A John Steinbeck Encyclopedia (review)

The new Steinbeck encyclopedia is massive, authoritative and took the editors far, far longer to compile and publish than any book John Steinbeck ever wrote. Why study Steinbeck? Jackson Benson has contributed a lengthy Introduction and he offers one rationale for Steinbeck study:

Few American writers have been the source of so much controversy as John Steinbeck. The furor over The Grapes of Wrath lasted for almost two years, as the author was denounced in newspaper editorials and in the Congress as a liar and pervert. His books are still denounced by those on the political right, and more of his books are on the top-ten list of most-banned books by schools and librarians than any other writer. On the other hand, as a presumably "popular" author, he has been scorned by many academics, and the liberal intellectual community has not yet forgiven him for what it perceived as his uncritical support for the Vietnam War. It will take a good many more years than have already passed since John Steinbeck's death for us to separate and evaluate the true merit of his work from the prejudices and misconceptions that are still attached to it

(p. xlvii).

Editor Brian Railsback writes that when George Butler of Greenwood Press asked him to compile A John Steinbeck Encyclopedia, he was "delighted for the community of Steinbeck scholars. Adding Steinbecks name to the prestigious Greenwood literary encyclopedias puts the author on the shelf next to such writers as William Faulkner and Henry James." Shortly after Railsback signed his contract, Steinbeck scholar Warren French wrote him "a kind letter with the caution that I had no idea what I was getting into." Railsback continues,

I had some idea—I knew that Jackson J. Benson's wonderful biography of Steinbeck had taken thirteen years to complete. Yet I was an assistant professor of English at the time, full of enthusiasm, and ready to knock out this book in two or three years. That was thirteen years ago. Had I been as wise as French or Benson, I would have realized that John Steinbeck is a vast, complicated subject (the length of Benson's biography, over 1,100 pages altogether, should have been a clue). Steinbeck himself provides a fair warning for those who would attempt to set his life down in a biography or encyclopedia. "A good writer always works at the impossible," he wrote in his Journal of a Novel. "There is another kind who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind as one lowers rifle sights. . . . Whether fortunate or unfortunate, this has never happened to me."

(xxxvii)

Railsback laments, "To contain a writer like Steinbeck between two covers is impossible," yet, nonetheless, he and his co-editor Michael Meyer have tried to contain the uncontainable: "In some 250,000 words and 1,269 entries, here is the life of one of our most popular authors, a Nobel Prize winner and international figure" (ibid.).

A John Steinbeck Encyclopedia is 482 pages long, printed in a seven-by-ten inch double-column format. It offers forty pages of "Back Matter," including a list of Steinbeck Archives, a bibliography, an index, and notes on the editors and contributors. Fifty-five Steinbeck scholars and critics contributed material to this encyclopedia, from the germane to the arcane. (In candor, I must state that I contributed the profile of Steinbeck's editor, publisher, mentor and friend Pascal Covici.)

How comprehensive is it? It is longer than The Grapes of Wrath, which was a mere 200,000 words, according to the Encyclopedia (130), though not as long as the manuscript of East of Eden—265,000 words, according to Robert DeMott's entry (90). Railsback's preface also says that an additional 40,000 words were cut from the encyclopedia prior to publication (xxxviii).

The table of contents lists some (but by no means all) entries by topics. In addition to the expected inventory of Steinbeck's major works, publishers, agents, critics...