Reading Steinbeck in Eastern Europe by Danica Čerče (review)

Almost half a century ago, when John Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature, his critical acclaim in the United States had long been on a steady decline. Since then, Steinbeck's postmortal reputation has been boosted by a number of outstanding monographs mapping the life and work of the author. The resurgence of interest in Steinbeck can also be attributed to the systematic work of two Steinbeck Centers, in Salinas and in San Jose. However, given the U.S.-oriented nature of most Steinbeck scholarship, the reading of his works beyond the U.S. borders was largely unexplored. With the exception of Japan, where Steinbeck's writing has been scrutinized by over a hundred scholars who established The John Steinbeck Society of Japan and started a journal devoted exclusively to the author, responses to Steinbeck's powerful work from other corners of the world have been sparse. It is interesting to note in this connection that Steinbeck's position in Japan is significantly different from that in Eastern Europe. In both, the disconnection between his popularity and his status in scholarly circles is noticeable. However, while the unmatched critical interest in Steinbeck in Japan outweighs his appeal to a general readership, his iconic stature among readers in Eastern Europe is accompanied by minimal attention from academics. Danica Čerče's Reading Steinbeck in Eastern Europe broke the critical silence surrounding the author in the ex-communist countries.

Čerče's book's primary focus is on the ideological dimension of the reception of Steinbeck's work east of the imaginary Iron Curtain. Her book is divided into three parts that are further subdivided into chapters. The first part addresses the author's reception in Eastern Europe, especially in Čerče's native Slovenia, and the challenges associated with translating Steinbeck into Slovene. The following part deals with the ideological aspects of three specific novels (The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden). The final part then offers two comparative analyses between works by Steinbeck and the Australian writer Frank Hardy.

The first chapter provides a useful overview of Steinbeck's reception in the Eastern bloc and thus establishes a context within which the following chapters are framed. As Čerče points out, the reading of Steinbeck's work in communist countries was conditioned and controlled by the state. His proletarian novels were conveniently (mis)interpreted by communist propaganda as condemnation of American capitalist society. Čerče identifies the common denominators of the dogmatic rendition of Steinbeck's books in the whole Eastern bloc. In the example of Slovenia, she documents the appropriation of Steinbeck as part of the literary campaign against the evil West, epitomized by the U.S. Steinbeck's oeuvre is examined through the narrow critical prism of social realism and its specially designed terminology which divides the world into the evil reactionary West and the good progressive communist bloc. Steinbeck was just a useful pawn on a board in this highly manipulative game. No wonder that Steinbeck was pointedly denigrated by communist critics following his support of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In the third chapter, Čerče maps the author's impact on Slovene social realism as well as on concrete writers, including the acclaimed writer Ciril Kosmac. Chapters four and five discuss translations of Steinbeck's work into Slovene. The significant role Steinbeck was assigned on the literary front of the Cold War is attested by the attention and care given to the graphic features of his editions. Čerče also introduces the major challenges Steinbeck's translators have to face. She highlights the difficulties involved in translating at the textual and cultural levels. Her observations are supported by examples of more and less successful translation strategies. In her eyes, the flattening of the multilayered language register is the most frequent blunder of Slovene translations. Meta Gosak's translation of Of Mice and Men (1951) is classified as the most serious failure. Not only does Gosak ignore the...