John Steinbeck as Propagandist: The Moon is Down Goes to War by Donald V. Coers (review)

238 'Western American Literature volumes of Steinbeck’s letters (1975, 1978, 1979), and before Jackson Benson’s monumental biography (1984). None of the essays were updated or revised for this book, so the sensation from reading the earlier ones is like looking at daguerreotypes. In particular, the essays by Bett Yates Adams (formerly Betty Perez) on Steinbeck, Ricketts, and Sea of Cortez seem spectacularly quaint. And given their juicy subjects, at least two might have been developed more fully (Duane Carr’s “Steinbeck’s Blakean Vision in The Grapes of Wrath"\ Donald Stone’s “Steinbeck, Jung, and The Winter ofOurDiscontent"). The three finest essays (Benson’s model piece, “Hemingway the Hunter and Steinbeck the Farmer”; Richard Allan Davison’s “Hemingway, Steinbeck, and the Art of the Short Story”; Roy S. Simmonds’s “Cathy Ames and Rhoda Penmark: Two Child Monsters”) really stand out because they are fresh—even startling—in their connections, solidly grounded in their scholarship, and penetrating in their valuations. If your taste runs to what Garcia calls simple “fourteen-bean soup,” then you will find this book worth buying; if not, not. ROBERT DeMOTT Ohio University John Steinbeck as Propagandist: The Moon is Down Goes to War. By Donald V. Coers. (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1991. 165 pages, $21.95.) John Steinbeck is generally conceived of as a man very much of one country' who wrote about one country—his own—and whose brilliance was his under­ standing of place. But The Moon is Down is not about America. It is set in a country invented by Steinbeck and chronicles an experience he neither wit­ nessed close at hand nor shared. In 1941, Steinbeck wanted to write a book that would be essentially a piece of propaganda in support of the war effort. According to Donald Coers, he “had decided to correlate in a work of fiction what he had learned about the psychological effects of enemy occupation upon the populace of conquered nations.”Encouraged by friends in resistance groups from various countries, he wrote The Moon isDown. Set in a small country occupied by an invading army, it takes as subjects both the occupied and the occupiers. Coers first describes the primarily negative reaction of American critics, most notably Clifton Fadiman and James Thurber, to the book and to the theatrical adaptation which followed, criticism grounded primarily in what they felt was lack of realism, particularly in the relatively sympathetic portrayal of the characters of the occupiers. He then contrasts this criticism with the very positive response of people in occupied countries. Focusing on Norway, Den­ mark, Holland, and France, Coers provides a fair amount of detail about how the book was printed underground in each country, by whom, and what effect it Reviews 239 seemed to have on those who were part of its promulgation. The evidence he mounts suggests that the book was extraordinarily popular among those who were its subject. That Steinbeck was awarded a medal by the people of Norway, who Coers explains strongly identified with the fictional people in the book, establishes the importance of The Moon isDown in that country. Coers’ primary message is that Steinbeck was not so much concerned with reality as he was with relating to people in occupied countries an acknowledg­ ment of their pain, an affirmation of their strength, and a belief in their ultimate victory. That it is not one of Steinbeck’s better efforts is not germane. Coers is correct in asserting that the book succeeded because it succeeded as a communication. As he puts it, “That power to inspire—its greatest virtue for millions of victims of Nazi oppression—remains today its signal distinction.” BONNIE MILLION Utah State University ‘This Strange, Old World’and OtherBook Reviews by KatherineAnne Porter. Edited by Darlene Harbour Unrue. (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1991. 149 pages, $25.00.) Katherine Anne Porter: A Life. Revised Edition. By Joan Givner. (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1991. 576 pages, $45.00/$19.95.) Darlene Harbour Unrue has collected almost fifty of the lesser-known book reviews published by Katherine Anne Porter. Nineteen others—on famous works by writers such as Lawrence, Mansfield, Cather, Woolf, and...