Steinbeck Today

Figure 1.

Marysville, California, Camp for migrants

In the News

In the 1930s, Sanora Babb wrote a novel about an Oklahoma family who left their Dust Bowl farm for California. Writes Mike Conklin of the Chicago Tribune: "Babb had worked in Los Angeles-area Farm Security Administration camps set up to help the hundreds of thousands of migrants from Plains states where, after years of deep plowing, overgrazing and drought, the fertile topsoil from millions of acres literally blew away in clouds that blackened the skies. Her book describing the migrants' plight and drawing on her experiences in the labor camps was to be called 'Whose Names Are Unknown.'"

Babb got a contract with Random House and was living in Manhattan working on revisions to the book The Grapes of Wrath was published. Conklin continues:

"Babb's editor at Random House — its co-founder, Bennett Cerf — tore up her contract and offered her another one to write something else. He felt the market wouldn't support two novels with such similar — and troubling — themes, namely the conditions faced by migrant farmworkers in the '30s . . . Babb's eventual manuscript went into a drawer and she, crushed, returned to writing short stories, articles for mainstream magazines as well as leftist publications, and poetry. It was 10 years before she wrote another book, one of five published during her career as a writer and editor."

Sixty-five years later, in 2004, the University of Oklahoma Press published Whose Names Are Unknown to good reviews. Babb, who was 97 years old when the book finally appeared, said through her agent (and friend) Joanne Dearcropp, that she was "thrilled." She also isn't shy about her talent, according to Conklin:

"I think I'm a better writer," Babb said. "His book is not as realistic as mine."

Babb was active in anti-Nazi programs during WWII, helped European artists move to the U.S. , and (again according to Conklin: ". . . lived for years with the man who eventually became her husband, Oscar-winning cinematographer James Howe, who died in 1976. His film credits include The Prisoner of Zenda, Picnic, The Old Man and the Sea, Hud and Funny Lady. Howe was Chinese-American, and California's miscegenation law prevented the couple from marrying until the law was overturned in the late '40s. In the early 1950s, when Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist witch hunts had many liberals and progressives running for cover, Babb moved to Mexico, partly to shield her husband from being blacklisted in Hollywood. It was there she finished her first published novel, The Lost Traveler."

[Source: Chicago Tribune (final) Wednesday, October 13, 2004. Sec. C, p. 1. ]

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The Coast Weekly featured John Steinbeck on its cover during Steinbeck Festival week, August 5-11 2004: "American Revolutionary John Steinbeck." Eric Johnson writes: "Next to Steinbeck, Michael Moore looks like a weak-kneed liberal. Fahrenheit 9/11 proves the venality of only one man and his coterie; The Grapes of Wrath recasts a piece of American history in the dark light of brutal oppression" (17-23).

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Claudia Salewske draws attention to Martin Cheek's article in The Gilroy Dispatch for Thursday, May 19, 2005, in which Cheek makes the interesting connection between Joseph Campbell's work on myth and the "heroquest," Steinbeck's lifelong interest in Arthurian tales, and . . . the Star Wars movies: "Campbell's views on myth led to today's final installment of the 'Star Wars' story where audiences learn how Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader. Lucas was influencedby Campbell—in fact, Campbell once called the film director 'his greatest pupil.' But before that, Campbell was influenced by John Steinbeck" (Sec. C, p. 3). In this issue of Steinbeck Studies, the reader will find a reading of Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle from the perspective of Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces, by Oana Melnic.

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The Los Angeles Times Theater section for Sunday, April 3, 2005, reports that in preparation for a 1974 production of Of Mice and Men, James Earl Jones wrote John Steinbeck to inquire what Lenny's reaction...