When I was a Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University
in 2007-8, I used to drive my rattletrap of a car back and forth between San
Jose and San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood with The Grapes of Wrath
audiobook playing on my CD player.
I listened to the book twice in a row, all 21 hours and five minutes of it in 42 installments. As the story unfolded, I projected the action onto the land in front of me. While an amoral used-car salesman ripped off desperate “Okies” on their way to California, my own jalopy leaked oil on Highway 280. When Noah Joad disappeared, I imagined him lost in the foothills above Palo Alto. Twice in a row the lapsed preacher John Casy got his head bashed by thug cops while I crossed Church and 22nd Street in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” Casy said to his tormentors as I found myself trapped behind a stalled-out streetcar. To this day, that upscale neighborhood feels like a tragic place; the taint never fades. Never mind that The Grapes of Wrath took place worlds away, in the San Joaquin Valley.
I listened to the book twice in a row, all 21 hours and five minutes of it in 42 installments. As the story unfolded, I projected the action onto the land in front of me. While an amoral used-car salesman ripped off desperate “Okies” on their way to California, my own jalopy leaked oil on Highway 280. When Noah Joad disappeared, I imagined him lost in the foothills above Palo Alto. Twice in a row the lapsed preacher John Casy got his head bashed by thug cops while I crossed Church and 22nd Street in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” Casy said to his tormentors as I found myself trapped behind a stalled-out streetcar. To this day, that upscale neighborhood feels like a tragic place; the taint never fades. Never mind that The Grapes of Wrath took place worlds away, in the San Joaquin Valley.
To me, Steinbeck’s writing, at its best, is a lived
experience. It doesn’t matter when or where you read or hear it. No matter how
many times I revisit Grapes, I fool myself
into thinking the Joads will find what they need in California. John Casy will survive his confrontation with
the police. The heartache and disappointment feel fresh every time. So does the shock
of the book’s final image.
Steinbeck believed in slow writing. It takes forever to get to California. We
live through every mile with the Joads and their touring car, overstuffed with
belongings and people and always on the verge of breakdown.
To mark the 75th anniversary of The Grapes of Wrath, I got back in touch
with my former colleagues at SJSU, including Paul Douglass, an English and
American literature professor, and director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center
for Steinbeck Studies. “When I think of The Grapes of Wrath, I think of the
remarkable way in which it embodies the agony and transcendence of its era,” he
told me. “The dirt poor down low life of the transient population, uprooted and
outcast, and yet at the same time, the luminosity of the human spirit revealed
through the pressure of poverty and desperation.” I had a longer conversation
with Shillinglaw, a recent President’s Scholar Award honoree, and a longtime
professor of English and comparative literature at SJSU. She marked the 75th
anniversary with her new book, On Reading
the Grapes of Wrath (Penguin, $14.) Shillinglaw sat down with Catamaran to
talk about the origins of The Grapes of Wrath and the reason it continues to
enchant, infuriate and inspire generations of readers.
Read about our conversation in the latest issue of Catamaran, now available at a bookstore near you.
