John Steinbeck and His Contemporaries: : Stephen K. George: Scarecrow Press

John Steinbeck and His Contemporaries

Description

In March of 2006, scholars from around the world gathered in Sun Valley, Idaho for a conference devoted to not only John Steinbeck but also to the authors whose work influenced, informs, or illuminates his writings. This volume represents the many unique papers delivered at that conference by scholars from around the world. This collection includes studies on authors who influenced Steinbeck's work, discussions of writers whose work is in dialogue with Steinbeck, and examinations of Steinbeck's contemporaries, whose individual works invite comparisons with those of the Nobel-prize winning author.

Revealing Steinbeck's penchant for culling "all old books," the first section focuses on Steinbeck's European forebears, particularly Sir Thomas Malory's retelling of the legend of King Arthur, Le Morte d'Arthur, and Henry Fielding's novel Tom Jones. This section also includes articles on his American forebears: Walt Whitman and Sarah Orne Jewett. The second part, "Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner, and Cather" includes a personal reminiscence by Ernest Hemingway's daughter-in-law, Valerie, as well as comparisons of Steinbeck with other great American authors of the 20th century. The third section includes an essay by National Book Award winner Charles Johnson (Middle Passage), as well as articles that compare Steinbeck's work with Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison. Further articles are concerned with Steinbeck's moral philosophy and strong sense of social justice, eliciting comparisons with Sinclair Lewis, Tom Kristensen, and Charles Johnson. The fourth section, "Steinbeck, the Arts, and the World" includes articles on the film adaptation of The Moon Is Down, on Steinbeck and Mexican Modernism, on the American experience as portrayed in The Grapes of Wrath and Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, and on Steinbeck and ecocriticism. The book fittingly concludes with John Ditsky's keynote address, "In Search of a Language: Steinbeck and Others," which was delivered

Part 1 Foreword
Part 2 Preface
Part 3 Acknowledgments
Part 4 Introduction: John Ditsky, Stephen George, and John Steinbeck
Part 5 Photograph: Sue and John Ditsky
Part 6 Photograph: Stephen George, Barbara Heavilin, and Charles Heavilin
Part 7 Part 1: Steinbeck and Literary Influences
Chapter 8 1. The Influence of Sir Thomas Malory'sMorte d'Arthur on John Steinbeck
Chapter 9 2. "Being in it myself": Echoes of Fielding in Steinbeck'sEast of Eden
Chapter 10 3. Steinbeck'sTo a God Unknown andThe Grapes of Wrath from the Perspective of Whitman's "Song of Myself"
Chapter 11 4. Limited Lives in Steinbeck and Jewett
Part 12 Part 2: Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner, and Cather
Chapter 13 5. Rivals and Revelry: Hemingway and His Contemporary Literary Scene
Chapter 14 6. Steinbeck, Hemingway, and the Nobel Prize
Chapter 15 7. "Surrendering to the Feminine": Implied Author Compassion in "The Chrystanthemums" and "Hills like White Elephants"
Chapter 16 8. John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway's Attitudes towards Otherness
Chapter 17 9. The Unspoken Heritage: The Influence of Famliy in Steinbeck and Faulkner
Chapter 18 10. Faulkner and Steinbeck: Thematic and Stylistic Resonance in the Early Stories
Chapter 19 11. Steinbeck and Cather: The Divergent Religious Visions
Chapter 20 12. John Steinbeck and Willa Cather: Almost on Speaking Terms
Part 21 Part 3: Steinbeck, Ethnicity, and Ethics
Chapter 22 13. Reading the Character of Crooks inOf Mice and Men: A Black Writer's Perspective
Chapter 23 14. The Possibilities of the Grotesque in Steinbeck'sOf Mice and Men and Hurston'sTheir Eyes Were Watching God
Chapter 24 15. John Steinbeck and Zora Hurston Neale as Folklorists
Chapter 25 16. Victimized Wives in Steinbeck's "The Chrysanthemums" and Alice Walker's "Really, Doesn't Crime Pay?"
Chapter 26 17. Into the Heart of Darkness: Travels with Sinclair and John
Chapter 27 18. John Steinbeck's Parsing of the Ethical Imperative: "Respect Persons"
Chapter 28 19. The Quest for Authenticity: The Moral Philosophies of Steinbeck and Kristensen
Chapter 29 20. Embedded Care, Embedded Harm: Challenges to Caring in Steinbeck and Morrison
Chapter 30 21. "There is one story": Good and Evil in Steinbeck'sEast of Eden and Morrison'sSula
Chapter 31 22. Moral Issues in the Fiction of John Steinbeck and Charles Johnson
Part 32 Part 4: Steinbeck, the Arts, and the World
Chapter 33 23. A Map of the Countryside: Elia Kazan and John Steinbeck
Chapter 34 24. Flies Conquer the Flypaper: Learning to Fight the Nazis in Hollywood's adaptation ofThe Moon is Down
Chapter 35 25. Steinbeck, Rivera, and Mexican Modernism
Chapter 36 26. Promise and Reality inThe Grapes of Wrath andThe Big Sleep
Chapter 37 27. Conquering the Flypaper: Steinbeck, Shostakovich, and Yevtushenko on War
Chapter 38 28. Makers of Myths: John Steinbeck and Frank Hardy
Chapter 39 29. John Stienbeck and Munshi Premchand: Some Striking Parallels and Contrasts
Chapter 40 30. Américo Paredes's "Interchapter": A "Mexicotexan" Counterpart toThe Grapes of Wrath
Chapter 41 31. John Steinbeck, Ecocriticism, and the Way Ahead
Chapter 42 32. In Search of a Language: Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Others
Part 43 Works Cited
Part 44 Index
Part 45 About the Contributors and Editors