee in Knoxville, Tennessee), both lost their fathers in car accidents when they were boys, and both wrote highly successful novels drawing on the impact their fathers’ deaths had on their young lives. Both went on to luminous literary careers — Agee posthumously winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1958 for A Death in the Family. I felt that Humphrey, too, should have won the Pulitzer for Home from the Hill.

We subsequently exchanged a number of letters. I sent him a copy of an early published short story of mine, The Dry Land, set in outback Australia, which I felt he would find interesting, and he very kindly sent me a copy of his recently published book Farther Off from Heaven, which dealt with his youth and coping with his father’s death. Forty years later this still sits on my bookshelf, along with all of Bill’s novels and short stories.

In one of his letters Humphrey indicated he had not seen the film; however, I feel he would not have been unhappy with Vincente Minnelli’s treatment of his novel, and Robert Mitchum made a fine Wade Hunnicutt.

I believe William Humphrey is one of the finest writers of the 20th century, and his skills have never been better displayed than in this, his first novel. If you enjoy family sagas set against a vivid background richly evocative of both time and place, you will be drawn into the drama of the Hunnicutts and the repercussions of their actions. In a sense it is a coming-of-age story, with the sensitive young Theron caught in the conflict between his parents, striving to fit in with his mother’s wishes and win the approval of his powerful, demanding father. Yet it is more than that — exploring the choices the characters make and depicting where those decisions will lead them. Few examples in literature better show how the sins of the father may be visited upon the firstborn.

This is among a small number of books that I periodically read again to savour the pleasure of the prose, the interactions of the characters, and the unfolding of the plot — The Grapes of Wrath, The Egyptian, Plough the Sea, All the King’s Men, Look Homeward, Angel and The Prince of Tides being some of the others.

From early times I have been inclined toward books with symbolic titles, often drawn from Shakespeare or the Old Testament. This was no exception, the title being taken from Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous poem Requiem, which was inscribed — at his instruction — as his epitaph on the sarcophagus that marks his grave on the summit of Mount Vaea in Samoa:

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

I hope that some of my comments will encourage you to seek out this novel. I feel sure you will not be disappointed.

Happy reading, Eric.

Ross Lockridge Jr. – Raintree County
Raintree County is my primary contender for the Great American Novel — and I could easily be wrong, because the very idea of identifying and selecting a novel that satisfies the criteria, whatever that may be, is subjective.
To give you an idea of the diversity of opinion, go on Wikipedia and scroll through the listings and “interpretations” for The Great American Novel. It seems to me the book must in some way capture American life, the people, their history, conflicts and how they embrace the future.
Regardless of the edition, this is a 1,000-page-plus novel first published in 1948 that examines the life of the lead character, John Wickliff Shawnessy, the people in his circle, the challenges with which he copes — or does not. Shawnessy is a Midwestern teacher, lover of literature and poet in fictional Raintree County, Indiana.
In both linear and flashback sequences we follow him into the Civil War, his hopes, goals, romances and betrayals. The Raintree of the title is a mythical golden raintree supposedly planted in the county. Many of the major turning points in his life coincide with the Fourth of July and are aligned with the evolution of America in the second half of the 19th Century.
Despite its length, this was a novel in which I immersed myself in the characters, the prose and the mystique. In due time it became one of my twenty favourite novels.
Happy reading, Eric.

John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is my favourite novel from over 6,000 books read and John Steinbeck my favourite 20th-century author. I probably know more about Steinbeck than anyone else in Australia, having read virtually everything he wrote and much that was written about him in preparation for a radio feature I had broadcast in the early 1970s, plus a biographical article published soon after in the Mark Twain Journal in America.
Steinbeck structured The Grapes in the ideal way for how he wanted to present it to the readers: roughly, the odd chapters depict Man and Mankind — the macrocosm of Depression-era America — and the even chapters embrace the personal saga of the Joad family.
They are sharecroppers on the Oklahoma dustbowl who are dispossessed by drought and economic circumstances. Like many other families, they gather their belongings and head west to the Promised Land of California.
The title is taken from The Battle Hymn of the Republic: “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored”, which in turn is Biblical, linking to Revelation. Typical of much of Steinbeck’s work, it is rich in symbolism.
Tom Joad, the eldest son, is released from gaol and returns to the farm as the family is about to head west. He is the pivotal character, and Jim Casy anchors the novel within its spiritual context.
A huge success when first published — universally praised and damned — it has never been out of print, consistently sells around 150,000 copies a year, and has now sold more than 15 million.
If you want to learn more about Steinbeck and his work, Jay Parini’s John Steinbeck: A Biography is the best place to start.
If you only read one book a year (which would be really sad), and especially if you haven’t read it, this should be it.
Happy reading.
Footnote: The Grapes of Wrath won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962 and was awarded the United States Medal of Freedom in 1964.

Mika Waltari – The Egyptian
“I, Sinuhe, the son of Senmut and his wife Kipa, write this. I do not write it to the glory of the gods in the land of Kem, for I am weary of gods, nor to the glory of the Pharaohs, for I am weary of their deeds...”
And so begins Mika Waltari’s magnificent novel The Egyptian. I first read it in the 1960s, when it became — and has remained — my favourite historical novel from hundreds read.
Originally published in 1945, it is a real example of the importance of finding the right translator. Waltari was born in Finland, and Naomi Walford translated this, his first historical novel, into English. I do not speak Finnish, but somehow it seems to me she has captured his genius of language and expression.
I have never read a book that so ably and completely transports the reader back 3,000 years into ancient Egypt. You are there with Sinuhe during his youth, the chance encounter that leads to a friendship with the young Pharaoh, his apprenticeship as a physician, his disastrous obsession with Nefernefernefer, and finally, his exile.
As can be seen from the first paragraph, the novel is told in the first person, and in rich, lustrous prose Waltari shows us the lives of slave and Pharaoh, and all castes in between, of those who people the ancient land on the banks of the Nile.
This is one of my half-dozen favourite novels, one I periodically reread or pick up simply to glory in the prose paragraph after paragraph.
This is a magisterial work, certainly Waltari’s best and most famous novel, and one that deserves a place on the bookshelf of any discerning reader.
Happy reading, Eric.

Robert Wilder – Plough the Sea
From over 5,000 books read, one from my top half-dozen favourites is Robert Wilder’s Plough the Sea. Written in 1962, I first read it in late 1965 and have read it many times since, savouring each of the 420 pages and deriving rare pleasure from the quality of his prose and depiction of the characters.
The wonderfully symbolic title is taken from a quote from Simón Bolívar: “He who serves a revolution ploughs the sea.” The novel follows Jorge Ojeda from a teenage boy in Tampa, Florida, to his destiny as President of the fictional island of San Rafael in the Caribbean.
For me Wilder captured beautifully the sense of destiny, the challenges El Presidente faces day by day, the love he is denied by circumstance, the power of enduring friendship, and the richly drawn characters who populate this world.
A couple of extracts I want to share with you:
“It was mystical and as primitive as the sound of a drum; a sure feeling of destiny... Nothing he could do would hurry or delay the shaping of a pattern already drawn and waiting to be filled in by time alone.”
“The years spun themselves out of the skein of time and were woven into a rich fabric, the pattern of which was companionship, affection, understanding and a measure of love as it can exist between men.”
Sitting quietly and reading these pages to Norma reminds me of my grandfather and mother reading aloud to us by the open fire at night, as I have relayed in my story A Memory Ever Green.
Happy reading, Eric.

Thomas Wolfe – Look Homeward, Angel
A wonderful new reading of a literary classic.
(Review originally posted on Audible — narrated by Stefan Rudnicki)
This is a review of a long-time favourite — a book I revisit periodically to immerse myself in the luxuriant, exotic prose written for the author’s own satisfaction above any thought of future readers.
Above all, it is a review of a new audio edition narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Since 2000 I have listened to over 2,000 audiobooks, mainly on Audible, and without doubt Stefan has become my favourite narrator.
In Angel he excels himself. I can close my eyes and listen to the dialogue, the exchanges between Eugene Gant, his parents, Oliver and Eliza, and his siblings — Stevie, Luke, Ben and Helen — and the other characters from the various levels of Altamont society.
Look Homeward, Angel was Thomas Wolfe’s first novel, written in the 1920s when he was only in his twenties and first published in 1929. It follows the fortunes and misfortunes of the Gant family as they navigate their way through conflicts, alcoholism, disease and dysfunction.
Probably if you asked a hundred good readers for the three best “coming-of-age” novels of the 20th century, the majority would nominate two: Look Homeward, Angel (Eugene Gant) and The Catcher in the Rye (Holden Caulfield).
If you are an audiobook listener, I hope my extolling of the virtues of both Thomas Wolfe and Stefan Rudnicki encourages you to turn on the play button for hours of pure literary joy.