The Beauty of John Steinbeck

During literary discussions I have had with many of my friends, the name John Steinbeck always seems to come up. Usually by me. While I do not pretend to have read all, or even a small majority of what he wrote, I still count him as one of my favorite authors. In John Steinbeck, I meet a man who is both deeply realistic (sometimes even despairingly so), but yet seems to hold on to a shred of idealistic hope that somehow humankind can become better than we really are. He is a man who understands the life of the common working man, but by no means portrays his life as simple. His characters lives' are often incredibly complicated, much how we all perceive our own lives to be. His writings grapple with the existential anxieties, joys, and let downs that make up this life in a way that, in my opinion, few other authors do.

I've often said that being a true Californian almost requires one to love Steinbeck. I've joked with friends from Idaho that California produced Steinbeck, but Idaho took Hemingway (Hemingway committed suicide while living in Ketchum, Idaho). For me, California seems to pulse with the spirit of John Steinbeck; or perhaps it is the other way around. Wherever I am in the state of California, I can find something to remind me of Steinbeck. I can scarcely pass by any orchards without being reminded of the trials of the Joad family. I can scarcely hear the word Monterey without images of Cannery Row coming into my head. I can't hear Salinas without an entire plethora of Steinbeck imagery invading my brain. Anything remotely agricultural makes me think of Steinbeck, even up in my northeastern corner of California, which as far as I am aware, Steinbeck never mentioned. However, I often hear his words from "The Grapes of Wrath" about the great diesel tractors tearing up Oklahoma whenever I drive a tractor myself. When I think about the land, I can almost hear it being described in a way that only Steinbeck could do it.

The characters that Steinbeck creates, mostly the agricultural ones, I can imagine vividly. Though the characters he wrote about, and the people that I know are about a century apart, I can catch glimpses of his creations in the people I see everyday in my area. I believe that because Steinbeck worked on ranches in the Salinas area, he was able to give his literary agricultural workers the kind of life that only someone who has spent time among them is able.

His solidarity with the working man is something else that makes him great. It's hard for his works to raise sympathy for the rich and powerful in the world. From what I have read, his best characters are the poor and the working class. Steinbeck was known for this; "The Grapes of Wrath," for example, did draw criticism for what some considered to be a socialist bent. It is true that Steinbeck was associated with communists and leftists, for which he faced some government persecution. However, the working man deserved (and still does) deserve a voice in a world in which the rich and powerful often become so at the expense of the working classes.

Steinbeck's love of the land is also something that draws me to him. He clearly has a respect for the natural beauty of the world, but at the same time he does not come across as deeply anti-agricultural as many environmentalists do (I am not necessarily trying to throw him into the environmentalist camp, as I do not feel I know enough about him to place him anywhere). When he writes about land, he does so in such a way that makes me hate its destruction.

Steinbeck is truly an amazing author. The Nobel Prize in Literature that he was awarded should come as absolutely no surprise to anybody who has even cracked one of his books. I have enjoyed what I have read of his, and look forward to more. What he had to say about culture, people, and the land sixty years ago, still deserves a hearing today. It is my belief that people really do not change, and that history is more cyclic than linear. People still face the same existential anxieties that his characters did. The land is still precious and needs protection from exploitation. The working middle class still do often get the short end of the stick while the rich get richer. Steinbeck still has a lot to say.