STEINBECK JOHN: (1902-1968)

STEINBECK JOHN: (1902-1968) American writer, Nobel Prize winner for Literature, 1962. A fascinating autograph manuscript, unsigned, six pages (separate leaves, written to the rectos only), folio, n.p., n.d. (1953). The manuscript, written in pencil and with various corrections as well as significantly longer unpublished sections to the published text, represents Steinbeck’s essay My Short Novels which appeared in Wings magazine in October 1953 ahead of the publication of the works as a collection. Steinbeck provides his analysis of six novels and opens with an introduction (numbered 1B) which is entirely different to the published version, in the present text writing ‘A book, even a little book, is a kind of person. It has tone – that’s its personality, and structure, that’s its physique…..During the time of a book’s writing, the author is his book – not one or other of the characters but the whole book…..When the book is finished, that person usually dies in the author……If the author has deeply loved the book……then when it is finished, he forgets…..the struggles and doubts and he remembers it as he would a dear person who is gone……I have never gone back over books long finished until now. But the printing of these short novels in one volume requires that I look at these and try to remember them. It is a confusing thing. Can I have been all of these persons……’, continuing to refer to his writing processes ( ‘Writing is an elusive business’) and commenting on the novels in particular ‘No two of these novels are alike. It would be strange if they were. Each one grew out of a time, and a condition, a state of mind, and states of history both personal and general. I can’t be sure that what I set down now is accurate but I have tried to remember’. Steinbeck then proceeds to reflect on the six stories, the circumstances of their writing, their reception, the goals he pursued in writing them, and more, beginning with The Red Pony, the manuscript reading ‘The Red Pony was set down in a matter (?) of pain. My mother was dying and her death was the first break in the family. Young people try to find a reason or a cause or a purpose in the events which move them. I suppose this is self-protective. In this time, I went back to my own childhood and tried as so many others have to write a death and a transfiguration, a balance between life and death…..’ (The published text varied considerably, ‘The Red Pony was written a long time ago, when desolation reigned in my family. The first death had arrived. And the family, which every child believes to be immortal, was broken. Perhaps this is the coming of age for every man and woman. The first torturous question: why?, then acceptance, and then the child becomes a man. The Red Pony was an attempt, an experiment, if you will, to put on paper this loss, this acceptance and this growth’). The writer then turns to Tortilla Flat, reflecting ‘I had been reading extensively concerning the Arthurian cycle – not with great scholarship but with interest…..wondering what real thing had happened out of which the myths grew. And then as an exercise I wrote Tortilla Flat using the people and stories currently told in Monterey but trying to set them in a moral tissue like the Gesta Romanorum. It was a kind of satire attempt to write folk lore….’, continuing with Of Mice and Men ( ‘another experiment’) and providing an anecdote involving his dog, Toby, who was thoughtful and given to brooding, ‘Once when I had finished about two thirds of Of Mice and Men I went out for an evening leaving Toby alone. Perhaps his critical sense took charge. At any rate he tore my manuscript book to confetti. There was no fitting it together. I had to start from the beginning…..I’ve often wondered how different the two versions were. I’ll never know’, writing of The Moon is Down, which was published after an interval when several long novels were created, ‘The Moon is Down was a kind of declaration of faith in the strength and survival of free and democratic men over dictatorship. The book got me in a lot of trouble. I was called a traitor…..’, the essay continuing ‘The fifth short novel was Cannery Row. It was written on my return from Europe and Africa…..as a war correspondent. It was written as a nostalgic thing to forget the bitterness and horror……It was said that I didn’t know anything about war; perfectly true although how Park Avenue commandos found me out I can’t conceive…..Subsequently I saw a piece of war as a correspondent and following that wrote Cannery Row….[for] …..soldiers who had said “Write something funny that isn’t about the war…..we’re sick of war”. They had to fight it……It was pleasing to me that half a million copies were distributed to troops and they didn’t complain. We had some very war-like critics then. They had no patience with soldiers’ and conc