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"WORKING DAYS AND HOURS": STEINBECK'S WRITING OF THE GRAPES OF WRATW Robert DeMott Ohio University I wrote The Grapes ofWrath in one hundred days, but many years of preparation preceded it. I take a hell of a long time to get started. The actual writing is the last process.2 John Steinbeck's masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath (1939) had a complex foreground and grew through an eventful process of accretion and experimentation. In one way or another, from August 1936, when Steinbeck discovered the plight of the Dust Bowl refugees in California, a subject he told Louis Paul was "like nothing in the world," through October of 1939, when he vowed to put behind him "that part of my life that made the Grapes," the "Matter of the Migrants" was Steinbeck's major artistic preoccupation.3 "The writer can only write about what he admires," Steinbeck claimed, "and since our race admires gallantry, the writer will deal with it where he finds it. He finds it in the struggling poor now."4 From the moment Steinbeck entered the fray, he prophesied that the presence of the heroic, pioneer-stock Oklahoma migrants would change the fabric of California life. He had little foresight, however, about what his own role in that change would be, how difficult realizing his vision would become, or the degree to which his writing labors would change him. Between 1936 and 1938 Steinbeck's engagement with his material evolved through at least four major stages of writing: (1) A seven-part series of investigative reports, "The Harvest Gypsies," which appeared October 5-12, 1936, in the San Francisco News. (These were reprinted in the spring of 1938 as a pamphlet, Their Blood Is Strong, published by the Simon J. Lubin Society with a preface by John Barry.) (2) An unfinished novel, "The Oklahomans," which apparently belonged to late 1937 and which has not survived. (3) A "vicious" 70,000-word anti-vigilante satire , "L'Affaire Lettuceberg," which he finished between February and May of 1938 and then destroyed. And (4) The Grapes of Wrath, which was written in one hundred days between late May and late October of 1938.5 The ecologically minded Steinbeck wasted little of this material; aspects of setting, conflict, characterization, and theme established in the first three stages found their way into The Grapes of Wrath. Each stage shared a fixed core of opposing elements: on one side, the tyranny of 4 Robert DeMott California's industrialized agricultural system; on the other side, the innate dignity and resilience of the victimized American migrants. As Steinbeck unequivocally reminded San Francisco News columnist John Barry, "every effort I can bring to bear is and has been at the call of the common working people to the end that they may eat what they raise, wear what they weave, use what they produce, and in every way and in completeness share in the works of their hands and their heads. And the reverse is also true. I am actively opposed to any man or group who, through financial or political control of means of production and distribution, is able to control and dominate the lives of workers."6 Each stage of composition differs, however, in tone, style, and execution , so that by the time Steinbeck wrote his celebrated novel, his vision and his control had matured greatly. When Steinbeck witnessed the flooding and starvation at Visalia in February and March of 1938, his attitude toward the workers' plight deepened drastically. It was no longer possible for him to record those experiences in a cool, journalistic manner, as he had done in "The Harvest Gypsies." Stronger emotions were required to do the subject justice. At first it was blind anger in the case of "L'Affaire;" then, when that unbridled ferociousness seemed to trivialize both his talent and his subject, he called up in its place every ounce of moral indignation and compassion. Thus, besides providing the setting for the final chapters of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck's wounding at Visalia opened the floodgates of his attention, created the compelling justification ot the novel, provided its haunting spiritual urgency, and rooted it in the...

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