Project MUSE®: Steinbeck Studies - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/274
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Steinbeck Studies.daily12026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 15 (2004) - vol. 16 (2005)Latest Articles: Steinbeck StudiesTWOProject MUSE®Steinbeck Studies1551-69030898-7734Latest articles in Steinbeck Studies. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Steinbeck in Vietnam, Spring 1966
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/212971
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Tim Benintendi (right) in Vietnam, 1966
I Had the Privilege of Meeting John Steinbeck in the spring of 1966. He was 64 years old, I was 20. I'm now 58. We met in what was then the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), during my first tour of duty with the U. S. Army, which had me functioning as a classified documents clerk / courier. I met him purely inadvertently in a mess hall of the 25th Infantry Division at a camp in Tay Ninh Province, near the Cambodian border. This battalion-size camp was eighty-five miles northwest of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). On this day I had flown in by helicopter to deliver documents to the command office, then went to the mess hall, where I planned to have a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/274/image/coversmallSteinbeck in Vietnam, Spring 19662007-04-11text/htmlen-USSteinbeck in Vietnam, Spring 19662007-04-112007TWOProject MUSE®108912026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002007-04-11"That's him. That shiny bastard.": Jim Casy and Christology
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/212972
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To Bo Beskow, Pacific Grove, 19 November, 1948–reprinted in E. Steinbeck & R. Wallstan (eds.), John Steinbeck: A Life in Letters [hereafter SLL] (New York: Penguin, 2001) 341–44, at 343.
To Bo Beskow, Pacific Grove, 19 November, 1948–reprinted in SteinbeckE. & WallstanR. eds. John Steinbeck: A Life in Letters[hereafter SLL]New YorkPenguin2001341344 at 343
Christology being, in the words of eminent Catholic theologian Karl Rahner: “That part of theology which deals with Jesus Christ, and in a strict sense with his Person. . . ” See K. Rahner & H. Vorgrimler, Concise Theological Dictionary (Burns & Oates, 1983) 70.
Christology being, in the words of eminent Catholic theologian Karl Rahner: “That part of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/274/image/coversmall"That's him. That shiny bastard.": Jim Casy and Christology2007-04-11text/htmlen-US"That's him. That shiny bastard.": Jim Casy and Christology2007-04-112007TWOProject MUSE®210092026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002007-04-11A Foolish Consistency: Sparky in Cannery Row
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/212974
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Ritzi "Tiny" Colletto (left) and Horace "Sparky" Enea on the Western Flyer in the Sea of Cortez
The late Sparky Enea, especially to those who might have met him at the Salinas Steinbeck Festival, was a colorful fellow whose historical importance derived from his having been part of the crew of the Western Flyer on its 1940 Sea of Cortez odyssey. But Enea also makes his appearance in scant but fictionalized form in a work of fiction, for John Steinbeck gives him a walk-on role in his 1945 best-seller Cannery Row. But Enea's permanency in print is tarnished a bit. Somehow his name became transformed, when it appeared in Chapter 25 of the original Viking edition, to "Evea"; and no one then or since seems to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/274/image/coversmallA Foolish Consistency: Sparky in Cannery Row2007-04-11text/htmlen-USA Foolish Consistency: Sparky in Cannery Row2007-04-112007TWOProject MUSE®33602026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002007-04-11"What's Your Opinion of...Steinbeck's Prose?"
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/212977
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John Steinbeck at the "Scoppia del Carro" festival in Firenze, Italy, on Easter morning, April 21, 1957
That's a Line From a Major Number, "Conga!," from the 1953 Broadway musical Wonderful Town, with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Betty Comden and the late Adolph Green. The show was only recorded as late as 1958, when it captured (after a telecast) the notable starring performance of Rosalind Russell. To many of us who remember the original telecast, the question to be asked over nearly half a century has been, "Why not again, or since?" But that's an aficionado's query; to others, it's a matter of what "Steinbeck's prose" is doing in a '50s musical, and to what it refers. In fact, Wonderful
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/274/image/coversmall"What's Your Opinion of...Steinbeck's Prose?"2007-04-11text/htmlen-US"What's Your Opinion of...Steinbeck's Prose?"2007-04-112007TWOProject MUSE®119252026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002007-04-11Notes From The Director
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/212978
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Professor Susan Shillinglaw stepped down as Director of the Center for Steinbeck Studies last May (2005), and I was honored to be invited to fill in for a time, while certain projects got done and a search could be mounted for a permanent Director. I once performed this duty for two semesters—but that was more than ten years ago, and a great deal has changed in the world of Steinbeck Studies, including the maturation of a journal by that name. That and much more is owing to Professor Shillinglaw's great labors. For eighteen years she has shepherded the Center, as it moved from the sixth floor of the old Wahlquist Library down to the third floor to join Special Collections, then to temporary quarters, and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/274/image/coversmallNotes From The Director2007-04-11text/htmlen-USNotes From The Director2007-04-112007TWOProject MUSE®41042026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002007-04-11John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men": A Reference Guide (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/212980
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Barbara Heavilin's study of and guide to John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men has much to recommend it. She provides interesting and informative chapters on the Contents, Texts, Contexts, Ideas, Narrative Art and Reception of the novel/play. There is also a brief bibliographical essay. Having gone over some of this same ground in my years of teaching what I consider a well constructed, almost perfect work of narrative art, it is always pleasing to me to find a writer who brings something new to the criticism, makes me look at the novel in a fresh way and gives me more ideas to introduce in the classroom discussion. Heavilin's particular strengths are demonstrated during her explications of the narrative art of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/274/image/coversmallJohn Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men": A Reference Guide (review)2007-04-11text/htmlen-USJohn Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men": A Reference Guide (review)2007-04-112007TWOProject MUSE®87762026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002007-04-11The Story of John Steinbeck in Communist Czechoslovakia
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/212982
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Steinbeck, Adolf Hoffmeister, and Edward Albee together in Prague, 1963
It would not have occurred to me to write an article on this subject had it not been for the time I spent researching at San José State University as a visiting Fulbright scholar. It was only there, surfing the bookshelves in the Center for Steinbeck Studies, browsing through the translations into a host of languages, that my curiosity about Steinbeck's literary conquest of my native country, Czechoslovakia, was aroused.1 I wondered why Steinbeck's popularity in Czechoslovakia arguably surpassed that in his own "country" of California.2 More importantly, I was interested in the way Steinbeck was (mis)interpreted by literary
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/274/image/coversmallThe Story of John Steinbeck in Communist Czechoslovakia2007-04-11text/htmlen-USThe Story of John Steinbeck in Communist Czechoslovakia2007-04-112007TWOProject MUSE®399772026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002007-04-11Hidden Treasure: The Steinbeck-Rudloe Letters
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/212985
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A Jumble of Specimens from Ed "Doc" Ricketts' Lab.
A half century ago, in the midst of a productive literary career, John Steinbeck published The Sea of Cortez, Cannery Row, and Sweet Thursday, a work of nonfiction and two novels centered on the life of a marine collector. Later in life, Steinbeck was good friends with a young man who lived in the Florida panhandle named Jack Rudloe, the founder and managing director of Gulf Marine Specimen Laboratory in Florida. His education and research facility is nestled off the thready highway that cuts through the sleepy fishing town of Panacea, located on the Sunshine State's Gulf Coast. Rudloe is an outspoken conservationist, marine naturalist, and gifted
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/274/image/coversmallHidden Treasure: The Steinbeck-Rudloe Letters2007-04-11text/htmlen-USHidden Treasure: The Steinbeck-Rudloe Letters2007-04-112007TWOProject MUSE®389212026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002007-04-11Bibliography: Durable Steinbeck
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/212986
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Tom (Jody), played by Peter Miles, listens to Billy, played by Robert Mitchum, in this scene from The Red Pony (1949), Directed by Louis Mileston
Two scholarly journals devoted solely to the study of Steinbeck's life and art brought forth a wealth of new material in 2004. Steinbeck Studies, beginning with volume 15, changed over from a large magazine format to a standard journal format, but Editor Susan Shillinglaw retained the use of archival photographs helpful to understanding the man and his milieu. (A cumulative index of the journal's essays, articles, and reviews follows this essay.) Steinbeck Review (SR), edited by Stephen K. George and Barbara A. Heavilin, is a brand-new offering, also in standard
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/274/image/coversmallBibliography: Durable Steinbeck2007-04-11text/htmlen-USBibliography: Durable Steinbeck2007-04-112007TWOProject MUSE®420082026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002007-04-11Following the Steps of the Hero: An Approach to Jim Nolan's Initiation Journey in John Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/212987
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John Steinbeck's use of Mythical Patterns has been much discussed, along with his interest in Jungian psychology. At the beginning of 1932 he met Joseph Campbell, "who was becoming one of the foremost authorities in mythology" (Benson 223), and even earlier talked with Evelyn Ott, a former student of Jung's who became a psychiatrist in Monterey (Rodger xxviii). Ed Ricketts had befriended Ott a few years before while pursuing his own interest in Jungian thought. Both proved to have a powerful influence on Steinbeck's writing, as his second novel To a God Unknown (1932), clearly attests. Robert DeMott notes that "[f]or a while, Campbell and Steinbeck enthusiastically shared their parallel investigations into
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/274/image/coversmallFollowing the Steps of the Hero: An Approach to Jim Nolan's Initiation Journey in John Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle2007-04-11text/htmlen-USFollowing the Steps of the Hero: An Approach to Jim Nolan's Initiation Journey in John Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle2007-04-112007TWOProject MUSE®564152026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002007-04-11The Moral Philosophy of John Steinbeck (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/212988
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Steinbeck during his visit to Hungary in 1963 with wife Elaine and Edward Albee, as part of a Cultural Exchange Trip at the request of President Kennedy.
Many reviewers and critics of John Steinbeck's works are irritated by or at least uncomfortable with the author's desire to insert, in a sometimes heavy-handed way, moral meaning into his books. Steinbeck's natural impulse to instruct the reader on moral ideas became an increasingly overt element in his work as he grew older. His last novel, The Winter of Our Discontent, is a study of moral disintegration and possible redemption; the last book published in his lifetime, America and Americans, is an unabashed sermon to his fellow citizens. I count myself
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/274/image/coversmallThe Moral Philosophy of John Steinbeck (review)2007-04-11text/htmlen-USThe Moral Philosophy of John Steinbeck (review)2007-04-112007TWOProject MUSE®125732026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002007-04-11Steinbeck Today
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/212989
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Marysville, California, Camp for migrants
In the 1930s, Sanora Babb wrote a novel about an Oklahoma family who left their Dust Bowl farm for California. Writes Mike Conklin of the Chicago Tribune: "Babb had worked in Los Angeles-area Farm Security Administration camps set up to help the hundreds of thousands of migrants from Plains states where, after years of deep plowing, overgrazing and drought, the fertile topsoil from millions of acres literally blew away in clouds that blackened the skies. Her book describing the migrants' plight and drawing on her experiences in the labor camps was to be called 'Whose Names Are Unknown.'" Babb got a contract with Random House and was living in Manhattan working
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/274/image/coversmallSteinbeck Today2007-04-11text/htmlen-USSteinbeck Today2007-04-112007TWOProject MUSE®160662026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002007-04-11Bibliography: A Tribute to Lee Richard Hayman and a Brief Description of His Collection
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/212991
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The dustjacket of Autobus auf Seitenwegen, a German translation of The Wayward Bus (Zürich, 1958), one of the treasures of the Lee Richard Hayman collection
Steinbeck aficionado, teacher, and collector Lee Richard ("Dick") Hayman lovingly and diligently amassed a huge and variegated collection of John Steinbeck-related materials over a 36-year period, beginning soon after Steinbeck's death in 1968. Mr. Hayman generously donated his extensive collection to the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies in 2004, where it will be available for researchers soon. Born in Indianapolis in 1922, Mr. Hayman moved to what he called the "salubrious part of the world," the Pacific Coast, in late 1958.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/274/image/coversmallBibliography: A Tribute to Lee Richard Hayman and a Brief Description of His Collection2007-04-11text/htmlen-USBibliography: A Tribute to Lee Richard Hayman and a Brief Description of His Collection2007-04-112007TWOProject MUSE®75202026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002007-04-11The Wayward Bus: Steinbeck and Queer America
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/212992
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Dan Dailey and Jayne Mansfield in The Wayward Bus (1957), Directed by Victor Vicas
Divorce a Text from its political, historical and biographical realm and you separate what a text means from how it means. This is what has happened to John Steinbeck's The Wayward Bus. The critical reception of The Wayward Bus indicates that readers have failed to see the relationship between the text and other contemporary texts and context sources. By bringing the context of the post World War II years in which The Wayward Bus was written into a close reading of the text, I will demonstrate the intertextuality that provides a way to talk about this text and how it comes to have meaning. I will reconnect The Wayward
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/274/image/coversmallThe Wayward Bus: Steinbeck and Queer America2007-04-11text/htmlen-USThe Wayward Bus: Steinbeck and Queer America2007-04-112007TWOProject MUSE®565362026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002007-04-11Affirming Whiteness: Visualizing California Agriculture
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/212993
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The Guardian of the Waters, San Diego, California
The Guardian of the Waters (Figure 1) looks down over the citizens of San Diego.1 As a fountain, she signifies the importance of water in the development of culture and community in the otherwise hot, dry climate of California's southernmost metropolitan center. Sculptor Donal Hord, raised in this dry southern California climate, understood the vagaries of what geobotanists call the "Sonora Zone." In an essay written for the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration, Hord acknowledged the dynamics of water —its availability, its conservation— as the essential issue of the region.2 For Hord, the vagaries of nature rather than
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/274/image/coversmallAffirming Whiteness: Visualizing California Agriculture2007-04-11text/htmlen-USAffirming Whiteness: Visualizing California Agriculture2007-04-112007TWOProject MUSE®1143682026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002007-04-11