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The Indifference of Nature and the Cruelty of Wealth 146 THERE ARE FEW NOVELISTS in the history of American literature whose work has been the subject of as much disagreement as John Steinbeck ’s. For some critics, his work embodies a tradition of American thought that is indebted to Emerson, Whitman, and Dewey, and extends what is unique to that tradition (see chapter 2, by Zoe Trodd).1 It is precisely the kind of literature that Emerson insisted Americans must develop for themselves. For others, Steinbeck’s work reached its full aesthetic potential with The Grapes of Wrath, the book for which he won a Nobel Prize.2 But the work following The Grapes of Wrath, beginning with the war novel The Moon Is Down, raises the question of whether the Nobel Prize should have been awarded on the basis of a single work. Steinbeck’s harshest critics argue that even The Grapes of Wrath is flawed by naïve left-wing, if not outright Marxist, sentimentality. Harold Bloom’s assessment illustrates the ambivalence with which Steinbeck’s work has been received. If Steinbeck is not an original or even an adequate stylist, if he lacks skill in plot and power in the mimesis of character, what then remains in his work, except its fairly constant popularity with an immense number of liberal middlebrows, both in his own country and abroad? Certainly he aspired beyond his aesthetic means. If the literary Sublime, or contest for the highest place, involves persuading the reader to yield up easier pleasures for more difficult pleasures, and it does, then Steinbeck should have avoided Emerson’s American Sublime, but he did not. Desiring it both ways, he fell into bathos in everything he wrote, even in Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath.3 CHAPTER 6 Michael T. Gibbons The Indifference of Nature and the Cruelty of Wealth 147 This seemingly harsh evaluation of Steinbeck—that he reached beyond his literary talents—is moderated by Bloom’s account of why The Grapes of Wrath, and by implication literature like it, remains an important part of the American literary tradition: “Yet there are no canonical standards worthy of human respect that could exclude The Grapes of Wrath from a serious reader’s esteem. Compassionate narrative that addresses itself so directly to the great social questions of its era is simply too substantial a human achievement to be dismissed. . . . One might desire The Grapes of Wrath to be composed differently, whether as plot or as characterization, but wisdom compels one to be grateful for the novel’s continued existence.”4 Bloom’s response raises a question: If one of the measures of great literature is that it addresses significant social questions in a compelling way, how are we to assess Steinbeck’s work subsequent to The Grapes of Wrath—work that is often denigrated but that addresses the great social questions of not just a particular era but all eras in which similar social and economic conditions persist? In this essay I examine Steinbeck’s account of the relationships between nature, the human, and social and economic life. I argue that he saw the progressive refashioning of human life as rooted in a complex relation among individuals, nature, and the prevailing social and economic institutions . He viewed nature as a set of forces that is largely indifferent to and often obstructs the possibilities of human and social life. Still, modern social institutions pose the most serious threats to the human potential for creation and re-creation of social conditions consistent with the capacities that define the human. I draw not only on The Grapes of Wrath but also on some of Steinbeck’s later works that amplify the ways in which people respond to social conditions that distort and undermine human existence. For if Bloom is right about what is of value in The Grapes of Wrath, then a reevaluation of Steinbeck’s later works is in order, since they too address troubling aspects of modern society that Bloom finds in Steinbeck’s most famous work. The essay is divided into five sections. The first summarizes Steinbeck’s core social and political beliefs. The second examines his views on the fragile relationship between human beings and the natural world. The third focuses on the ways that modern social institutions disrupt and disfigure human relationships and communities that provide dignity, security, and safety, none of which can be taken for granted (although...

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