The Composition, Publication, and Reception of John Steinbeck’s The Wayward Bus, with Biographical Background, by Roy Simmonds: Synopsis of Chapter Six, “It was a paste-up job and I should never have let it go out the way it did”

The sixth and penultimate chapter of the serial posthumous publication of Roy Simmonds’s The Composition, Publication, and Reception of John Steinbeck’s The Wayward Bus, with Biographical Background, “It was a paste-up job and I should never have let it go out the way it did,” chronicles the steps leading to a disappointing novel and a failed marriage. With his usual astute insights into

FIG. 1.

Roy Simmonds in his study in Billericay, Essex, England, standing before his Steinbeck collection.

the integral relationship between Steinbeck’s writing process and his personal life, Simmonds here records events leading up to Steinbeck’s lament over the premature release and publication of a novel that he believed had needed more time, more careful planning, and more thought. Continuing his usual insightful perusal of the integral relationship between a writer’s life and his work, Simmonds reviews the disparate criticism of The Wayward Bus, simultaneously chronicling the author’s complicated relationship with his second wife, Gwyn.