Steinbeck Today

Developments around COVID-19 in the first half of 2020 stimulated renewed interestin The Grapes of Wrath while suggesting a limited future for live events like the annual Steinbeck festival in Salinas, or the public presentation in Palo Alto by Gavin Jones on Steinbeck’s time at Stanford and the university’s influence on To a God Unknown, Cannery Row, and other books by Steinbeck. Commentators in New York responded to the imposition of social distancing controls there and elsewhere in America with appeals to The Grapes of Wrath that left room for ambivalence about the future, like the ambiguous ending of Steinbeck’s greatest novel.