Fifty Years Gone: A Personal Statement

This personal reminiscence of John Steinbeck's life and works recalls the novelist's ethical impact, concluding that Steinbeck does us all a continuing service by his lifelong adherence to honoring truthfulness, accurate discourse—and especially the humanistic values of perfectibility, empathy, and inclusiveness that allow us to achieve "understanding and communication," as he pointed out in his 1962 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Steinbeck's greatest books are an antidote to—if not a blatant call to resist—the tidal wave of vain posturing, fake news, obfuscation, debasement of language, and outright lies that seem to be the stock in trade of our grievously callous and incompetent current administration.