Steinbeck and the Environment: Interdisciplinary Approaches

16. How Green Was John Steinbeck?

SIXTEEN How Green Was John Steinbeck? Warren French As early as 1933 John Steinbeck expressed concern over environmental destruction , and a note of despair is echoed forcefully in his last published work, America and Americans (1966). But his environmental advocacy must be seen, finally, as more inspirational than practical. He offered few models for an ecologically oriented political agenda but instead optimistically relied on "moral suasion," acall to awaken the slumbering "goodness" of the American people and inspire them to live in harmony with their environment . At the 1989 meeting of the Western Literature Association, Cheryll Burgess pointed out that "society as a whole and our profession in particular have been faced with three crises in the last thirty years: civil rights, women's liberation, and environmental degradation. The discipline of English has addressed the concerns of civil rights, equality for minorities, and women's liberation through Widespread attention ... but has failed to respond in any significant way to the issue of the environment, the acknowledgement of our place within the natural world and our need to live beautifully with it, at the peril of our very surviyal" (quoted in Love 1990, 201). The president of the association, Glen A. Love, used Burgess's indictment in a subsequent issue of the organization's journal to launch his own plea toward "Revaluing Nature" with a call for a movement toward an ecological criticism. He supported its necessity by a quotation from Person/planet (1978) by Theodore Roszak, one of the best-known critics of American countercultures, about the dangers of accepting "progress" without question: "We have an economic style whose dynamism is too great, too fast, too reckless for the eco-systems that must absorb its impact.... The eco-damage is not mitigated in the least if it is perpetrated by a I good society' that 282 French shares its wealth fairly and provides the finest welfare benefits for its citizens" (quoted in Love, 203). Love winds up his comments with a reminder that the distinguished biologist Lewis Thomas ~/has cautioned us r~centlythat it is time for us to grow up as a people . ~ . , to become the consciousness of the whole earth," but that "we have a long way to go, and are remarkably loath to begin the journey" (213). This anthology brings t~gether thoughtful assessments of John Steinbeck's expressions of concern with environmental degradation. A further relevant question concerns the model and inspiration that his comments may provide for those seeking to promote individual and collective actions that might improve chances of our "living beautifully" with our natural environment.·What guidelines might he offer to the ecological parties that have recently enjoyed some success in England, France, and Germany? In short, how green was John Steinbeck? Did he simply pay lip service to environmental preservation or did he work effec'tively toward mitigating ecodamage? I realize that in the following speculations I may be fighting with phantoms. I have no idea how widespread interest might be in ecological criticism, nor could I guess how useful it might prove. Could literary works make as effective contributions to environmental preservation as to feminist or ethnic minority or gayI lesbian movements ? Although Nature speaks to us through rustling whispers and violent outbursts, it has no works of its own to champion action. As Lewis Thomas urges, we must recognize ourselves as Nature's articulate consciousness. Steinbeck's writings demonstrate that one's head is not always where one's heart is. His despair about our growing up ecologically colors many of his writings, beginning as early as 1933 with a cynical vision of the suburbanization of a Californian Shangri-La in the story-cycle The Pastures of Heaven. The most. comprehensive summary of his position appears in his last major publication, America and Americans (1966). This meditation on the land he cherished began as a collection of photographs commissioned by the Viking Press, his longtime publisher , to present a colorful montage of the nation two-thirds of the way through the twentieth century. Steinbeck's participationwas so- How Green? 283 licited to promote the reception of the project. He had recently enjoyed renewed popularity with a new generation after publishing Travels with Charley in Search ofAmerica (1962), which had sold more copies following its first appearance than any of his earlier works. In the course of what he had envisioned as a few weeks' leisurely work, he became...