Steinbeck (21 page)

I must go over into the interior valleys. There are about five thousand families starving to death over there, not just hungry but actually starving. The government is trying to feed them and get medical attention to them with the fascist group of utilities and banks and huge growers sabotaging the thing all along the line and yelling for a balanced budget. In one tent there are twenty people quarantined for smallpox and two of the women are to have babies in that tent this week. I've tied into the thing from the first and I must get down there and see it and see if I can't do something to help knock these murderers on the heads. Do you know what they're afraid of? They think that if these people are allowed to live in camps with proper sanitary facilities, they will organize and that is the bugbear of the large landowner and the corporation farmer. The states and counties will give them nothing because they are outsiders. But the crops of any part of this state could not be harvested without these outsiders. I'm pretty mad about it. No word of this outside because when I have finished my job the jolly old associated farmers will be after my scalp again.

I guess that is all. Funny how mean and little books become in the face of such tragedies.

John

Los Gatos
February 14, 1938
Monday

Dear Elizabeth:

Your letter this morning with check and lots of information. Thank you very much. I'm glad the paternity suit matter is nearly over. And I'm desperately sorry for the break with George but I think it is healthier in the open.

I don't know whether I'll go south or not but I must go to Visalia. Four thousand families, drowned out of their tents are really starving to death. The resettlement administration of the government asked me to write some news stories. The newspapers won't touch the stuff but they will under my byline. The locals are fighting the government bringing in food and medicine. I'm going to try to break the story hard enough so that food and drugs can get moving. Shame and a hatred of publicity will do the job to the miserable local bankers. I'll let you know more about this when I get back from the area. Talk about Spanish children. The death of children by starvation in our valleys is simply staggering. I've got to do it. If I can sell the articles I'll use the proceeds for serum and such. Codliver oil would give the live kids a better chance. Of course no individual effort will help. Ten thousand people are affected in one area. Anyway, I'll do what I can.

The whole state is flooded you know. This is the 19th day of rain.

I guess this is all. I'll let you know what happens.

Bye,
John

[Los Gatos]
[Spring 1938]

Dear Godmother:

I am so sorry you are ill. This continued rain makes for illness. I have a cold but I can't take it very seriously. I've just come from the area where people are not only ill but hungry too. Get well quickly.

Always I hope that sometime I'm not going to be too busy —that sometime I will be able to write a long letter without the feeling that I am playing hookey from work.

Right now with the grass coming up thickly and the mustard beginning to bloom, I am filled with a thousand little memory nostalgias. I'd like to think about them—about how the black birds build nests on the mustard stalks and how Glen Grave's father was angry with us for tramping down his grain to get to the nests. And how six of us on a sunny morning solemnly burned our names on a fence picket with a burning glass—and said—“In fifty years we'll come back and look at it.” But you know I did go back (it wasn't fifty years though) and the picket was gone.

Such nonsense. I hope you are better now. It will be a good spring, I think.

love
John

Los Gatos
March 7, 1938

Dear Elizabeth:

Dear Elizabeth:

I shouldn't have repeated that for the sake of the letter but it was true enough in intention and quite unconscious. I guess unconscious is very correct as an evaluation of my condition. Just got back from another week in the field. The floods have aggravated the starvation and sickness. I went down for Life this time. Fortune wanted me to do an article for them but I won't. I don't like the audience. Then Life sent me down with a photographer from its staff and we took a lot of pictures of the people. They guarantee not to use it if they change it and will send me the proofs. They paid my expenses and will put up money for the help of some of these people.

I'm sorry but I simply can't make money on these people. That applies to your query about an article for a national magazine. The suffering is too great for me to cash in on it. I hope this doesn't sound either quixotic or martyrish to you. A short trip into the fields where the water is a foot deep in the tents and the children are up on the beds and there is no food and no fire, and the county has taken off all the nurses because “the problem is so great that we can't do anything about it.” So they do nothing. And we found a boy in jail for a felony because he stole two old radiators because his mother was starving to death and in stealing them he broke a little padlock on a shed. We'll either spring him or the district attorney will do the rest of his life explaining.

But you see what I mean. It is the most heartbreaking thing in the world. If Life does use the stuff there will be lots of pictures and swell ones. It will give you an idea of the kind of people they are and the kind of faces. I break myself every time I go out because the argument that one person's effort can't really do anything doesn't seem to apply when you come on a bunch of starving children and you have a little money. I can't rationalize it for myself anyway. So don't get me a job for a slick. I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this but I can best do it through newspapers.

I'm going to see the Secretary of Agriculture in a little while and try to find out for my own satisfaction anyway just how much of the government's attitude is political and how much humanitarian. Then I'll know what course to take.

I'm in a mess trying to catch up with things that have piled up in the week I was gone. And of course I was in the mud for three days and nights and I have a nice cold to beat, but I haven't time right now for a cold so I won't get a very bad one.

 

Sorry for the hectic quality of this letter. I am hectic and angry.

Thank you for everything.

Bye,
John

Los Gatos
May 2, 1938

Dear Elizabeth:

Your letters both to Carol and to me came this morning and were very welcome.

This is the first really free letter I have written for a long time. Yesterday or rather the day before yesterday I finished the first draft of this book. Now just the rewriting, but a lot of it because it is pretty badly done. It is short, just a few thousand over sixty thousand words. We'll finish it and send it on and if you think it is no good we'll burn it up and forget it.

It is a mean, nasty book and if I could make it nastier I would.

This morning I got the swellest letter of my life. From a man named Lemuel Gadberry, believe it or not, and he says he bought m and m
[Of Mice and Men]
and feels that he not only has been degraded in reading it but that he was cheated out of two dollars. I have just written him a long letter praising his high soul and offering to return his two dollars with six percent interest on receipt of the book, that or a copy of When Knighthood Was In Flower.

I have a very good working streak on and, when I finish this rewriting, I think perhaps I will do a few short stories. It is a long time since I have done any. I want to do a few essays too but not necessarily for publication. Feeling very literary these days with words crowding up to come tumbling out and the time between putting them down crowding with them like the forming eggs in a chicken or the spare fangs of a rattlesnake. But I like it even if the words are no good. It is still good fun to write them.

Bye, and
love to you all,
John

LOS GATOS
APRIL 23, 1938

CRITICS CIRCLE, CARE ANNIE LAURIE WILLIAMS 18 EAST 41 ST NYC

GENTLEMEN: I HAVE ALWAYS CONSIDERED CRITICS AS AUTHORS NATURAL ENEMIES NOW I FEEL VERY MILLENIAL BUT A LITTLE TIMID TO BE LYING DOWN WITH THE LION THIS DISTURBANCE OF THE NATURAL BALANCE MIGHT CAUSE A PLAGUE OF PLAYWRIGHTS I AM HIGHLY HONORED BY YOUR GOOD OPINION BUT MY EGOTISTICAL GRATIFICATION IS RUINED BY A SNEAKING SUSPICION THAT GEORGE KAUFMAN AND THE CAST DESERVE THEM MORE THAN I. I DO HOWEVER TAKE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THANKING YOU.

JOHN STEINBECK

Los Gatos
May 1938

Dear Elizabeth:

There seem to be so many places for me to put my foot even when I try not to walk about very much. What was the matter with that telegram I sent to the Critics' Circle? Annie Laurie seemed ashamed of it. I thought it was all right. Carol thought it was all right. Maybe it got mixed up in the sending. It wasn't abject but I didn't think a group of men as eminent as that would care for an abject one. I guess I just haven't any social sense. So many things can happen. I have never submitted a novel to the Commonwealth Club here which gives a medal every year but Pat has. This year he forgot to or something and I understand that it is being spread that I think I am too good to compete in local things now. Just little things like that all the time. And this not going to New York to see this play which is being used everywhere now (it has got to the fourth-rate movie columnists by now). I'd like to have seen the play but I wouldn't go six thousand miles to see the opening of the second coming of Christ. Why is it so damned important?

 

I have the letter from George Jean Nathan [President of the Critics' Circle] but will not answer until the plaque comes. Now what in the world will I do with a plaque? Melt it down perhaps and buy a pair of shoes for someone.

I am sending you one of the sets of articles which were just printed from my articles on migrants. The proceeds go to help these people.

Thanks for the checks. What a terrible lot of money. But there's some use for it all the time.

Bye,
John

[Los Gatos]
May 23 [1938]

Dear Mr. Nathan:

After some delay, the Critics' Circle plaque arrived today. It is a very handsome thing. I thank the Circle again. I like to think there is a perfect line of conduct for every situation. I've never met any situation like this before. But I do remember a speech of appreciation made by a rider at a dinner where he had received a pair of silver spurs for a championship in ear notching and castrating calves. Cheered to his feet, the winner stood up blushing violently and made the following speech—“Aw shit, boys—Jesus Christ—why—god-dam it—oh! the hell with it,” and sat down to tremendous applause. You will find that this brief speech has in it every element of greatness in composition—beginning, middle, end, self-deprecation, a soaring quality in the middle and it ends not on a cynical or defeatist note but rather in a realization that nothing he could say could adequately convey his feeling.

It is a beautiful plaque, and I am very proud to have it.

Sincerely,
John Steinbeck

Los Gatos
June I, 1938

Dear Elizabeth:

Your letter and $475 check arrived. I think this is the windup [of the New York run of
Of Mice and Men]
but Carol thinks there is one more [check]. However it is, we've had much more than we deserve. And with care it will keep us for a long, long time.

This is a very happy time. The new book is going well. Too fast. I'm having to hold it down. I don't want it to go so fast for fear the tempo will be fast and this is a plodding, crawling book. So I'm holding it down to approximately six pages a day. That doesn't mean anything about finishing time since perhaps fifty percent will be cut out. Anyway, it is a nice thing to be working and believing in my work again. I hope I can keep the drive all fall. I like it. I only feel whole and well when it is this way. I don't yet understand what happened or why the bad book should have cleared the air so completely for this one. I am simply glad that it is so.