Working Days (23 page)

Pauls.
The novelist Louis Paul (aka Leroi Placet) and his wife Mary had moved from New York to Palo Alto, close enough (about twenty miles from Los Gatos) for the two couples to continue a felicitous and frequent friendship that had started in 1937 in New York City (John Steinbeck/Louis and Mary Paul, letter, August 15, 1937; courtesy of University of Virginia Library). Like Steinbeck, Paul (1901-1970), an Army veteran and ex-San Francisco longshoreman, preferred experience over education as preparation and background for writing fiction. During the period of this journal, Paul published four of his fourteen novels:
The Man Who Left Home
(Chicago: Black Cat Press, 1938),
The Wrong World
(New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1938), A
Passion for Privacy
(New York: Alfred Knopf, 1940), and
The Reverend
Ben Pool (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1941). See DeMott,
Steinbeck’s Reading
(pp. 89—90, 167—68). Starting with his appreciation of “No More Trouble for Jedwick” (first prize in the
0. Henry Memorial Award: Prize Stories of 1934,
which also included Steinbeck’s “The Murder”), Steinbeck’s enthusiasm for and encouragement of Paul’s work remained constant until the early 1940s, when Steinbeck, following his separation from Carol, and his move from Los Gatos, appears to have lost touch with Paul. However, Paul, who had published a glowing review of
Of Mice and Men
in the New York
Herald Tribune Book Review
(February 28, 1937), eventually became perplexed by the boldly symbolic and elevated quality of
The Grapes of Wrath.
Steinbeck inscribed a gift copy of the Covici-Friede limited edition
The Red Pony
(1937), “For Louis and Mary with still increasing affection”; and a first edition of
The Grapes of Wrath,
“For Louis and Mary in gratitude.”

Rays.
Martin Ray (1905—1976), ex-stockbroker turned pioneering, celebrated, and iconoclastic vintner, lived with his first wife, Elsie (d. 1951), on Mount Eden, above Big Basin in Saratoga, northwest of Los Gatos. In 1936 Martin Ray bought the Santa Cruz Mountain vineyards of Paul Masson’s Champagne Company, where he produced brilliant, exorbitantly priced vintages. He sold out to Seagram’s in 1943, but shortly afterward started the smaller Martin Ray Vineyards. Steinbeck and Ray were temperamentally akin—both were aloof from society, self-sufficient, demanding of themselves and others, individualistic, and thoroughly dedicated to their art (Mrs. Eleanor Ray/Robert DeMott, telephone interview, June 4, 1985).

 

 

Paul Jordan Smith.
Smith (1885—1971), a writer and former English instructor at UCLA, served from 1933 to 1958 as the influential Literary Editor for the Los Angeles
Times.
He not only reviewed Steinbeck’s books favorably (he later called
The Grapes of Wrath
one of the “most thrilling” reading experiences he ever had) but had tried—unsuccessfully—to arrange publication of Steinbeck’s 1920s’ apprentice fiction. Presumably Smith never made it to see Steinbeck that summer.

 

 

The Long Valley.
Steinbeck’s only collection of short fiction, originally intended to be published by Covici-Friede in 1938. When the firm (Donald Friede had left in 1935) went bankrupt, The Viking Press hired Pascal Covici as an editor and bought Steinbeck’s contract, so that the book was issued in September 1938, without a hitch, and to very strong reviews. (See Entries #49, 70, 79, and 81 below.) The book gathered short stories which appeared from 1933 to 1937 in such periodicals as
Harper’s, Esquire,
and
Atlantic Monthly;
it also included the first appearance of “Flight,”as well as the complete publication of
The Red Pony.

Tolertons.
Like the Steinbecks, David Tolerton, a sculptor, and his wife, Lavinia, a painter, were part of the liberal artistic/intellectual community of the otherwise conservative Los Gatos. According to Benson,
True Adventures of John Steinbeck
(p. 351), the year before, David Tolerton had been directly instrumental in the San Francisco Theatre Union’s production of
Of Mice and Men.
See Entry #49 below.

Bob C.
Robert Cathcart, a classmate of Steinbeck’s at Stanford (AB, 1930; LLB, 1934), was a close friend and confidant, especially during the 1920s, when the two men corresponded frequently. In 1938 Cathcart was practicing law in San Francisco.

Margery Bailey.
The formidable Dr. Margery Bailey (1891- 1963), an exciting teacher and an early mentor to Steinbeck, taught in the English Department at Stanford and was a major force in the English Club, where Steinbeck first encountered her. They had a strong, but rocky, personal relationship thereafter, partly because Bailey disliked Steinbeck’s propensity for sentimentality. See Susan Riggs, “Steinbeck at Stanford,”
The Stanford Magazine,
4 (Fall/Winter 1976), p. 17. See Entry #55 below.

 

 

Lack of solitude.
The one-story Steinbeck house, designed by Carol, built in mid-1936 on a secluded, heavily wooded 1.7-acre plot (purchased in May from Eleanor Bowdish) on Greenwood Lane, Los Gatos, was only about 800 square feet in size. Even with the later addition of a guest house, the five-room cottage was still so small that Steinbeck was continually subjected to interruptions from within and, with increasing new home construction in the area, from without as well. Most of the time, he wrote in a spartanly furnished 8-by-8-foot room, but at other times worked in the guest room, or, if weather permitted, on the porch deck (Connie Skiptares [With Assistance of Robert DeMott], “Garlic Gulch,” San Jose
Mercury News,
March 12, 1986, Extra 4, pp. 1-3). For more on Steinbeck’s Greenwood Lane house, see James P. Delgado, “Garlic Gulch: John Steinbeck in Los Gatos, 1936-1938,”
The Book Club of California Quarterly News-Letter,
XLVI (Summer 1981), 59-64.

Music.
Carlton Sheffield recalled the “simple” plan of the Steinbeck house included a speaker system “... set into the upper wall of the big room to carry music from a specially designed record player for their growing collection of good music.” Sheffield,
Steinbeck: The Good Companion
(p. 214). See also Entry #20 below for the specific importance Steinbeck placed on listening to music.

 

 

Rodman.
The American poet and anthologist Selden Rodman (b. 1909) was an editor and founder (with Alfred M. Bingham) of
Common
Sense (1932-1943), a monthly political/literary magazine published in New York City. Like several other literary editors during this period Rodman wanted Steinbeck to submit work to his magazine; the novelist had nothing on hand to send, though later he helped his friend Richard Lovejoy publish there.

 

 

Crawford ... Ford.
Broderick Crawford (1912-1986) and Wallace Ford (1898—1966) had won acclaim starring as, respectively, Lennie Small and George Milton in the George S. Kaufman production of
Of Mice and Men,
which, after closing its Broadway run on May 21, 1938, was being readied for an American tour, featuring a slightly toned-down script. At the cast party on closing night Steinbeck’s drama agent, Annie Laurie Williams, presented each player with a first edition of the play, including a personal dedication from Steinbeck tipped in. To Ford, he wrote, “For God’s sake stick with this play you have helped to make so much better than it is”; to Crawford, he wrote, “Your playing of this difficult part must be a work of great genius. I wish I could indicate to you my gratification. You are a great actor. One must be to play simply.” (Courtesy of Annie Laurie Williams Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.) Both men visited Steinbeck during the summer of 1938.

Good work.
“New book moves and I like it,” Steinbeck told his literary agent. “Goes easily. It used to worry me when they came so easily, but counting the two years of fighting with it, I guess it isn’t so easy” (John Steinbeck/Elizabeth Otis, letter, June 10, 1938; courtesy of Stanford University Library).

Champagne.
Martin Ray continued the Paul Masson tradition in champagnes and sparkling wines, a fact not lost on the chastened Steinbeck, who noted their wrathful effect in the left-hand margin of this entry: “Couldn’t Concentrate” and “NO WORK HANGOVER.” He needed one more day to complete Chapter 6.

 

 

Beth.
Elizabeth Ainsworth (b. 1894), Steinbeck’s sister. Between 1933 and 1938, one of her sons, as well as her father, mother, and husband, died. She was understandably “washed out” (Mrs. Eugene Ainsworth/Robert DeMott, letter, July 12, 1985). Steinbeck was thoroughly moved by “remarkable” Beth’s strength during this period. He later dedicated
The Winter of Our Discontent
(New York: The Viking Press, 1962), “To Beth, my sister, whose light bums clear.” See also Entry #20.

Fred S.... Dick’s job.
Frederick R. Soule, whom Steinbeck had known since 1936, was Regional Information Advisor (in San Francisco) for the Farm Security Administration (formerly the Resettlement Administration); Dick Oliver, a friend of Steinbeck’s, then living in New York, applied for a position with the F.S.A. in Washington. Steinbeck wrote directly to Pare Lorentz, who—about to become Director of the newly created United States Film Agency, another progressive New Deal organization, housed temporarily with the F.S.A.—had some clout in the capital. Steinbeck’s action was partly altruistic, partly self-protective—the more friends he had in the F.S.A., the more advocates he would have for the veracity of the book he was writing, which, he rightly predicted, would come in for a storm of attack from conservative groups of all kinds, especially the Associated Farmers.

 

 

Tristram Shandy.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
(1767), novel by Laurence Sterne (1713-1768).

Dad.
In 1910 or 1911 Steinbeck’s father, John Ernst Steinbeck (1862—1935), opened a feed and grain store, The J. E. Steinbeck Feed Store, at 352 Main Street, Salinas. When the store went under, the elder Steinbeck worked briefly as a bookkeeper at the Spreckels Sugar Refinery, then, from 1924 until his death, as Treasurer of Monterey County, his office located in the county courthouse, West Alisal Street, Salinas (Pauline Pearson/Robert DeMott, interview, May 1984). Except for the following 1951 reminiscence, Steinbeck wrote very little about his father: “My greatest fault ... is my lack of ability for relaxation.... Even in sleep I am tight and restless.... I think I got this through my father. I remember his restlessness. It sometimes filled the house to a howling although he did not speak often. He was a singularly silent man.... He was strong rather than profound. Cleverness only confused him—and this is interesting—he had no ear for music whatever. Patterns of music were meaningless to him.... In my struggle to be a writer, it was he who supported and backed me and explained me—not my mother. She wanted me desperately to be something decent like a banker. She would have liked me to be a successful writer like [Ed.—Booth] Tarkington, but this she didn’t believe I could do. But my father wanted me to be myself.... He admired anyone who laid down his line and followed it undeflected to the end. I think this was because he abandoned his star in little duties and let his head go under in the swirl of family and money and responsibility. To be anything pure requires an arrogance he did not have, and a selfishness he could not bring himself to assume. He was a man intensely disappointed in himself. And I think he liked the complete ruthlessness of my design to be a writer in spite of mother and hell.” See Steinbeck’s
Journal of a Novel: The
East of Eden
Letters
(p. 103).

 

 

Doc Bolin.
Dr. Rolf L. Bolin (1901-1973), ichthyologist, oceanographer, and Assistant Director at Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station (on the Monterey Peninsula’s Point Cabrillo in Pacific Grove; Steinbeck had taken a class there in the summer of 1923) was a lover “of true things,” who later prompted two humorous anecdotes in Steinbeck’s and Ricketts’s
Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research
(New York: The Viking Press, 1941), pp. 31 and 215. The Steinbecks did not make it to Hawaii the next winter, though Carol vacationed there alone in 1941.

Mrs. Gragg ... Josh Billings.
Steinbeck often turned the oral stories and local tales of Monterey he heard from friends into fiction: the second edition of
Tortilla Flat
(1935) is dedicated to Susan Gregory, who provided much colorful information; Salinas childhood friends Max and Jack Wagner’s mother inspired “How Edith McGillcuddy met R. L. Stevenson” (1941). American humorist Josh Billings (aka Henry Wheeler Shaw, 1818-1885) died of a stroke in the Del Monte Hotel. Harriet Gragg’s tale of the unceremonious treatment of his intestines after being embalmed by a doctor (his body was returned to Massachusetts) is told in Chapter 12 of
Cannery Row
(New York: The Viking Press, 1945). Steinbeck’s premonition was unfounded—according to Benson’s
True Adventures of John Steinbeck
(p. 612), he consulted Mrs. Gragg and her daughter, Julia Breinig, again in 1948 when he was researching
East of Eden
(1952).

 

 

The Swan.
Russian composer Peter Tchaikovsky’s ballet
Swan Lake
(1876). Steinbeck sometimes composed his novels under the influence of music, especially at the beginning of each week’s work, or after hiatuses in his writing. He listened repeatedly, for instance, to Anton Dvorak’s Symphony Number 9, “From the New World” (1893), when he was writing
Cup of Gold
(1929). The “pure and effective religion” of Bach was Steinbeck’s “narcotic” during the final draft of
To a God Unknown
(New York: Robert O. Ballou, 1933). During the writing of his as-yet-unnamed novel Steinbeck was influenced by “the mathematics of musical composition.” See Shasky and Riggs, eds.,
Letters to Elizabeth
(p. 11). See also Entry #6 above.