0:00:02 > 0:00:03"To the red country
0:00:03 > 0:00:06"and part of the grey country of Oklahoma,
0:00:06 > 0:00:08"the last rains came gently,
0:00:08 > 0:00:11"and they did not cut the scarred earth.
0:00:11 > 0:00:15"The sun flared down on the growing corn
0:00:15 > 0:00:17"and in the water-cut gullies
0:00:17 > 0:00:20"the earth dusted down in dry little streams.
0:00:20 > 0:00:23"And every day the earth paled further.
0:00:23 > 0:00:29"Every moving thing lifted the dust into the air.
0:00:29 > 0:00:32"A walking man lifted a thin layer as high as his waist.
0:00:34 > 0:00:37"An automobile boiled a cloud behind it.
0:00:37 > 0:00:39"Dawn came, but no day.
0:00:40 > 0:00:43"In the grey sky a red sun appeared,
0:00:43 > 0:00:48a dim, red circle that gave a little light, like dusk
0:00:48 > 0:00:51"and as that day advanced,
0:00:51 > 0:00:55"the dusk slipped back towards darkness."
0:00:57 > 0:00:58This is Oklahoma,
0:00:58 > 0:01:00and about 80 years ago
0:01:00 > 0:01:02it was one of the starting points,
0:01:02 > 0:01:04around here and the neighbouring states,
0:01:04 > 0:01:09for the biggest internal migration the United States has ever seen.
0:01:09 > 0:01:12Up to half a million people, working people, left their farms,
0:01:12 > 0:01:15left their droughted lands and went West,
0:01:15 > 0:01:18a thousand miles to the Californian border...
0:01:18 > 0:01:19to seek work.
0:01:19 > 0:01:23It was an epic journey and it was marked by what became
0:01:23 > 0:01:26one of the epic American novels of the 20th century,
0:01:26 > 0:01:27The Grapes Of Wrath.
0:01:29 > 0:01:31John Steinbeck's novel told a remarkable story
0:01:31 > 0:01:34about the intolerance that comes from economic hardship,
0:01:34 > 0:01:37and it held up a mirror to America's shameful abuse
0:01:37 > 0:01:40and neglect of its own people.
0:01:40 > 0:01:42When it came out at the end of the '30s,
0:01:42 > 0:01:43it had a dramatic effect.
0:01:43 > 0:01:45It was revered.
0:01:45 > 0:01:46It was scorned.
0:01:46 > 0:01:49Steinbeck himself was accused of being a communist,
0:01:49 > 0:01:51a vicious Red,
0:01:51 > 0:01:54something he could never throw off for the rest of his life.
0:01:55 > 0:01:59In some ways, the immense impact of The Grapes Of Wrath
0:01:59 > 0:02:02distorted Steinbeck's reputation.
0:02:02 > 0:02:05His range was vast and his output prolific.
0:02:05 > 0:02:08In this film, I want to take a fresh look
0:02:08 > 0:02:10at the kind of writer he really was.
0:02:23 > 0:02:27I've admired John Steinbeck since I first read him in my teens.
0:02:27 > 0:02:31For me, he was one of the great writers of the American landscape.
0:02:31 > 0:02:35He created enduring myths around the lives of ordinary Americans
0:02:35 > 0:02:37who were figures in that landscape,
0:02:37 > 0:02:39buffeted by the forces of nature and politics.
0:02:41 > 0:02:45I want to revisit some of the places that shaped his imagination -
0:02:45 > 0:02:47the California Valley where he grew up,
0:02:47 > 0:02:52the Monterey Coast where he studied marine life,
0:02:52 > 0:02:55and the Oklahoma plains where he immortalised
0:02:55 > 0:02:59the people of the American Dust Bowl in the Grapes Of Wrath.
0:02:59 > 0:03:02# That old dust storm killed my baby
0:03:02 > 0:03:04# But it can't kill me, Lord
0:03:04 > 0:03:07# And it can't kill me
0:03:07 > 0:03:09# That old dust storm
0:03:09 > 0:03:11# Killed my family
0:03:11 > 0:03:13# But it can't kill me, Lord
0:03:13 > 0:03:16# And it can't kill me... #
0:03:16 > 0:03:19The dustbowl was the worst environmental disaster
0:03:19 > 0:03:20in this part of the US.
0:03:20 > 0:03:22It occurred in the mid-1930s
0:03:22 > 0:03:24when farming conditions from the years before that,
0:03:24 > 0:03:27when prices were so good during World War One and afterwards,
0:03:27 > 0:03:30caused a lot of farmers to put a lot more of this kind of land
0:03:30 > 0:03:33into production that was mainly just for buffalo-grazing
0:03:33 > 0:03:36or cattle-grazing before that, causing all that land
0:03:36 > 0:03:39to be blown up during the height of the drought.
0:03:39 > 0:03:42There wasn't enough cover to hold down that soil.
0:03:44 > 0:03:47The dust came rolling in across the fields
0:03:47 > 0:03:49and it was black. And I was in school.
0:03:49 > 0:03:52I don't remember if my father came and got me
0:03:52 > 0:03:53after that or not.
0:03:53 > 0:03:57But I do remember that cloud
0:03:57 > 0:03:59that was so distinct, so scary.
0:04:00 > 0:04:03People in Oklahoma still remember the devastation
0:04:03 > 0:04:05of the Dust Bowl and this year,
0:04:05 > 0:04:08farmers are experiencing the worst drought
0:04:08 > 0:04:09since the 1930s.
0:04:09 > 0:04:11I remember my grandparents talking some
0:04:11 > 0:04:15and telling some stories about the drought and about the Dust Bowl.
0:04:15 > 0:04:18The Depression, you know, was in the late '20s
0:04:18 > 0:04:20and then just a few years following...
0:04:20 > 0:04:26severe drought, and so it was sort of one extreme hard time
0:04:26 > 0:04:28followed by another.
0:04:28 > 0:04:30Some of your friends and maybe even neighbours
0:04:30 > 0:04:33around this area are going to suffer badly, are they, this summer?
0:04:33 > 0:04:34That's correct.
0:04:34 > 0:04:38We could see similar numbers that are forced
0:04:38 > 0:04:41to find other sources of income,
0:04:41 > 0:04:44similar to what was experienced in the '30s.
0:04:44 > 0:04:47But it wasn't just dust that drove the farmers out.
0:04:47 > 0:04:50Mechanisation was changing farming practices
0:04:50 > 0:04:54and smallholdings were becoming uneconomical.
0:04:54 > 0:04:57Many farmers started buying a lot more equipment.
0:04:57 > 0:04:59That started racking them up in debt even more,
0:04:59 > 0:05:03and they kept digging themselves deeper and deeper into debt.
0:05:03 > 0:05:05And then we get the economic depression
0:05:05 > 0:05:10and the bad climates for bad crops and their notes went belly up.
0:05:12 > 0:05:14In The Grapes Of Wrath,
0:05:14 > 0:05:16Steinbeck describes the natural disaster
0:05:16 > 0:05:20which befell the farmers as a catastrophe of Biblical proportions.
0:05:20 > 0:05:24But he also focused on the economic collapse which was
0:05:24 > 0:05:27threatening their survival, a situation
0:05:27 > 0:05:29with telling parallels in today's America.
0:05:32 > 0:05:35It was all about turning agriculture into big business,
0:05:35 > 0:05:38and Steinbeck had no doubt about who the villains were.
0:05:38 > 0:05:42The villains were the banks who were ruthlessly forcing
0:05:42 > 0:05:44the closure of the small farms.
0:05:46 > 0:05:48This is one of the things he wrote about the banks. "If a bank
0:05:48 > 0:05:51"or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said,
0:05:51 > 0:05:55"the Bank - or the Company - needs - wants - insists -
0:05:55 > 0:05:57"must have -
0:05:57 > 0:06:00"as though the Bank or the Company were a monster.
0:06:00 > 0:06:03"The Bank - the monster - has to have profits all the time.
0:06:03 > 0:06:06"It can't wait. It'll die.
0:06:06 > 0:06:09"When the monster stops growing, it dies.
0:06:09 > 0:06:11"It can't stay one size."
0:06:13 > 0:06:17Steinbeck was always on the side of the working man...
0:06:17 > 0:06:19battling the system. In this instance,
0:06:19 > 0:06:21it was the broken farmers of Oklahoma.
0:06:23 > 0:06:25The main characters in The Grapes Of Wrath
0:06:25 > 0:06:27are the Joad family. They came from Sallisaw,
0:06:27 > 0:06:29which in the 1930s had a claim to fame -
0:06:29 > 0:06:32it was the home town of the bank-robber and folk-hero,
0:06:32 > 0:06:34Pretty Boy Floyd.
0:06:34 > 0:06:37Pretty Boy Floyd was seen as a Robin Hood figure,
0:06:37 > 0:06:39hitting back at the rapacious banks.
0:06:39 > 0:06:45Steinbeck uses him as a role model for his main character, Tom Joad.
0:06:45 > 0:06:49When the novel starts, Tom Joad has just been let out of prison.
0:06:49 > 0:06:53He has spent four years there for killing a man in self-defence.
0:06:53 > 0:06:56He gets back home to discover that his family is ready
0:06:56 > 0:06:58to hit the road West.
0:06:58 > 0:07:01The banks have foreclosed on their farm.
0:07:10 > 0:07:12Tom Joad catches up with his evicted family
0:07:12 > 0:07:15and joins them in their overloaded truck.
0:07:15 > 0:07:18And so begins their gruelling journey to California.
0:07:18 > 0:07:20# Lots of folks back East, they say
0:07:20 > 0:07:22# Leaving home every day
0:07:22 > 0:07:27# Beating the hot old dusty way to the California line... #
0:07:27 > 0:07:31The route they take is the arterial road west...
0:07:31 > 0:07:34the Mother Road, as it's called - Route 66.
0:07:37 > 0:07:40"Highway 66 is the main migrant road.
0:07:40 > 0:07:41"66...
0:07:41 > 0:07:45"the long concrete path across the country,
0:07:45 > 0:07:48"waving gently up and down on the map,
0:07:48 > 0:07:51"from Mississippi to Bakersfield...
0:07:51 > 0:07:53"66 is the path of people in flight,
0:07:53 > 0:07:55"refugees from dust and shrinking land,
0:07:55 > 0:07:59"from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership,
0:07:59 > 0:08:02"from the desert's slow northward invasion...
0:08:02 > 0:08:06"and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads,
0:08:06 > 0:08:09"from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads.
0:08:09 > 0:08:10"66 is the mother road.
0:08:10 > 0:08:11"The road of flight."
0:08:15 > 0:08:19Steinbeck described this mass migration as a Biblical exodus.
0:08:19 > 0:08:21He was steeped in the Bible
0:08:21 > 0:08:24even though he himself wasn't a Christian.
0:08:24 > 0:08:26There are 12 people on the truck.
0:08:26 > 0:08:28They are the 12 tribes of Israel.
0:08:28 > 0:08:29Noah counts them on two by two,
0:08:29 > 0:08:32they and the animals as Noah counted them onto the Ark.
0:08:32 > 0:08:34We are in the Bible belt,
0:08:34 > 0:08:38but even so, Steinbeck wanted to use the Bible
0:08:38 > 0:08:40in order to make heroic
0:08:40 > 0:08:42the journey of these people...
0:08:42 > 0:08:45to give them vast, even mythic, status.
0:08:45 > 0:08:47They are like the Israelites, he thinks,
0:08:47 > 0:08:52going across the desert, making for the Promised Land.
0:08:52 > 0:08:55My fellow traveller, Earl Millen, is a Vietnam veteran
0:08:55 > 0:08:58and a vintage car enthusiast.
0:08:58 > 0:08:59I wanted to know what he thought
0:08:59 > 0:09:01about the mass migration to California.
0:09:01 > 0:09:03Do you admire them?
0:09:03 > 0:09:06Do you think they must have been tough people?
0:09:06 > 0:09:09I look at them as some of the strongest people
0:09:09 > 0:09:11in American history.
0:09:11 > 0:09:14How would you feel today about putting your family,
0:09:14 > 0:09:16say three or four people, in the back of this truck
0:09:16 > 0:09:18and driving that thousand miles in this?
0:09:18 > 0:09:20What would you feel about that?
0:09:20 > 0:09:21I'd probably chicken out.
0:09:21 > 0:09:22THEY LAUGH
0:09:22 > 0:09:24You'd chicken out, would you?
0:09:24 > 0:09:26Even a military man like you...
0:09:26 > 0:09:3029 years' service and you'd still chicken out.
0:09:35 > 0:09:38As the Joads travel along Route 66,
0:09:38 > 0:09:40they begin to experience hostility
0:09:40 > 0:09:42at state borders, suspicion at gas stations,
0:09:42 > 0:09:45and harassment from the police.
0:09:45 > 0:09:49They hear themselves described disparagingly as "Okies",
0:09:49 > 0:09:52a term applied to all the migrants irrespective of whether
0:09:52 > 0:09:57they came from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri or Kansas.
0:09:57 > 0:10:00As one character puts it in The Grapes Of Wrath,
0:10:00 > 0:10:04"Well, Okie use' ta mean you was from Oklahoma.
0:10:04 > 0:10:07"Now it means you're a dirty son-of-a-bitch.
0:10:07 > 0:10:09"Okie means you're scum."
0:10:10 > 0:10:14# I'm a-going down this road feeling bad
0:10:14 > 0:10:19# I'm a-going down this road feeling bad
0:10:19 > 0:10:21# I'm going down this road
0:10:21 > 0:10:25# Feeling bad, bad, bad
0:10:25 > 0:10:28# And I ain't gonna be treated this a-way... #
0:10:35 > 0:10:39This is the small town of Needles on the Colorado river,
0:10:39 > 0:10:42the border crossing from Arizona into California.
0:10:42 > 0:10:46In 1936, the Los Angeles Police Department sent officers
0:10:46 > 0:10:48to close the borders to migrant workers
0:10:48 > 0:10:51without jobs. They were effectively criminalising
0:10:51 > 0:10:56fellow Americans simply for being out of work and foreign to the state of California.
0:10:56 > 0:10:59The migrant situation was becoming so serious
0:10:59 > 0:11:01that California was cutting its links
0:11:01 > 0:11:03to the rest of the United States.
0:11:03 > 0:11:05These were cops who stood at the border
0:11:05 > 0:11:07and literally turned people away.
0:11:07 > 0:11:11If they were coming across into California looking for work,
0:11:11 > 0:11:13they said, "There are no jobs here, go home."
0:11:13 > 0:11:16And this commonly became known as the Bum Blockade.
0:11:16 > 0:11:19There was a determined attempt to keep them out,
0:11:19 > 0:11:21almost to secede from the Union, wasn't there?
0:11:21 > 0:11:25Yes. There were various attempts to keep the migrants out.
0:11:25 > 0:11:27So there were actually radio broadcasts sent
0:11:27 > 0:11:31back from different, quote unquote, "citizens' associations",
0:11:31 > 0:11:34and they would broadcast back to Oklahoma and say,
0:11:34 > 0:11:37if you've heard California's the land of milk and honey,
0:11:37 > 0:11:39if you've heard jobs are plentiful,
0:11:39 > 0:11:42don't believe it. Don't come, there are no jobs.
0:11:42 > 0:11:44We don't want you here. Stay out.
0:11:46 > 0:11:50By the time the Joad family get to Needles,
0:11:50 > 0:11:52they're already demoralised by the loss
0:11:52 > 0:11:56of the grandfather of the family, who's died along the way,
0:11:56 > 0:12:00and they are increasingly anxious about what lies ahead of them.
0:12:00 > 0:12:04The first sight of California is a huge disappointment.
0:12:04 > 0:12:07"Well, we're here.
0:12:07 > 0:12:12"This here's California, an' she don't look so prosperous.
0:12:12 > 0:12:14"'Got the desert yet', said Tom.
0:12:14 > 0:12:17"'An' I hear she's a son-of-a-bitch."
0:12:18 > 0:12:21After a pummelling journey across the desert,
0:12:21 > 0:12:25the Joads finally catch a glimpse of what they're looking for.
0:12:25 > 0:12:28"They drove through Tehachapi in the morning glow,
0:12:28 > 0:12:31"and the sun came up behind them, and then, suddenly,
0:12:31 > 0:12:34"they saw the great valley below them.
0:12:34 > 0:12:35"Al jammed on the brake.
0:12:35 > 0:12:38"'Jesus Christ! Look!' he said.
0:12:38 > 0:12:40"The vineyards, the orchards,
0:12:40 > 0:12:43"the great flat valley, green and beautiful,
0:12:43 > 0:12:47"the trees set in rows, and the farmhouses. And Pa said,
0:12:47 > 0:12:50"'God almighty! I never knowed there was anything like her.'
0:12:50 > 0:12:54"Ruthie and Winfield looked at it and Ruthie whispered,
0:12:54 > 0:12:55"'It's California.'"
0:12:55 > 0:12:58It might look like the land of Canaan,
0:12:58 > 0:13:00overflowing with milk and honey, or another Eden.
0:13:00 > 0:13:03But down there, in the orchards and vineyards,
0:13:03 > 0:13:07the Joad family were going to experience much worse -
0:13:07 > 0:13:10squalor, exploitation,
0:13:10 > 0:13:12prejudice and violence.
0:13:16 > 0:13:20What Steinbeck portrayed in the labour camps of California shocked America.
0:13:20 > 0:13:25Below subsistence wages, malnutrition, disease,
0:13:25 > 0:13:29beatings, and the complete loss of civil rights.
0:13:29 > 0:13:32That was what was waiting for the migrants.
0:13:32 > 0:13:34That was their promised land.
0:13:39 > 0:13:43The movie version of The Grapes Of Wrath portrays with documentary realism
0:13:43 > 0:13:45the hardships and brutality of the labour camps.
0:13:45 > 0:13:47The film was made in 1940,
0:13:47 > 0:13:50when the migrant crisis was still under way,
0:13:50 > 0:13:54and used real locations in the California valleys.
0:14:04 > 0:14:07Deputies armed with rifles and pick-axe handles
0:14:07 > 0:14:11herd the Joad family into what is effectively a concentration camp.
0:14:11 > 0:14:15When the Joads do finally get out to California,
0:14:15 > 0:14:16they got up against something
0:14:16 > 0:14:18I don't think they were expecting.
0:14:18 > 0:14:22They had no experience with big agribusiness here in Oklahoma.
0:14:22 > 0:14:23That was something different.
0:14:23 > 0:14:26California agricultural history is unique,
0:14:26 > 0:14:27because that was always that way.
0:14:27 > 0:14:31There were the biggest wheat ranches, the biggest fruit farms.
0:14:31 > 0:14:33There were the biggest everything out there.
0:14:33 > 0:14:35And they were owned by larger people
0:14:35 > 0:14:37who really had a lot of money to invest.
0:14:37 > 0:14:40And therefore they could exploit labour.
0:14:41 > 0:14:44Steinbeck's understanding of the developing crisis in California
0:14:44 > 0:14:46had been gradual.
0:14:46 > 0:14:49He was a native of California and had a privileged upbringing,
0:14:49 > 0:14:53but he couldn't avoid the violent unrest which shook the state
0:14:53 > 0:14:58in the 1930s and was leading to political extremism and mob rule.
0:15:04 > 0:15:05Steinbeck was born in 1902
0:15:05 > 0:15:08here in the agricultural town of Salinas,
0:15:08 > 0:15:11nicknamed "The Salad Bowl of the World".
0:15:21 > 0:15:24He grew up in a middle-class household
0:15:24 > 0:15:28and from an early age, he knew that he wanted to be a writer.
0:15:28 > 0:15:31They read aloud to one another
0:15:31 > 0:15:34and they had fierce debates about ideas over the dinner table.
0:15:34 > 0:15:36They would talk about ideas.
0:15:36 > 0:15:38So there was a kind of literary,
0:15:38 > 0:15:42not intellectually pretentious but certainly curious family.
0:15:42 > 0:15:45- Did he start writing quite young? - He said later that
0:15:45 > 0:15:48he wanted to be a writer since he was 14.
0:15:48 > 0:15:50And so he said, this is all I want to do, is write.
0:15:50 > 0:15:53And the amazing thing about Steinbeck is,
0:15:53 > 0:15:54having made that decision,
0:15:54 > 0:15:57he simply worked at it relentlessly
0:15:57 > 0:16:01all of his life. From age 14 until he died at age 66,
0:16:01 > 0:16:02he wrote every day,
0:16:02 > 0:16:06he wrote letters, he wrote journals to warm up.
0:16:06 > 0:16:09He would write for three, four, five hours a day.
0:16:11 > 0:16:16Steinbeck came into contact with itinerant field labourers from an early age,
0:16:16 > 0:16:20while doing vacation work at a local sugar beet factory.
0:16:20 > 0:16:22His sympathy for these marginal figures
0:16:22 > 0:16:25was shown in one of his most famous novels, Of Mice And Men,
0:16:25 > 0:16:29which follows the fortunes of two itinerant fruit tramps,
0:16:29 > 0:16:30Lennie and George.
0:16:30 > 0:16:34George describes their solitary life as follows.
0:16:34 > 0:16:39"Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world.
0:16:39 > 0:16:41"They got no family.
0:16:41 > 0:16:43"They don't belong no place.
0:16:43 > 0:16:45"They come to a ranch an' work up a stake
0:16:45 > 0:16:46"and then they go inta town
0:16:46 > 0:16:49"and blow their stake, and the first thing you know
0:16:49 > 0:16:51"they're poundin' their tail to some other ranch.
0:16:51 > 0:16:54"They ain't got nothing to look ahead to."
0:16:54 > 0:16:57He was drawn to people who weren't
0:16:57 > 0:16:59in the mainstream, workers in the fields,
0:16:59 > 0:17:01people who were lonely, people who were isolated,
0:17:01 > 0:17:04people on the margins. He always defended
0:17:04 > 0:17:06those who suffered in some way.
0:17:06 > 0:17:09He seemed to step outside what in England we would
0:17:09 > 0:17:11unhesitatingly call his class,
0:17:11 > 0:17:12very emphatically and
0:17:12 > 0:17:16go over a line and be the man who is now best remembered
0:17:16 > 0:17:19for being what was called a proletarian writer.
0:17:19 > 0:17:22He describes people working with their hands all the time.
0:17:22 > 0:17:24I mean, Of Mice And Men is full of hands.
0:17:24 > 0:17:28We're looking at Lenny's hands, George is playing solitaire.
0:17:28 > 0:17:31- And then Lenny crushes Curly's hand.- Exactly.
0:17:31 > 0:17:32Hands are very much a part of that book.
0:17:32 > 0:17:35But hands are a part of everything he wrote.
0:17:35 > 0:17:38Grapes Of Wrath, everybody's working with their hands,
0:17:38 > 0:17:40they're digging ditches, they're cooks,
0:17:40 > 0:17:43he talks about people frying hamburgers and onions.
0:17:43 > 0:17:45They're about workers and people who work.
0:17:45 > 0:17:48And I think if somebody like Fitzgerald is always
0:17:48 > 0:17:51writing about money and people's fascination with money,
0:17:51 > 0:17:54I think Steinbeck really got it right about people who have to
0:17:54 > 0:17:57work for a living and work with their hands.
0:17:57 > 0:18:00And he knew what that was like himself.
0:18:01 > 0:18:05Steinbeck's early reputation as a writer was based on stories
0:18:05 > 0:18:08set around the Salinas Valley. They were rural parables of life
0:18:08 > 0:18:09in The Pastures of Heaven
0:18:09 > 0:18:11or comic tales of Mexican paisanos
0:18:11 > 0:18:13in a district known as Tortilla Flat.
0:18:13 > 0:18:18But with the migrant crisis of the 1930s, everything changed,
0:18:18 > 0:18:21and the marginal figures he was typically drawn to
0:18:21 > 0:18:23began to take centre stage.
0:18:23 > 0:18:27In 1934, Steinbeck began to notice that new groups of people
0:18:27 > 0:18:29were passing through the Salinas Valley.
0:18:29 > 0:18:32Jalopies piled high with furniture and people
0:18:32 > 0:18:35were coming from Arkansas and Oklahoma
0:18:35 > 0:18:37and Texas, and going through the town.
0:18:37 > 0:18:38They made for a hill,
0:18:38 > 0:18:41and created a little shanty town,
0:18:41 > 0:18:43or 'Hooverville' as it was known then.
0:18:43 > 0:18:47The Depression had arrived right on Steinbeck's doorstep,
0:18:47 > 0:18:51and he began to study the situation in detail.
0:18:51 > 0:18:54You had about half a million people who came to California
0:18:54 > 0:18:57through the '30s and they swamped the place.
0:18:57 > 0:19:00And you can imagine the local reaction to this.
0:19:00 > 0:19:02Even if you were open-minded,
0:19:02 > 0:19:05you were starting to really feel a squeeze in a lot of ways.
0:19:05 > 0:19:08By the middle of 1934,
0:19:08 > 0:19:13there were 142 workers for every 100 jobs,
0:19:13 > 0:19:16and the incoming migration was driving wages
0:19:16 > 0:19:20to below subsistence level for a back-breaking ten-hour day.
0:19:20 > 0:19:24In effect, this sort of work was a form of seasonal slavery.
0:19:27 > 0:19:30This was a state that was divided between far left and far right.
0:19:30 > 0:19:36You literally had communists running around organising the farm fields
0:19:36 > 0:19:38and you had business interests
0:19:38 > 0:19:41and others who were determined to protect their interests
0:19:41 > 0:19:44who leaned very far politically the other way.
0:19:44 > 0:19:48Intrigued by what was going on in his own backyard,
0:19:48 > 0:19:51Steinbeck set about meeting Communist leaders and organisers.
0:19:52 > 0:19:55As a direct result of his exposure to these labour activists,
0:19:55 > 0:19:58he wrote the strike novel, In Dubious Battle.
0:20:00 > 0:20:02His first idea was to interview a strike organiser
0:20:02 > 0:20:05and he was going to write a biography.
0:20:05 > 0:20:08So you can see that initially he was kind of detached.
0:20:08 > 0:20:12I'm just going to interview this striker and write his biography.
0:20:12 > 0:20:15And he said, "I want to achieve a kind of detached perspective.
0:20:15 > 0:20:18"I'm non-partisan. I'm just going to report
0:20:18 > 0:20:20"as a journalist on what's going on."
0:20:20 > 0:20:22So, In Dubious Battle is about a strike,
0:20:22 > 0:20:25but it takes a kind of neutral position.
0:20:25 > 0:20:29Based on an actual strike which took place in August 1933,
0:20:29 > 0:20:32it depicted the battle, the bloody battle,
0:20:32 > 0:20:35between the fruit-pickers and the owners
0:20:35 > 0:20:36in orchards like these behind me.
0:20:36 > 0:20:40In this instance, Steinbeck didn't take sides.
0:20:40 > 0:20:44He depicts the Communist organisers as just as manipulative
0:20:44 > 0:20:46as the owners of the land themselves.
0:20:47 > 0:20:49"Mac said, 'Here's the layout.
0:20:49 > 0:20:52"'Torgas is a little valley and it's mostly apple orchards.
0:20:52 > 0:20:56"'Most of it's owned by a few men. Now when the apples are ripe,
0:20:56 > 0:20:59"'the crop tramps come in and pick them. From there, they go on
0:20:59 > 0:21:01"'over the ridge and south and pick cotton.
0:21:01 > 0:21:04"'If we can start the fun in the apples,
0:21:04 > 0:21:08"'maybe it will just naturally spread over into the cotton.'"
0:21:08 > 0:21:12Steinbeck was using this battle as a metaphor for human antagonism.
0:21:12 > 0:21:14In a letter, he wrote,
0:21:14 > 0:21:18"I'm not interested in the strike as a means of raising men's wages,
0:21:18 > 0:21:21"and I'm not interested in ranting about justice and oppression.
0:21:21 > 0:21:26"I wanted merely to be a recording consciousness, judging nothing,
0:21:26 > 0:21:28"simply putting down the thing.
0:21:28 > 0:21:32"I think it has the thrust, almost crazy, that mobs have."
0:21:32 > 0:21:35But something would happen to John Steinbeck,
0:21:35 > 0:21:39and he would reject his detached position and become full of anger
0:21:39 > 0:21:41and political commitment when,
0:21:41 > 0:21:44three years later, he wrote The Grapes Of Wrath.
0:21:46 > 0:21:50In August 1936, soon after the publication of In Dubious Battle,
0:21:50 > 0:21:54Steinbeck was asked by the San Francisco News
0:21:54 > 0:21:57to write a series of articles on migrant farm workers.
0:21:57 > 0:22:01Steinbeck toured the labour camps of the San Joaquin Valley.
0:22:03 > 0:22:08He described appalling scenes of squalor and malnutrition
0:22:08 > 0:22:12and young children dying in these slum conditions.
0:22:12 > 0:22:14"He will die in a very short time.
0:22:14 > 0:22:16"The older children may survive.
0:22:16 > 0:22:20"Four nights ago the mother had a baby in the tent,
0:22:20 > 0:22:22"on the dirty carpet.
0:22:22 > 0:22:25"It was born dead, which was just as well,
0:22:25 > 0:22:28"because she could not have fed it at the breast.
0:22:28 > 0:22:31"Her own diet will not produce milk.
0:22:31 > 0:22:34"After it was born and she had seen that it was dead,
0:22:34 > 0:22:36"the mother rolled over
0:22:36 > 0:22:40"and lay still for two days. This woman's eyes have the glazed,
0:22:40 > 0:22:42"faraway look of a sleepwalker.
0:22:45 > 0:22:48I did have a great-uncle. He lived over here in Oklahoma.
0:22:48 > 0:22:52He couldn't make it any more, so he moved to California.
0:22:52 > 0:22:54They lived in a tent city.
0:22:54 > 0:22:55But they had a daughter
0:22:55 > 0:22:58that hadn't been feeling too good when they left.
0:22:58 > 0:23:01So she was sick quite a while.
0:23:01 > 0:23:03But when you don't have any money,
0:23:03 > 0:23:06you don't go to the doctor and take care of it.
0:23:07 > 0:23:10So she passed away out there then.
0:23:12 > 0:23:15It was scenes like this which provoked Steinbeck
0:23:15 > 0:23:20to abandon his detachment and take an angry, partisan stance.
0:23:20 > 0:23:22And when he returned from this research trip,
0:23:22 > 0:23:27he found an alarming situation developing in his home town.
0:23:29 > 0:23:33The Salinas lettuce strike started at the end of August 1936.
0:23:33 > 0:23:35Bully boys were marching around the town
0:23:35 > 0:23:37to defend it from the strikers.
0:23:37 > 0:23:40The local police were in alliance with the growers
0:23:40 > 0:23:43and gave charge of the situation to a retired army officer,
0:23:43 > 0:23:46Colonel Sanborn, who declared a form of martial law
0:23:46 > 0:23:51and deputised 2,000 vigilantes to patrol the streets.
0:23:53 > 0:23:57Salinas was producing half of all the lettuce consumed in the USA.
0:23:57 > 0:24:01So there were fortunes at stake for the growers facing a strike.
0:24:01 > 0:24:03The labourers in the fields had seen
0:24:03 > 0:24:05their earnings decline by two-thirds,
0:24:05 > 0:24:08and their anger was kept under control
0:24:08 > 0:24:11at the end of the barrel of a gun.
0:24:11 > 0:24:14The Nation magazine described sinister developments,
0:24:14 > 0:24:18"Just outside Salinas, something shockingly resembling
0:24:18 > 0:24:21"a concentration camp has recently been constructed.
0:24:21 > 0:24:26"A water tower rises in solitary grandeur in the midst of this camp.
0:24:26 > 0:24:29"Surrounding the tower is a platform, splendidly adapted
0:24:29 > 0:24:33for observation, night illumination and marksmanship.
0:24:34 > 0:24:38Tensions reached breaking point when non-union farm workers
0:24:38 > 0:24:41were brought in by the growers to bust the strike.
0:24:43 > 0:24:45Here, in this charming town of Salinas,
0:24:45 > 0:24:49on September 16, 1936,
0:24:49 > 0:24:51a pitched battled was fought in these streets.
0:24:51 > 0:24:54Pick handles, tear gas, shotguns.
0:24:54 > 0:24:57The Battle of Salinas had begun.
0:25:04 > 0:25:08By September 17, Steinbeck's home town was a war zone.
0:25:08 > 0:25:10250 American Legionnaires,
0:25:10 > 0:25:12admirers of European fascism,
0:25:12 > 0:25:13joined the battle.
0:25:27 > 0:25:31Steinbeck describes the situation in California as
0:25:31 > 0:25:32"a bomb ready to explode.
0:25:32 > 0:25:37"There are riots in Salinas and killings in the streets
0:25:37 > 0:25:39"of that dear little town where I was born."
0:25:39 > 0:25:42Looking at the local newspapers is a reminder that
0:25:42 > 0:25:46what was going on in the California Valleys reflected
0:25:46 > 0:25:50the bigger political struggles unfolding in Europe in the 1930s.
0:25:50 > 0:25:52The conflict was often described ideologically
0:25:52 > 0:25:55as a battle between communists and fascists,
0:25:55 > 0:25:58but the truth was more basic than that.
0:25:58 > 0:26:01Steinbeck wrote, "The use of the word 'communist' as a bugbear
0:26:01 > 0:26:03"has nearly lost its sting.
0:26:03 > 0:26:05"An official of a speculative-farmer group,
0:26:05 > 0:26:08"when asked what he meant by a communist, replied,
0:26:08 > 0:26:11"'Why, he's the guy that wants 25 cents an hour
0:26:11 > 0:26:13"when we're paying 20.'"
0:26:13 > 0:26:16Steinbeck was now desperately concerned about
0:26:16 > 0:26:19the collapse of democracy and civil rights, and the rise of vigilantism,
0:26:19 > 0:26:22the lynch mob and fascism.
0:26:24 > 0:26:26He decided to go undercover to research
0:26:26 > 0:26:29a big novel about the migrant situation.
0:26:29 > 0:26:33He went to the headquarters of the Farm Security Administration
0:26:33 > 0:26:37in Washington and said he wanted to work as a migrant worker.
0:26:37 > 0:26:40They assigned to him a man called Tom Collins, who was camp manager
0:26:40 > 0:26:44at this camp, Arvin, here, and the two men worked in the valleys,
0:26:44 > 0:26:48this valley and other valleys, for several months in 1937.
0:26:48 > 0:26:52What he saw and experienced with Tom Collins in the fields
0:26:52 > 0:26:55and labour camps provided much of the raw material
0:26:55 > 0:26:56for The Grapes Of Wrath.
0:26:57 > 0:26:59He really got to know the way
0:26:59 > 0:27:02the Joads, these migrants, the way they talked,
0:27:02 > 0:27:05the way they dressed, the churches they went to,
0:27:05 > 0:27:08their dialect, their cars,
0:27:08 > 0:27:11their family structures.
0:27:11 > 0:27:15He really immersed himself in that world.
0:27:15 > 0:27:18Steinbeck wrote the Grapes Of Wrath in a marathon stint.
0:27:18 > 0:27:19It's an immense novel.
0:27:19 > 0:27:21He made several false starts.
0:27:21 > 0:27:24He said that the effort nearly destroyed him.
0:27:24 > 0:27:28"I'm trying to write history while it is happening
0:27:28 > 0:27:31£and I don't want it to be wrong."
0:27:31 > 0:27:35In the end he wrote something that was viscerally documentary,
0:27:35 > 0:27:39brutally realistic, and yet rifted with myths
0:27:39 > 0:27:42and references to the Bible.
0:27:43 > 0:27:46In the end, he said,
0:27:46 > 0:27:48"It's a mean, nasty book,
0:27:48 > 0:27:51"and if I could make it nastier I would.
0:27:51 > 0:27:53"The book has a definite job to do."
0:27:53 > 0:27:56He told his publisher, "I want to put a tag of shame
0:27:56 > 0:27:59"on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this."
0:27:59 > 0:28:02And he was clear who the greedy bastards were -
0:28:02 > 0:28:05the big agribusinesses and the banks.
0:28:09 > 0:28:10It was Steinbeck's wife Carol
0:28:10 > 0:28:13who suggested the title The Grapes Of Wrath.
0:28:13 > 0:28:15It's a phrase from The Battle Hymn Of The Republic,
0:28:15 > 0:28:17originally from the Book of Revelation,
0:28:17 > 0:28:20and Steinbeck insisted that the full text of the hymn
0:28:20 > 0:28:23be printed in the front papers of the novel.
0:28:23 > 0:28:25This was a statement of patriotism.
0:28:25 > 0:28:28Steinbeck was making it clear that this is an American book
0:28:28 > 0:28:32to its core, and not a piece of Red propaganda.
0:28:32 > 0:28:34It had an enormous impact.
0:28:34 > 0:28:38First of all, this was the best-selling book of 1939
0:28:38 > 0:28:40across all of America.
0:28:40 > 0:28:43It was one of the ten best-sellers of 1940.
0:28:43 > 0:28:45The film version of The Grapes Of Wrath came out
0:28:45 > 0:28:49the year after it was published and was a big box-office hit.
0:28:49 > 0:28:53So this was a story that clearly resonated with people.
0:28:53 > 0:28:56It's really a story about people's incredible humanity
0:28:56 > 0:28:58in the face of all this hardship.
0:28:58 > 0:29:00And here was John Steinbeck, this author who
0:29:00 > 0:29:05came in in the midst of this left-right divide and
0:29:05 > 0:29:08really identified with the left
0:29:08 > 0:29:11with some incredibly incendiary language.
0:29:11 > 0:29:13Steinbeck, if he wasn't
0:29:13 > 0:29:15out and out calling for revolution -
0:29:15 > 0:29:18and that was a word that really meant something in that era -
0:29:18 > 0:29:21he was tip-toeing pretty close to the line.
0:29:24 > 0:29:27Steinbeck's fear that there would be a right-wing backlash
0:29:27 > 0:29:29was totally justified.
0:29:29 > 0:29:31He was accused of being a "liar", a "communist",
0:29:31 > 0:29:33and undermining the economy
0:29:33 > 0:29:37by putting himself on the side of Zionist-Communist interests.
0:29:37 > 0:29:42The book was burned in Bakersfield, Buffalo and Illinois.
0:29:42 > 0:29:44It was widely banned and has suffered bans
0:29:44 > 0:29:47from schools and libraries ever since
0:29:47 > 0:29:50because of its earthy language and blunt, sexual content.
0:29:50 > 0:29:52It was banned as obscene in Kansas City
0:29:52 > 0:29:53and even back in Oklahoma,
0:29:53 > 0:29:55there were those who disliked it
0:29:55 > 0:29:58and thought it was too lewd and coarse.
0:29:58 > 0:30:02You know, there's some four letter words throughout the book.
0:30:02 > 0:30:05And I think mainly even more than that, some of the scenes,
0:30:05 > 0:30:09particularly the last scene, of course, where Rose of Sharon
0:30:09 > 0:30:11gives her breast to a starving stranger,
0:30:11 > 0:30:14having just lost her stillborn baby.
0:30:14 > 0:30:18That was probably a little too much for some people to bear.
0:30:18 > 0:30:19Comments were made in Congress
0:30:19 > 0:30:23by Representative Lyle Borden. He said, "I say to you,
0:30:23 > 0:30:26"and to every honest, square-minded reader in America,
0:30:26 > 0:30:31"that the painting Steinbeck made in this book is a lie, a black,
0:30:31 > 0:30:35"infernal creation of a twisted and distorted mind."
0:30:35 > 0:30:37Steinbeck hated the attention
0:30:37 > 0:30:39that the success of the novel was bringing him.
0:30:39 > 0:30:42He also lived in fear of reprisals from the right.
0:30:42 > 0:30:45He was concerned about what would happen to him,
0:30:45 > 0:30:50and at one point in the '30s he began actually carrying
0:30:50 > 0:30:55a Colt revolver with him. That's how scared he was.
0:30:59 > 0:31:02When Hollywood decided to ride the wave of the book's success,
0:31:02 > 0:31:04the film's producer, Darryl Zanuck,
0:31:04 > 0:31:08cleverly cast popular actor Henry Fonda as Tom Joad.
0:31:08 > 0:31:10The casting gave the outlaw murderer
0:31:10 > 0:31:13the instant status of a people's champion.
0:31:13 > 0:31:15They're working away on our spirits,
0:31:15 > 0:31:18trying to make us cringe and crawl, working on our decency.
0:31:18 > 0:31:19You promised, Tom!
0:31:19 > 0:31:21I know. I'm a-tryin' to, Ma. Honest I am.
0:31:21 > 0:31:23You gotta keep clear. The family's a-breakin' up.
0:31:23 > 0:31:25You got to keep clear.
0:31:25 > 0:31:26What's that, a detour?
0:31:29 > 0:31:33Fonda was able to play the role of tough guy or peacemaker,
0:31:33 > 0:31:36depending on the needs of the situation.
0:31:36 > 0:31:37Tom, Tom, please!
0:31:42 > 0:31:44Just where do you think you're goin'?
0:31:46 > 0:31:49Well...we're strangers here, mister.
0:31:49 > 0:31:53We heard about there was work in a place called Tavares.
0:31:53 > 0:31:55Yeah? Well, you're heading the wrong way.
0:31:55 > 0:31:58What's more, we don't want no more Okies in this town!
0:31:58 > 0:32:00If the Grapes Of Wrath publicly damned
0:32:00 > 0:32:03California's response to the migrant crisis,
0:32:03 > 0:32:08Steinbeck did offer one example of how these people could and should have been treated.
0:32:08 > 0:32:12It was in the government camp run by Tom Collins.
0:32:12 > 0:32:16Tom Collins was an active campaigner for migrant rights.
0:32:16 > 0:32:19He ran this place democratically, this camp,
0:32:19 > 0:32:23and this was the model for Weedpatch in The Grapes Of Wrath.
0:32:23 > 0:32:26It was the first place in the book that the Joads were treated
0:32:26 > 0:32:29with respect and dignity, and in the film,
0:32:29 > 0:32:34this camp, Arvin, became Weedpatch, and this shack here
0:32:34 > 0:32:36became the camp manager's office.
0:32:38 > 0:32:40Camp I was in before, they burnt it out.
0:32:40 > 0:32:42Deputies and some of them pool-room fellas.
0:32:42 > 0:32:45They don't get in here. Sometimes the boys patrol the fences.
0:32:45 > 0:32:47Especially on dance nights.
0:32:47 > 0:32:49You got dances too?
0:32:49 > 0:32:53We have the best dances in the county, every Saturday night.
0:32:53 > 0:32:56- Who runs this place? - The government.
0:32:56 > 0:32:59- Why ain't there more like it? - You find out. I can't.
0:33:02 > 0:33:04Earl Shelton came to this camp as a boy.
0:33:04 > 0:33:08He spent seven years living in a tent, before moving into
0:33:08 > 0:33:10a tin shack like this one.
0:33:10 > 0:33:12He's now in his 80s.
0:33:13 > 0:33:15You look pretty fit.
0:33:15 > 0:33:17Well, time waits on no-one.
0:33:17 > 0:33:20He remembers Tom Collins' camp with affection.
0:33:20 > 0:33:24They had...dances, religious meetings,
0:33:24 > 0:33:29pie suppers. This was the community building.
0:33:29 > 0:33:35The government camps was absolutely gorgeous for the people,
0:33:35 > 0:33:37because they had protection.
0:33:37 > 0:33:40Those Okies who didn't come to a government camp,
0:33:40 > 0:33:43and there were very few of these camps, those who didn't come,
0:33:43 > 0:33:47what did you hear about the way they were treated in their camps?
0:33:47 > 0:33:49Oh, they were...
0:33:49 > 0:33:51they were treated miserably.
0:33:51 > 0:33:54They were just looked down on
0:33:54 > 0:33:59because they said, well, they were uneducated,
0:33:59 > 0:34:02dirty and what have you, and that was wrong.
0:34:04 > 0:34:06Earl was one of the lucky ones who found shelter
0:34:06 > 0:34:08and human compassion in Tom Collins' camp.
0:34:08 > 0:34:12I can see why there's that dedication at the front of
0:34:12 > 0:34:14The Grapes Of Wrath from Steinbeck
0:34:14 > 0:34:16"To Tom...who lived it."
0:34:17 > 0:34:19The Camp at Arvin
0:34:19 > 0:34:22has been offering shelter to migrants ever since.
0:34:22 > 0:34:25Now, the seasonal workforce
0:34:25 > 0:34:28in the fields of California is almost entirely Mexican.
0:34:28 > 0:34:31Mexican migrants come up because they can make more money
0:34:31 > 0:34:34here in the American West than they can in Mexico.
0:34:34 > 0:34:37They do represent the kind of nowaday Joads in several ways.
0:34:37 > 0:34:41This is a huge dilemma, especially more so over in California
0:34:41 > 0:34:44where there's more need for stoop labour.
0:34:46 > 0:34:49At Arvin, I also met a Mexican family who cross the border
0:34:49 > 0:34:51every year for the fruit-picking season.
0:34:51 > 0:34:52Hard work?
0:34:52 > 0:34:55- Duro trabajo?- Si, si.
0:34:55 > 0:34:58And whereabouts in Mexico are you from, Mr Ramirez?
0:34:58 > 0:35:00Donde vienes en Mexico, que lugar?
0:35:00 > 0:35:02De Juana Cuarto. Mexico.
0:35:05 > 0:35:08Mr Ramirez and his family are treated well,
0:35:08 > 0:35:11but they made me think of the struggles of all migrant workers
0:35:11 > 0:35:13who Steinbeck stood up for and gave voice to
0:35:13 > 0:35:15in The Grapes Of Wrath.
0:35:15 > 0:35:18Steinbeck had powerfully exposed America's
0:35:18 > 0:35:20scandalous neglect of its own people.
0:35:20 > 0:35:22The book came out in 1939.
0:35:22 > 0:35:25War in Europe meant that a year or so later,
0:35:25 > 0:35:28preparations for war began here. The armaments industry grew.
0:35:28 > 0:35:30The migrants who couldn't get work anywhere
0:35:30 > 0:35:35got work in a factory making arms, and later, work in the forces.
0:35:35 > 0:35:36And it was the war
0:35:36 > 0:35:39that drew the line under the furore
0:35:39 > 0:35:42created by The Grapes Of Wrath.
0:35:44 > 0:35:48Steinbeck was exhausted both by the writing of The Grapes Of Wrath
0:35:48 > 0:35:51and by the commotion it caused.
0:35:51 > 0:35:54At the peak of his fame, he ran away to sea.
0:35:54 > 0:35:57This wasn't so much backing away
0:35:57 > 0:36:00from political commitment, as pursuing another
0:36:00 > 0:36:04important strand of his imaginative life.
0:36:04 > 0:36:06Steinbeck had always been interested
0:36:06 > 0:36:08in how men fit into their landscape.
0:36:08 > 0:36:11He was now moving beyond the political arena
0:36:11 > 0:36:14and developing an ecological vision of how man as a species
0:36:14 > 0:36:16fits into the natural world.
0:36:18 > 0:36:23In 1940 he set off on a boat trip with his close friend Ed Ricketts
0:36:23 > 0:36:27to explore the marine life of the Sea of Cortez in Mexico.
0:36:27 > 0:36:31Ricketts was a professional collector of marine animals,
0:36:31 > 0:36:34and had been a key influence on Steinbeck's thinking
0:36:34 > 0:36:35throughout the 1930s.
0:36:36 > 0:36:38I think the Sea of Cortez
0:36:38 > 0:36:42is the book that best represents what Steinbeck thought,
0:36:42 > 0:36:45and what Steinbeck and Ricketts talked about throughout the '30s.
0:36:45 > 0:36:47I think there's more... One reviewer said
0:36:47 > 0:36:50there's more of Steinbeck the man in Sea of Cortez
0:36:50 > 0:36:52than in any other book that he wrote.
0:36:52 > 0:36:55So I think it's a compendium of his ideas,
0:36:55 > 0:36:57from survivability of the species,
0:36:57 > 0:36:59considering man's place in the universe,
0:36:59 > 0:37:02or how various species interact.
0:37:04 > 0:37:07Steinbeck had developed an interest in marine biology
0:37:07 > 0:37:09as a student at Stanford University.
0:37:09 > 0:37:13He'd studied at Hopkins Marine Station close to the beach house
0:37:13 > 0:37:16where he did a lot of his writing. The coastline here
0:37:16 > 0:37:18offered Steinbeck an alternative world
0:37:18 > 0:37:22to the Salinas Valley where he grew up. With Ed Ricketts,
0:37:22 > 0:37:24he used to explore the coastal tide pools of Monterey Bay,
0:37:24 > 0:37:28and became fascinated with their ecosystems.
0:37:29 > 0:37:32I think the friendship between Steinbeck and Ricketts
0:37:32 > 0:37:34meant everything to both of them.
0:37:34 > 0:37:38They were best friends for a decade or more.
0:37:38 > 0:37:42Ricketts was a scientist with an artistic sensibility,
0:37:42 > 0:37:45and Steinbeck was an artist with a scientific sensibility,
0:37:45 > 0:37:48and that's really true. And their gears really meshed.
0:37:48 > 0:37:51They worked together, they worked well together,
0:37:51 > 0:37:54and they stimulated each other to see new things
0:37:54 > 0:37:57that neither of them would have seen alone.
0:37:59 > 0:38:03"Our own interest lay in relationships of animal to animal.
0:38:03 > 0:38:06"If one observes in this relational sense, it seems apparent
0:38:06 > 0:38:10"that species are only commas in a sentence, that each species
0:38:10 > 0:38:13"is at once the point and the base of a pyramid,
0:38:13 > 0:38:16"that all life is relational.
0:38:16 > 0:38:19"Species grow misty. One merges into another,
0:38:19 > 0:38:23"groups melt into ecological groups until the time when
0:38:23 > 0:38:26"what we know as life meets and enters
0:38:26 > 0:38:28"what we think of as non-life -
0:38:28 > 0:38:31"barnacle and rock, rock and earth,
0:38:31 > 0:38:33"earth and tree."
0:38:35 > 0:38:38Steinbeck, through his friendship with Ricketts,
0:38:38 > 0:38:40was developing his own philosophy
0:38:40 > 0:38:43in how man fits into the whole ecosystem.
0:38:46 > 0:38:51"And it is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious,
0:38:51 > 0:38:53"most of the mystical outcrying
0:38:53 > 0:38:55"which is one of the most prized and used
0:38:55 > 0:38:58"and desired reactions of our species,
0:38:58 > 0:39:00"is really the understanding
0:39:00 > 0:39:04"and the attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing,
0:39:04 > 0:39:06"related inextricably to all reality,
0:39:06 > 0:39:09"known and unknowable.
0:39:09 > 0:39:11"All things are one,
0:39:11 > 0:39:14"and one thing is all things,
0:39:14 > 0:39:17"all bound together by the elastic string of time.
0:39:18 > 0:39:21"It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars,
0:39:21 > 0:39:25"and then back to the tide pool again."
0:39:29 > 0:39:34What seemed like a totally new direction in Sea Of Cortez
0:39:34 > 0:39:36was in fact a continuation of ideas
0:39:36 > 0:39:39he had been developing throughout his career.
0:39:39 > 0:39:41Sea Of Cortez was really a key,
0:39:41 > 0:39:43a Rosetta Stone to reading Grapes Of Wrath.
0:39:43 > 0:39:44These are the ideas they had.
0:39:44 > 0:39:47Ricketts applies them in philosophy and science overtly.
0:39:47 > 0:39:50Steinbeck incorporates them into the novels.
0:39:50 > 0:39:53Any work that Steinbeck wrote, basically, you can view
0:39:53 > 0:39:55through that lens and see this sort of
0:39:55 > 0:39:58interrelationships of people and place,
0:39:58 > 0:40:00achieving universality.
0:40:00 > 0:40:02It's the philosophy of the ecology
0:40:02 > 0:40:05and the environment and personal relations
0:40:05 > 0:40:07that he really mastered, I think.
0:40:08 > 0:40:11In 1945, Steinbeck applied his ecological vision to the people
0:40:11 > 0:40:13he knew and loved in the town of Monterey,
0:40:13 > 0:40:16in particular the outsiders and bohemians.
0:40:16 > 0:40:20The result was the novel Cannery Row.
0:40:21 > 0:40:25"Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem,
0:40:25 > 0:40:28"a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone,
0:40:28 > 0:40:30"a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.
0:40:30 > 0:40:33"Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered,
0:40:33 > 0:40:37"tin and iron and rust and splintered wood,
0:40:37 > 0:40:39"chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps,
0:40:39 > 0:40:44"sardine canneries and corrugated iron, laboratories and flop-houses.
0:40:44 > 0:40:47"Its inhabitants are, as the man once said,
0:40:47 > 0:40:49"'Whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,
0:40:49 > 0:40:52"by which he meant Everybody.
0:40:52 > 0:40:54"Had the man looked through another peephole,
0:40:54 > 0:40:59"he might have said, 'Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men',
0:40:59 > 0:41:01"and he would have meant the same thing."
0:41:03 > 0:41:07Cannery Row is a kind of freestyle jazz novel,
0:41:07 > 0:41:10loosely based around two drunken, wild parties
0:41:10 > 0:41:15held at a marine laboratory run by a character called Doc.
0:41:15 > 0:41:17Doc is effectively a portrait of Ed Ricketts,
0:41:17 > 0:41:21who worked here in the Pacific Biological Laboratories,
0:41:21 > 0:41:24which this once was.
0:41:24 > 0:41:25This wasn't only a laboratory.
0:41:25 > 0:41:28It was a hang-out for Ricketts' friends -
0:41:28 > 0:41:32artists, Steinbeck, of course, other pals -
0:41:32 > 0:41:34and bums like Mack and the boys
0:41:34 > 0:41:37who feature so heavily in Cannery Row.
0:41:37 > 0:41:39It's opposite what was known as
0:41:39 > 0:41:44"Monterey's most genteel and magnificent whorehouse".
0:41:44 > 0:41:47Cannery Row is probably the only American novel
0:41:47 > 0:41:50with the tide pool as the main metaphor
0:41:50 > 0:41:54and it's about the community of assorted people, a scientist, Doc,
0:41:54 > 0:41:58the whores in the Bear Flag Cafe, the bums on the street,
0:41:58 > 0:42:00Mack and the boys...
0:42:00 > 0:42:03it's really a bizarre mix of fringe-dwellers
0:42:03 > 0:42:06that are all related in lots of strange ways in Cannery Row.
0:42:06 > 0:42:10Steinbeck was trying something radically new with this novel.
0:42:10 > 0:42:14The book has very little plot.
0:42:14 > 0:42:16He wanted to find a form that reflected
0:42:16 > 0:42:17his ecological view of life.
0:42:19 > 0:42:22"How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise,
0:42:22 > 0:42:25"the quality of light, the tone, the habit
0:42:25 > 0:42:27"and the dream, be set down alive?
0:42:27 > 0:42:30"When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms
0:42:30 > 0:42:33"so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole,
0:42:33 > 0:42:35"for they break and tatter under the touch.
0:42:35 > 0:42:38"You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will
0:42:38 > 0:42:40"on to a knife blade
0:42:40 > 0:42:43"and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water.
0:42:43 > 0:42:46"And perhaps that might be the way
0:42:46 > 0:42:47"to write this book -
0:42:47 > 0:42:51"to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.
0:42:52 > 0:42:55The tide pools, here along Monterey's rocky coastline,
0:42:55 > 0:42:59was where Steinbeck would often accompany Ed Ricketts
0:42:59 > 0:43:00to collect specimens.
0:43:00 > 0:43:04The worlds he found in these tide pools fascinated him.
0:43:06 > 0:43:09Steinbeck revels in the beauty
0:43:09 > 0:43:12and the violence contained inside these pools of trapped sea-water.
0:43:12 > 0:43:17For him, they represent a lurid and pungent microcosm of life.
0:43:18 > 0:43:22"Doc was collecting marine animals in the Great Tide Pool
0:43:22 > 0:43:23"on the tip of the Peninsula.
0:43:23 > 0:43:26"When the tide is in, a wave-churned basin,
0:43:26 > 0:43:28"creamy with foam, whipped by the combers
0:43:28 > 0:43:32"that roll in from the whistling buoy on the reef.
0:43:32 > 0:43:35"But when the tide goes out, the little water world
0:43:35 > 0:43:39"becomes quiet and lovely. The sea is very clear and the bottom
0:43:39 > 0:43:42"becomes fantastic with hurrying, fighting, feeding, breeding animals.
0:43:42 > 0:43:46"Crabs rush from frond to frond.
0:43:46 > 0:43:50"Starfish squat over mussels and limpets.
0:43:50 > 0:43:53"The sharp smell of iodine from the algae,
0:43:53 > 0:43:55"and the lime smell of calcareous bodies...
0:43:55 > 0:43:58"smell of sperm and ova fill the air.
0:43:58 > 0:44:02"The smells of life and richness, of death and digestion,
0:44:02 > 0:44:04"of decay and birth."
0:44:04 > 0:44:08When Steinbeck turns to describe the inhabitants of Cannery Row,
0:44:08 > 0:44:11he describes them with the same zoologist's eye,
0:44:11 > 0:44:14and sees them in a tide pool with the same seductions,
0:44:14 > 0:44:17appetites and survival instincts.
0:44:20 > 0:44:22"Doc said, 'Look at them.
0:44:22 > 0:44:24"There are your true philosophers...
0:44:24 > 0:44:28"Mack and the boys know everything that has ever happened in this world
0:44:28 > 0:44:30"and possibly everything that will happen.
0:44:30 > 0:44:34"I think they survive in this particular world better than other people.
0:44:34 > 0:44:38"In a time when people tear themselves to pieces with ambition
0:44:38 > 0:44:42"and nervousness and covetousness, they are relaxed.
0:44:42 > 0:44:46"All of our so-called successful men are sick men, with bad stomachs,
0:44:46 > 0:44:51"and bad souls, but Mack and the boys are healthy
0:44:51 > 0:44:54"and curiously clean. They can do what they want.
0:44:54 > 0:44:56"They can satisfy their appetites
0:44:56 > 0:44:59"without calling them something else'".
0:44:59 > 0:45:01Even though Steinbeck was now a wealthy man,
0:45:01 > 0:45:05he was still drawn to those who lived a simple, carefree life.
0:45:05 > 0:45:09Perhaps these loafers and idlers held the key to happiness?
0:45:09 > 0:45:12When I first read Cannery Row as a teenager in Wigton
0:45:12 > 0:45:14up in Cumbria, Mac and the boys reminded me
0:45:14 > 0:45:16of people in my home town, characters.
0:45:16 > 0:45:19I'm sure it was the same in towns and cities and villages
0:45:19 > 0:45:22all over Europe, all over America, all over the world.
0:45:22 > 0:45:25He'd hit on a universal type.
0:45:25 > 0:45:28In my opinion, Cannery Row, with its celebration of life
0:45:28 > 0:45:32in all its forms, is up there with The Grapes Of Wrath.
0:45:32 > 0:45:33It's a love letter to a world
0:45:33 > 0:45:35Steinbeck left behind when he became
0:45:35 > 0:45:37a world-famous author.
0:45:38 > 0:45:43Steinbeck spent part of World War II in Italy as a war correspondent.
0:45:43 > 0:45:46In 1947 he travelled with photographer Robert Capa
0:45:46 > 0:45:50to the Soviet Union, which only added to the mistaken idea
0:45:50 > 0:45:52that he was a communist.
0:45:52 > 0:45:53By the end of the decade,
0:45:53 > 0:45:56he was feeling distanced from his real subject,
0:45:56 > 0:45:57Americans in their landscape.
0:45:57 > 0:46:00He loved the landscape.
0:46:00 > 0:46:03He talks about it always, that it was in his blood,
0:46:03 > 0:46:05the lime stone of these mountains.
0:46:05 > 0:46:08You see the limestone of the mountains where you are on
0:46:08 > 0:46:09the East Of Eden ranch.
0:46:09 > 0:46:12You can see him looking up at those and thinking,
0:46:12 > 0:46:15"OK, this is where I belong, this is where my people live."
0:46:27 > 0:46:29In 1948, Steinbeck decided
0:46:29 > 0:46:31to reconnect with his native California.
0:46:31 > 0:46:33He wanted to write another epic book,
0:46:33 > 0:46:36this time based on his own family.
0:46:36 > 0:46:39It would eventually become East Of Eden.
0:46:39 > 0:46:42It was a hugely ambitious undertaking.
0:46:42 > 0:46:46He described it as his attempt to write his War And Peace.
0:46:49 > 0:46:51Two things happened in that year.
0:46:51 > 0:46:52Ricketts died.
0:46:52 > 0:46:55He was killed by a train. And he was divorced
0:46:55 > 0:46:57from his second wife. And I think
0:46:57 > 0:47:00that earthquake created something that...
0:47:00 > 0:47:04it was kind of a reassessment of where he was at that point.
0:47:06 > 0:47:08This was to be his big novel.
0:47:08 > 0:47:11"What I have been practising to write all my life," he wrote.
0:47:11 > 0:47:13"Everything else has been training.
0:47:13 > 0:47:17"It's the whole nasty, bloody, lovely history of the world,
0:47:17 > 0:47:20"that's what it is, with no boundaries
0:47:20 > 0:47:22"except my own inabilities".
0:47:22 > 0:47:25Everybody in America always wanted to write
0:47:25 > 0:47:28the Great American Novel from the mid-19th century on,
0:47:28 > 0:47:30because we were trying to define ourselves.
0:47:30 > 0:47:32And so what is an American novel?
0:47:32 > 0:47:34He said I have to write about my home country,
0:47:34 > 0:47:37I have to write about Salinas.
0:47:37 > 0:47:40The original title of East Of Eden was The Salinas Valley,
0:47:40 > 0:47:43and Steinbeck embarked on a period of intense research
0:47:43 > 0:47:46into the early settling of the Valley
0:47:46 > 0:47:51and into his ancestry on his mother's side, the Irish Hamiltons.
0:47:51 > 0:47:52He wanted the Salinas Valley
0:47:52 > 0:47:55to be a microcosm for the whole of the USA,
0:47:55 > 0:47:58and his own family to stand for what is universal
0:47:58 > 0:48:01in all families. Steinbeck's maternal grandfather,
0:48:01 > 0:48:04Samuel Hamilton, originally from Northern Ireland,
0:48:04 > 0:48:07moved here in 1870 and built this farm.
0:48:07 > 0:48:12The farm, and Hamilton himself, feature strongly in East Of Eden
0:48:12 > 0:48:15where Steinbeck traces the rugged individualism
0:48:15 > 0:48:18and the strength of those early settlers.
0:48:19 > 0:48:23"When people first came to the West, particularly from the owned
0:48:23 > 0:48:24"and fought-over farmlets of Europe,
0:48:24 > 0:48:28"and saw so much land to be had for the signing of a paper
0:48:28 > 0:48:30"and the building of a foundation,
0:48:30 > 0:48:33"an itching land-greed seemed to come over them.
0:48:33 > 0:48:35"They wanted more and more land.
0:48:35 > 0:48:38"They took up worthless land just to own it.
0:48:38 > 0:48:40"They and the coyotes lived clever, despairing,
0:48:40 > 0:48:42"sub-marginal lives.
0:48:42 > 0:48:44"I don't know whether it was a divine stupidity
0:48:44 > 0:48:48"or a great faith that let them do it."
0:48:48 > 0:48:51This novel was written with Steinbeck's two young sons in mind,
0:48:51 > 0:48:54and explores the idea of legacy and inheritance
0:48:54 > 0:48:57and the individual's ability to shape his own destiny.
0:48:57 > 0:49:01Steinbeck wrote, "I am choosing to write this book to my sons.
0:49:01 > 0:49:03"They are little boys now and will never know
0:49:03 > 0:49:07"what they came from through me, unless I tell them.
0:49:07 > 0:49:09"And so I will tell them one of the greatest,
0:49:09 > 0:49:12"perhaps the greatest story of all...
0:49:12 > 0:49:15"the story of good and evil, of strength and weakness,
0:49:15 > 0:49:18"of love and hate."
0:49:18 > 0:49:21I think part of the book is his trying to understand
0:49:21 > 0:49:26his very personal recent past and his distant past as well.
0:49:26 > 0:49:30And I think he wants it to open up, almost like tide pool to the stars,
0:49:30 > 0:49:34open up into the story that he thought was...
0:49:34 > 0:49:37contained all of human experience, which was
0:49:37 > 0:49:39the Cain and Abel story.
0:49:39 > 0:49:41As he did in The Grapes Of Wrath,
0:49:41 > 0:49:43Steinbeck went to the Bible for his stories
0:49:43 > 0:49:45and his themes in East Of Eden,
0:49:45 > 0:49:48particularly the fight between Cain and Abel
0:49:48 > 0:49:51and the Garden of Eden story itself.
0:49:52 > 0:49:56"A child may ask, 'What is the world's story about?'
0:49:56 > 0:50:00"And a grown man or woman may wonder, 'What way will the world go?
0:50:00 > 0:50:04"How does it end and, while we're at it, what's the story about?
0:50:04 > 0:50:07"I believe that there is one story in the world,
0:50:07 > 0:50:11"and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live
0:50:11 > 0:50:15"in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder.
0:50:15 > 0:50:18"Humans are caught in their lives, in their thoughts,
0:50:18 > 0:50:21"in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty,
0:50:21 > 0:50:24"and in their kindness and generosity too...
0:50:24 > 0:50:27"in a net of good and evil.
0:50:27 > 0:50:30"I think this is the only story we have,
0:50:30 > 0:50:33"and that it occurs at all levels of feeling and intelligence.
0:50:33 > 0:50:36"Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness,
0:50:36 > 0:50:39"and they will be the fabric of our last,
0:50:39 > 0:50:42"and this despite changes we may impose on field and river
0:50:42 > 0:50:45"and mountain, on economy and manners.
0:50:45 > 0:50:47"There is no other story.
0:50:47 > 0:50:50"A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life,
0:50:50 > 0:50:53"will have left only the hard, clean questions.
0:50:53 > 0:50:55"Was it good or was it evil?
0:50:55 > 0:50:57"Have I done well...
0:50:57 > 0:50:59"or ill?"
0:51:00 > 0:51:02Steinbeck was again on epic territory,
0:51:02 > 0:51:06and in my opinion, he created a powerful foundation myth
0:51:06 > 0:51:09for the American West.
0:51:09 > 0:51:12East Of Eden received mixed reviews but it had commercial success.
0:51:12 > 0:51:15It hit number one in the bestseller list and Elia Kazan's film
0:51:15 > 0:51:19starring James Dean added to its popularity and sales.
0:51:19 > 0:51:23But it wasn't, and it wasn't thought to be, the epoch-making novel
0:51:23 > 0:51:25that The Grapes Of Wrath had been.
0:51:25 > 0:51:29Steinbeck had a curious relationship with critics,
0:51:29 > 0:51:32because many of them praised many of his books,
0:51:32 > 0:51:35even East Of Eden, even Winter Of Our Discontent,
0:51:35 > 0:51:39his last novel. But I don't know if...
0:51:39 > 0:51:42He always said they didn't understand what he was trying to do.
0:51:42 > 0:51:45And I think that's in part because he was trying to experiment
0:51:45 > 0:51:47but it didn't necessarily seem as experimental
0:51:47 > 0:51:51as somebody like Faulkner or Hemingway, the great modernists.
0:51:51 > 0:51:54He was always compared to them,
0:51:54 > 0:51:56and I think that he didn't just seem very experimental
0:51:56 > 0:51:59and people put writers in slots, and it's hard
0:51:59 > 0:52:01to get out of the slot you're put into.
0:52:01 > 0:52:05So he was put into a naturalist-realist slot.
0:52:05 > 0:52:09Everybody wanted him to keep rewriting The Grapes Of Wrath.
0:52:09 > 0:52:11Go back to your best work, the work of the '30s,
0:52:11 > 0:52:15the committed artist, the partisan writer.
0:52:17 > 0:52:19Steinbeck appeared to be out of step with the times,
0:52:19 > 0:52:21and if the critics thought it,
0:52:21 > 0:52:23Steinbeck was beginning to think it too.
0:52:23 > 0:52:26In the mid-'50s, he dreamt up the idea of making
0:52:26 > 0:52:28a road trip across the country
0:52:28 > 0:52:31to report on the health of America and reconnect with its soul.
0:52:33 > 0:52:34"I want to take a drive
0:52:34 > 0:52:36"through the middle west and the south
0:52:36 > 0:52:40"and listen to what the country is about now.
0:52:40 > 0:52:43"I have been cut off for a very long time and I think
0:52:43 > 0:52:45"it would be a very valuable thing for me to do."
0:52:45 > 0:52:48He didn't get to make the trip until 1960.
0:52:48 > 0:52:50The resulting book, Travels With Charley -
0:52:50 > 0:52:52Charley was the dog who went along with him -
0:52:52 > 0:52:55was also called "In Search Of America".
0:52:57 > 0:53:03What Steinbeck found on his trip was conformity, homogenisation,
0:53:03 > 0:53:06urban decay and the ruin of the American landscape.
0:53:08 > 0:53:11"American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash.
0:53:13 > 0:53:14"All of them.
0:53:14 > 0:53:15"Surrounded by piles of wrecked
0:53:15 > 0:53:18"and rusted automobiles, and almost smothered
0:53:18 > 0:53:21"with rubbish. The new American finds his challenge
0:53:21 > 0:53:24"and his love in traffic-choked streets,
0:53:24 > 0:53:26"skies nested in smog,
0:53:26 > 0:53:29"choking with the acids of industry."
0:53:30 > 0:53:31Towards the end of his road trip,
0:53:31 > 0:53:34he returned to his beloved Salinas Valley
0:53:34 > 0:53:37and the coastal town of Monterey.
0:53:37 > 0:53:39He found them both changed beyond recognition.
0:53:42 > 0:53:44When he reached Cannery Row,
0:53:44 > 0:53:47Steinbeck was dismayed by the commercialism of the place.
0:53:47 > 0:53:49"They fish for tourists now," he said.
0:53:49 > 0:53:52But it's ironic that the tourists come because of Cannery Row.
0:53:52 > 0:53:55They changed the name because of his book,
0:53:55 > 0:53:58and because of Steinbeck, who was the other great draw here.
0:54:00 > 0:54:04Travels With Charley is a jeremiad.
0:54:04 > 0:54:07Steinbeck saw the America of that time as decadent.
0:54:07 > 0:54:11The problem was not deprivation, as it was in the Depression,
0:54:11 > 0:54:13it was modern American affluence.
0:54:13 > 0:54:17He wrote that America had gone soft.
0:54:17 > 0:54:20"A nation or a group or an individual cannot survive
0:54:20 > 0:54:22"being soft, comforted, content.
0:54:22 > 0:54:25"The individual only survives when the pressure is on him.
0:54:25 > 0:54:28"The American people are losing their ability to be versatile,
0:54:28 > 0:54:32"to do things for themselves, to put back in.
0:54:32 > 0:54:35"When people or animals lose their versatility,
0:54:35 > 0:54:37"they become extinct."
0:54:39 > 0:54:41Despite being a hugely popular writer,
0:54:41 > 0:54:45Steinbeck's literary reputation had been declining for some time.
0:54:45 > 0:54:49He was on the lists of required reading at colleges
0:54:49 > 0:54:52and high schools but even that, perhaps mostly that,
0:54:52 > 0:54:55counted against him with the literati.
0:54:55 > 0:54:59I really think that Steinbeck was somebody who kept trying things,
0:54:59 > 0:55:02and the critics really didn't appreciate what he was trying.
0:55:02 > 0:55:05And he wasn't going to repeat himself,
0:55:05 > 0:55:07and I think that they didn't know what to expect next.
0:55:07 > 0:55:09What's coming out of this writer?
0:55:09 > 0:55:12He was going in every direction and so that was confusing.
0:55:12 > 0:55:15One way of looking at it is that in the commanding east coast
0:55:15 > 0:55:18headquarters of the literary establishment,
0:55:18 > 0:55:19he just didn't fit in.
0:55:19 > 0:55:22There were the great Jewish intellectuals like Saul Bellow,
0:55:22 > 0:55:24there were the hipsters like Norman Mailer,
0:55:24 > 0:55:26there were the drug-affected writers,
0:55:26 > 0:55:28there were the existentialists.
0:55:28 > 0:55:30And where was Steinbeck in all that?
0:55:30 > 0:55:32Maybe he was too real.
0:55:32 > 0:55:35A little too grubby, a little too...
0:55:35 > 0:55:36of the real world.
0:55:36 > 0:55:40You know, he's a guy, as you said, who had dirt under his nails.
0:55:40 > 0:55:44He really immersed himself beyond his mind and really got out there.
0:55:44 > 0:55:47There was a sense in which Steinbeck couldn't win.
0:55:47 > 0:55:49He was the proletarian writer
0:55:49 > 0:55:52too much beloved by Russians at the time of the Cold War.
0:55:52 > 0:55:54Then he supported the Vietnam War.
0:55:54 > 0:55:59Too much beloved by Lyndon Johnson, the enemy of the intellectuals.
0:55:59 > 0:56:00He went out of fashion.
0:56:00 > 0:56:04Still, people who go out of fashion often come back with a vengeance.
0:56:04 > 0:56:08And what they can't deny Steinbeck is his power as a storyteller
0:56:08 > 0:56:11of the working people of this great continent.
0:56:11 > 0:56:13It's Steinbeck's understanding
0:56:13 > 0:56:15of the common man which gives his books
0:56:15 > 0:56:18universal appeal and keeps them in print all over the world.
0:56:18 > 0:56:22Rather than being a writer of the 1930s, Steinbeck speaks
0:56:22 > 0:56:25directly to our present concerns, and I think
0:56:25 > 0:56:26he was also ahead of his time
0:56:26 > 0:56:31in developing an ecological view of man's place in the cosmos.
0:56:32 > 0:56:35Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in 1962, and by then
0:56:35 > 0:56:39the American literary establishment had really turned against him.
0:56:39 > 0:56:42On the eve of the celebration of the prize itself,
0:56:42 > 0:56:43The New York Times wrote,
0:56:43 > 0:56:47"Does a Moral Vision of the Thirties Deserve a Nobel Prize?"
0:56:47 > 0:56:50The newspaper declared that, "After The Grapes Of Wrath
0:56:50 > 0:56:52"at the end of the '30s,
0:56:52 > 0:56:55"most serious readers have ceased to read him."
0:56:55 > 0:56:59The article went on to say that the Swedes had made a serious error
0:56:59 > 0:57:02by giving the prize to a writer whose "limited talent is,
0:57:02 > 0:57:06"in his best books, watered down by tenth-rate philosophising."
0:57:06 > 0:57:11That seems to me to be nearer mere abuse than criticism.
0:57:11 > 0:57:14Steinbeck didn't like criticism. Who does?
0:57:14 > 0:57:17But he took it on the chin. And he chose to answer back
0:57:17 > 0:57:20in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
0:57:20 > 0:57:21"At this particular time,
0:57:21 > 0:57:24"I think it would be well to consider the high duties
0:57:24 > 0:57:27"and the responsibilities of the makers of literature.
0:57:27 > 0:57:31"Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated
0:57:31 > 0:57:32"critical priesthood
0:57:32 > 0:57:35"singing their litanies in empty churches...
0:57:35 > 0:57:37"nor is it a game
0:57:37 > 0:57:40"for the cloistered elect. Literature is as old as speech.
0:57:40 > 0:57:43"It grew out of human need for it,
0:57:43 > 0:57:47"and it has not changed except to become more needed.
0:57:47 > 0:57:50In my opinion, Steinbeck was a great writer,
0:57:50 > 0:57:52and above all, a great storyteller.
0:57:52 > 0:57:55He wrote, I think, at least four masterpieces -
0:57:55 > 0:57:58The Grapes Of Wrath, East Of Eden,
0:57:58 > 0:58:00Cannery Row, and Of Mice And Men.
0:58:00 > 0:58:03That's four more than the vast majority of writers
0:58:03 > 0:58:04ever manage to do.
0:58:04 > 0:58:07And he brought to the American dream of self-betterment
0:58:07 > 0:58:11the idea that it should also contain tolerance and compassion,
0:58:11 > 0:58:13and, above all, a democratic view of life.
0:58:13 > 0:58:16That, I think, is one of the reasons he is so popular
0:58:16 > 0:58:19like few great writers are popular.
0:58:19 > 0:58:22It's that sense of democracy and Arthur Miller picked it up
0:58:22 > 0:58:25in a very strong appreciation he wrote of Steinbeck.
0:58:25 > 0:58:28"I can't think of another American writer,
0:58:28 > 0:58:31"with the possible exception of Mark Twain,
0:58:31 > 0:58:35"who so deeply penetrated the political life of the country."
0:58:36 > 0:58:42# Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
0:58:42 > 0:58:48# He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored
0:58:48 > 0:58:50# He hath loosed the fateful lightning
0:58:50 > 0:58:54# of His terrible swift sword
0:58:54 > 0:58:58# His truth is marching on. #