The Autry: The Grapes of Wrath, which turns 75 this year, keenly captured the essence of Route 66 during the Great Depression. Both the road and the book have since become significant parts of Americana. Why do you think these things continue to be such an integral part of how Americans define their history and view themselves?
Susan Shillinglaw: In his last book, America and Americans, Steinbeck notes that Americans were a restless people; he himself was restless, a wanderer, a man on the road (or in a boat or wandering around the world). I think that Route 66 represents an iconic American road—heading west, toward the iconic dream state, California. Also, the road takes in such a wide swath of America, from the Midwest to the Southwest to the West. And look at all the life that sprang up beside that highway; Steinbeck captures the life of the road in The Grapes of Wrath as well. The truck stop is iconic as well, since roadside food is a part of the American experience.
A: More than half a century later, what do you think The Grapes of Wrath—and Steinbeck’s work in general—still has to teach us?
SS: Penguin Press asked me to write a little book on that subject and I did, quickly as assigned, On Reading The Grapes of Wrath. A recent review took me to task, and rightly so, for not including a chapter on Route 66. And there should be—for American restlessness and being on the road are most certainly one part of the book’s abiding appeal. The book encompasses the American experience both in 1939 and now (foreclosed homes, migrants, poverty, homelessness, hunger). It’s so painfully relevant to our times, when the gap between wealth and poverty is so apparent to everyone. And Grapes also reaches across cultural divides because it is about the marginalized and ignored, about working folks. So it seems universal in its message; the myth behind Grapes is Exodus from the Bible. And the book is about revolution, or standing up for the people on the bottom. Today those are what Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has called “The Square People,” those in other countries standing up for basic rights.
A: New people find The Grapes of Wrath every year. What advice do you have for people who are venturing into the Joads’ world for the first time?
SS: Read deliberately. Relish the prose. Consider how characters respond to one another, how they speak—Steinbeck had a superb ear for dialogue and once said that he had the instincts of a minstrel rather than a scrivener. Listen to the music of the prose. Note how important family is to the Joads, how each is introduced by a story. Consider the bond between Jim Casy and Tom Joad and why Tom enters the book as he is stepping out of prison.
It’s so rich in texture!
A: The Autry is a museum dedicated to exploring and sharing the diverse stories of the myriad cultures and peoples of the West. What role do you think Steinbeck has in this type of exchange?
SS: Steinbeck wrote about the great diversity of the West—his fiction includes Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, white settlers. Perhaps he doesn’t always feature these characters and some say that Tortilla Flat, for example, draws on stereotypical Mexicans. But his intention was always to capture the great human mix of California.
Related to that is the fact that his vision was ecological. He looked at humans connected to the places they lived—to other humans, to the natural settings, to history. In the West, land is so important—because the spaces are so vast, so sublime. Steinbeck’s grasp of the West was hardy and expansive, like the locale itself.
And his West is not the cowboy or heroic West but that of ordinary people—farmers, workers, paisanos, ranchers. His West is about community and family.
A: Why do you think endeavors like the Journey are important?
SS: The Journey was a terrific opportunity to reconsider what life is like along a stretch of highway that has changed significantly since 1939—and yet still clings to its identity. To ask about politics and fears and the economy, the kinds of questions that Steinbeck asked in his own trip across America in 1961. I think journeys like the one undertaken by the National Steinbeck Center help people focus on why a writer’s work is important. So many people were brought back to the book and to Steinbeck’s importance by that journey.
A: What is your next project?
SS: I’m completing a Steinbeck encyclopedia on the cultural contexts of Steinbeck’s work (including Route 66!) with Katie Rodger, who has published on [marine ecologist Ed] Ricketts [the model for Steinbeck’s “Doc” in Cannery Row]. And then I’m working on Steinbeck, Russia, and the Cold War. He wrote A Russian Journal about a 1947 trip he took to postwar Russia with photographer Robert Capa. I wrote the introduction to that book for Penguin and want to do more work on the subject, including all three of Steinbeck’s trips to the Soviet Union: in 1937, 1947, and 1963.
Visit TheAutry.org to learn more about the October 16 Steinbeck celebration.
