John Steinbeck and His Contemporaries

Revealing Steinbecks penchant for culling all old books, the first section focuses on Steinbecks European forebears, particularly Sir Thomas Malorys retelling of the legend of King Arthur, Le Morte dArthur, and Henry Fieldings 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 Hemingways 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 Steinbecks work with Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison. Further articles are concerned with Steinbecks 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 Chandlers The Big Sleep, and on Steinbeck and ecocriticism. The book fittingly concludes with John Ditskys keynote address, In Search of a Language: Steinbeck and Others, which was delivered