Nicholas Taylor: But it will pop up a little
Nicholas Taylor: A little box for everyone.
William Souder: Got it.
So,
Nicholas Taylor: I have to imagine I've never written a biography myself, but I have to imagine that in order to keep you interested for five, the five years it takes to write a book like this.
Nicholas Taylor: There has to be some amount of discovery in it for you. In other words, you wouldn't want to write about a biography about someone
Nicholas Taylor: That you know everything about right. That's right. So, so I wanted to ask you, what aspect of Steinbeck's life or what incidents in his life. What themes surprised you as you moved through your research that maybe you didn't know when you started
William Souder: Wow, that's a great question. You know, I think what probably surprised me the most was
William Souder: This obsession that he had with more Arthur and with the Arthurian legend. And the reason I think that he was so engaged by that story. Obviously, it had captivated.
William Souder: His imagination, when he was about 10 years old when he got a children's version of Mallory's story, but of course he you know he tried to incorporate
William Souder: That story into some of his books, certainly in tortilla flat. Nobody else could see how
William Souder: Danny and his friends were Knights of the Round Table but Steinbeck certainly thought it was obvious and and then of course you know later in his life, his attempt to
William Souder: To translate or or rejuvenate Mallory in some sort of modern lexicon or syntax that he didn't complete in his lifetime, and was very frustrated by
William Souder: But there's a very telling letter that he wrote, so he had gone to England to work on this project and and he'd written a little bit, and he and he said back to his to his editor and his agent in New York, and he heard right away from
William Souder: From his agent who didn't like it at all. And, and, of course, Steinbeck was was upset about this and he wrote back and said,
William Souder: I don't think I can give up on this. He said there's there's something terribly sad in the story. I just know there is. And I think when I read that letter, a lot of things kind of fell into place for me.
William Souder: Steinbeck's great talent was to deploy this empathy that he can deploy for people who were otherwise displace dispossessed invisible marginalized. They show up again and again in many of his books.
William Souder: Once Steinbeck tried to write the grapes of wrath. Initially he started out with a different book and a different approach. It was he was
William Souder: initially thought it was a story about the landowners and the techniques that they were using the vigilante groups and other other means, they were using to kind of keep the migrants under control.
William Souder: And he couldn't make that book work and he finally tore it up and and it only fell into place as The Grapes of Wrath when he kind of turned the telescope around and
William Souder: And and looked in the other direction at the migrants and realized that they were the story and that that was the frame of reference. And so the job family comes into existence. Well, I think that that Steinbeck's interest in
William Souder: Life difficult chapters and how they play out in people who aren't often noticed and often aren't heard from was kind of the key to understanding
William Souder: How he worked. Now as the title suggests, he also had this innate anger at in justice at he hated bullies. He hated anybody being taken advantage of.
William Souder: He hated people that were more powerful.
William Souder: Than the rest of us. And so that was a big part of it, but I really think that it was his affinity for for human suffering.
William Souder: Even if the humans who were suffering didn't perceive themselves as being particularly unfortunate and so
William Souder: That that sort of surprised me. I mean, very early on, I've kind of have that title for this book. Almost from the beginning.
William Souder: Because I thought that that was really important understanding his best work is most important and most enduring work which kind of grew out of
William Souder: The social injustices and economic and Justices of the the catastrophe that was the great depression that was clear to me but
William Souder: This kind of feeling that I think he had in the pit of the stomach for people that caused him to appreciate them in a way that most of us don't
William Souder: I think that was probably what the maybe the thing that I learned that was I think the most, the most telling you know there's a there's a wonderful scene and
William Souder: Cannery Row where doc says, Why is it that all the character characteristics that we tend not to like, and people read Self centeredness.
William Souder: meanness selfishness exploited the willingness to exploit others. Why are those the keys to success when all of the things that we tend to value generosity loyalty honesty guilelessness innocence.
William Souder: Tend to be the things that mark you for failure in life. And I think he saw that equation as a fundamentally sad proposition.
Nicholas Taylor: I wonder if that was part of the sadness. He saw on the more Arthur
William Souder: I think it more darker. That was part of it, but I think that
William Souder: You know, he also felt that it's it's
William Souder: humankind's destiny to fall short, and even the greatest strongest, most Virtuous Night was destined to kind of fall short, in whatever
William Souder: Quest was that issue, and he certainly felt that was his own life. He felt that writers are like nights, they are on a quest for the perfect story. The perfect novel.
William Souder: The perfect phrasing that you could never quite made you all what you're destined to fall short and and always to fall short.
William Souder: As just as you run out of time.
Nicholas Taylor: I now, this may be I may be too close to the subject here given my job, but I tend to think of Steinbeck as having different phases like Elvis. You know, there's like young Elvis there's there's old Elvis Sag Harbor Steinbeck you know
Yeah.
Nicholas Taylor: And I thought you did such a great job i mean i i thought you did a great job with the entire chronology. But I was especially captivated by the the your narration of his struggles as a as a beginning writer, not only
Nicholas Taylor: In high school, and at Stanford, but also in that period in New York when he moved there. And then, of course, when he moved back to California after that.
Nicholas Taylor: And I think what made that aspect of the book. So
Nicholas Taylor: So affecting to me is that you also described the incredible rise of his career.
Nicholas Taylor: Well, you know, if in fact you describe this five years, beginning with tortilla flat. So in 1935 you call that the most productive period for any American writer, which is, that's quite a statement. You want to talk us through that.
William Souder: Well, if you look at the books from one year to the next, you have
William Souder: tortilla flat and dubious Battle Of Mice and Men. The Long Valley, which assembles his stories and then the grapes of wrath. So from 1935 to 1939
William Souder: Every year Steinbeck delivered a book that just kind of took readers by storm. It was a tour de force.
William Souder: There's no doubt that other writers have had very, very productive fertile periods. I just think it is striking that he was able to go from one year to the next. Just kind of dazzling readers and critics. I was really interested in that.
William Souder: Even though you know he's big success in his, you know, mid 30s, but but at the same time did have this kind of long apprenticeship.
William Souder: And there are a bunch of reasons for that. It's just the way he was wired. It was the way he was put together the way that he was made as a writer. It took him a while to find his way.
William Souder: But some other factors that go into that are that one. He missed the war. So he was not a casualty and by casualty. I mean,
William Souder: Not so much in the literal sense, but in the kind of metaphorical sense. It wasn't a casualty of the cataclysm of the Great War as the last generation writers were he hadn't seen
William Souder: He has kind of literary lineage sort of jerked out from underneath them ripped away in the same way that Fitzgerald and and some of his contemporaries had and so Steinbeck had to kind of, and he was he was on the west coast.
William Souder: You know, he was he was a Western writer. He was isolated from what was happening in New York and what was happening in Europe, and so he had to find he had to make his own way.
William Souder: And it took him a while to figure out what way that was going to be, you know, for for Hemingway and for Fitzgerald does pass us
William Souder: It just seemed the most natural thing in the world to kind of reinvent literature out of this kind of rubble that they were kind of kicking around and after the war and
William Souder: And by finding the best their own best subjects were themselves and and Steinbeck didn't see it that way for a long time. The first book was about pirates. So
William Souder: He didn't naturally fall into
William Souder: This category post war writer, that was so important to literature, the time. And so he was he was an outlier and but he was, but he was an interesting outlier. And when he found his way.
William Souder: I think he occupied a very unique niche in in American letters during that time. And that's another reason why that those books of the 1930s are so striking nobody else was doing anything quite like that. And, at least not among
William Souder: Major novelists and short story writers are certainly people writing
William Souder: Works of social protest. I don't mean to minimize that, but
William Souder: Really nobody so much in the mainstream that Steinbeck was that was interested in what was actually happening on the ground.
William Souder: In the depths of the depression.
Nicholas Taylor: So on the call. We have a lot of a lot of scholars. A lot of people whose work I admire and read and and so I want to nerd out for a minute, if you'll let me
Nicholas Taylor: I, I really enjoyed
Nicholas Taylor: The your, your style of citation and notes in this book, I, I found it to be incredibly clean and readable, that the way that your notes were listed by page at the end, but they weren't called out with with
Nicholas Taylor: With numbers or footnotes or anything within the text. And so, it allowed you to read without interruption. But if you wanted to know where you found these facts or anecdotes, it was so easy to find in the back of the book, I
Nicholas Taylor: I think we should all use this technique. I think it's tremendous and and coupled with the extensive Bibliography that you've included here. I think this is a kind of book that I would like to assign to students.
Nicholas Taylor: For its structure and format as much as for the
Nicholas Taylor: For the content.
Nicholas Taylor: Did you come up with this. Where did you find
William Souder: That out. Now this is
William Souder: Actually pretty, it's just, it's exactly the way it did book in the Audubon and and and Carson biographies and it's pretty standard among biographers it's a I believe it's called the following phrase, so there's a little italicized phrase that
William Souder: Tells me
William Souder: What what
William Souder: Passage is being referred to in the text, I can tell you that I know a lot of biographers and we all share one common trait which is that when we look at
William Souder: A Biography by someone some other writer, the very first thing we look at is the back of the book we go right to the acknowledgments. We go right to the bibliography. We go right to the notes because that's where you show your work and and
William Souder: Their gold mine of information. But I think what you want to do with a book like this is which is intended for a general audience, but which is also intended to
William Souder: Is also based on, you know, serious research. I think you want to leave a breadcrumb trail for anybody that is going to read it in the future and
William Souder: Have some thought about how to use the material that's in there where it came from.
William Souder: And and you also want to let people know that, you know, you don't. You didn't invent the stuff you actually, you actually have sources for what you're saying. And so it's a pretty standard way of doing it. I agree. It's very
William Souder: Accessible and I don't like the idea of footnotes and I'm in a book like this, they're fine and in other kinds of books, but
William Souder: To have super numerals and
Nicholas Taylor: Attacks or
William Souder: Footnotes at the bottom. I think would would interrupt the reader, if you if you'll bear with me for just very brief, I'll tell you a quick story that
William Souder: May amuse, some of you because it absolutely horrifies my colleagues, but the way I do these notes is
William Souder: Most people most biographers use their software programs. You can use it will keep track of.
William Souder: Citations or at a minimum, people kind of as they go. Are you know putting down the citations. I've never been able to do that. I don't, I can't stop writing to you know make a note about where I got the information from I just don't do it.
William Souder: It interrupts the flow. And I just, I don't like to be interrupted. So I write the entire book.
William Souder: I worked from the I worked from the sources. I'm looking at the lettering question at the time, but I'm not making a note about it.
William Souder: And when the book is done, and I've gone through at least once with my editor to make sure that it's kind of in semi final form, then I go back to page one, print it out and I highlight the first fact that needs a citation and then I go find that I go find out a letter I go find
Nicholas Taylor: Fact, check your own book.
William Souder: I fact check my own book. It takes about a month.
Nicholas Taylor: That's it. Well,
William Souder: About a month.
William Souder: And it's grueling and
William Souder: Again, when I tell them the biographers I could do it that way. They're absolutely horrified. They can't imagine, but
William Souder: It allows me to write the book, the way I want to
William Souder: Do. Yeah, first time through. And as you just suggested it is a an invaluable fact checking device because no matter how scrupulous you are
William Souder: You make little mistakes you confuse dates or something. And so it's a it's a second chance. And we all need second chances. And in book writing to get things right. And so that's how you do it, it's cumbersome but but it works.
Nicholas Taylor: Thanks for sharing that that's really fascinating to know that process. I
Nicholas Taylor: It kind of leads me to another question that I wanted to ask you about sourcing, which is
Nicholas Taylor: as you went along. Was there a period of Steinbeck's life that you wished had been better documented or for wish for which you wish there had been better sources.
William Souder: Of why I don't think so, you know,
William Souder: It's always true that the you know the early days, or that the documentation is the thinnest, you know, when money is quite young, and a lot of not much as survive that he that he wrote when he was, you know, in grade school and high school
William Souder: So it might have been nicer. However,
William Souder: At the at the National Steinbeck center in Salinas, there is a very unusual resource and it is this huge collection of recorded interviews that were done mostly in the 1970s, early 1980s by a librarian at the Salinas Public Library name calling. Pearson and Pauling was a
William Souder: Great as a fan of john Steinbeck and very knowledgeable person about Steinbeck's life and work and she made it her business to interview people that had known john Steinbeck and grew up with john Steinbeck while they were still alive. And so there are
William Souder: I think hundreds of interviews that are on tape there. They've never been transcribed. If you want to know what's in them. You gotta listen to them.
William Souder: And I spent months listening to them. I ended up with 100 single spaced pages of notes from those interviews about 50,000 words.
William Souder: In a Word document that were taken from those recordings. And so, and these in many cases where people who know john Steinbeck when when they were in grade school and and as well as later on. So there was actually pretty good.
William Souder: Material on his early life later in life john Steinbeck rarely let a day go by. They didn't write two or three letters to people.
William Souder: And many of them, most of them probably have been preserved and and are archived and well curated at places like the cost center at Stanford at Berkeley in Salinas, and
William Souder: And and there's also a wonderful collection of
William Souder: Us editors of correspondence at the University of Texas down in Austin. And so I never felt like there wasn't
William Souder: Enough. It was more. It was more occasionally a feeling that there might be too much almost more than you can handle.
William Souder: But that was great. And it was it was. It's a wonderful resource. And so no, I didn't feel like it was a part of his life that
William Souder: I couldn't access because it just didn't have the material and I was very fortunate in that I was allowed to read
William Souder: Tony highlights collection of
William Souder: His letters to a sister Mary Decker and and those were great and other scholars seen those but not very many. And so that was
William Souder: That was, that was really great.
Nicholas Taylor: Yeah, I was gonna say that I wanted to commend you on using those to those exact two sources. The Tony hyler letters from Mary Decker and or to marry Decker, and the
Nicholas Taylor: The audio recordings at the National Steinbeck Center. I mean, the amount of diligence that you put into uncovering new sources is
Nicholas Taylor: It's not what you would expect from a general interest nonfiction book.
Nicholas Taylor: I mean that, with all respect, just, it's, it's the kind of intense scholarship that people in this world that the you know the academic scholarship world admire tremendously and understand deeply
William Souder: Well, I
William Souder: Really try you try to look in every possible direction. And I think it's Robert Carroll, who said that
William Souder: The one thing a biographer has to do is make sure that he or she always turns the page, you should never skip anything
William Souder: Never bypass something because you never know what you're going to find and in that letter that looks inconsequential and unimportant. And just like the last 20 letters that you read and there are there are big parts of
William Souder: Steinbeck's paper trail that are like that, you know, in the when he and Elaine were traveling to Europe, you know, a couple times a year in the 1950s, there, there are these sort of travel letters from from fancy hotels all over the world that
William Souder: They're all sort of similar and yet each one is is distinct from the other. So I read them all at least skim them all and to see what was in them and
William Souder: Yeah, that's that kind of comes with I think that comes with the territory. If you're doing it right.
Nicholas Taylor: Yeah, well, I want to invite people to put a note in the chat. Just right question. If you'd like to meet a call on you to
Nicholas Taylor: To ask a question. And I want to start off with a question that was sent to me ahead of time from Dr Lim boozy in Congo and his question was, is this having gone through Steinbeck's life and work, what can
Nicholas Taylor: What can you maintain in the end about Steinbeck's relation to racism.
William Souder: Well, I think, like,
William Souder: I think like a number of American writers in the mid 20th century.
William Souder: Is a really fraught question because he's aware of the of the place that racism holds, not just in contemporary society, but in the
William Souder: Kind of foundational history of the country, it's, it's our original sin. It's the unpardonable act that lives under you know underlies everything that America has striven to accomplish, you know, since it's since its founding and and before. And so I think that he is
William Souder: I think like, like many American writers, he's he's, he understands this, and at the same time, mostly doesn't address it head on. You know, the probably the most sort of literal attempt to
William Souder: Kind of lay bare the situation is, you know, the scene and travels with Charlie when he
William Souder: Kind of visits. This
William Souder: Anti integration rally and in New Orleans and
William Souder: Pretty specifically reports on the kind of the vile attitude that that is present in that
William Souder: He doesn't turn the same vision toward New York. I don't think or
William Souder: Or really
William Souder: Anywhere in his work in quite that literal kind of direct
William Souder: You know, frontal way so
William Souder: I never know how to answer this question because I think that
William Souder: It's not as it's not a subject that seems to be central in his work.
William Souder: You know, even when he's writing about non white people as he does in a tortilla flat. I don't think he I know he is addressing that as a
William Souder: Kind of a racial equation. I think that he's fascinated by the pies Donald's because he's fascinated by these people that are part of a meal you that is intrinsic to his life and so
William Souder: I don't think he avoids the subject, I don't think that he
William Souder: I don't think that he approaches it very directly, except maybe in that
William Souder: Passage and travels with Charlie and I know that's not a very satisfactory answer, I suppose.
William Souder: The real answer is that the failure to address it more. He had on maybe says more about Steinbeck in the time he lived in than
William Souder: Anything that he kind of overtly attempted to write about it, but it's a hard question. And I feel I don't have a good answer to it. Maybe that's because there isn't one.
Nicholas Taylor: I have a question from Mike CURTIS Who went ahead and type the question into the chat. So I'll just read it to john Steinbeck ever comment about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two.
William Souder: Yeah, he did. You know,
William Souder: Ed records was really
William Souder: Upset about what happened to
William Souder: Japanese Americans during, during the war, and they were both in but now Steinbeck was in New York at the time, but he was aware of what Ricketts was doing records was organizing
William Souder: To protest this and and in wrote about it and recognize that this has been a tremendous and justice, and I know that he communicated with with Steinbeck about it was certainly
William Souder: Certainly will disagree, but he was he was on the East Coast at the time. So he was kind of separated from what was happening in California, but I certainly knew about it and and he knew that Ricketts was particularly upset about it. Yeah.
Nicholas Taylor: Kevin hurl has a question. Some biographers attend intentionally introduced one or two inaccuracies in order to trip up future scholars who might use their work without citing them appropriately. Did you do that.
William Souder: Well I, I will. I am going to confess right away that I've never heard that before.
William Souder: I think it
William Souder: I think it is.
William Souder: Well, that's that i guess i i've never heard that said before, I don't know anything about that.
William Souder: I did not do that. And I wonder what you know what would be the purpose. I mean, where's the satisfaction of knowing that you've
William Souder: fouled up another, you know, hard working biographer at some point in the future. I don't. I'm a little skeptical of that i i do you have an example that we know of anybody that's actually done this.
Nicholas Taylor: I don't know, maybe if you have an example, Kevin.
Nicholas Taylor: Throw it into the chat. We'll come back to it. Nick Martinez has a question Nick. Hey, thanks.
Nick Martinez: First of all, thanks for coming, talking to all of us. I read the book. This week I really enjoyed it.
Nick Martinez: And I'm not coming from a, I would say.
Nick Martinez: A very academic background I do teach at the university but I'm on the film side. That's what I teach, and I've always been a lover of Steinbeck I was reading the book. And one of the things that I noticed
Nick Martinez: Was, you had a comment. You had a passage in the book. It talks about Fitzgerald and Hemingway being in Paris.
Nick Martinez: And how they were in Paris, because that's the, you know, that's where it was okay to be poor or not have a lot of money and this lifestyle but john never did that. Do you think
Nick Martinez: I immediately as soon as I heard you say that I thought you might follow up on it, but in my head. The first thing I thought was
Nick Martinez: Was that what gave him his advantage that he stayed in America as a writer, as someone who's trying to develop his voice, and that's why he connected so much with the American people.
Nick Martinez: And in really he could get the language down because he was living here. I was just wondering what your thoughts were on that.
William Souder: Yeah, I think that's right. That's sort of what I was alluding to before, but talking about how Steinbeck had to kind of make his own way sort of define his own
William Souder: Place in American literature, because he was not part of this kind of a lost generation movement. It was his professor at Stanford. These merlis was his
William Souder: Favorite writing instructor at Stanford who told him he should think about, you know, moving to Europe because everything was cheap there and it was no shame to be poor. But then, of course, when
William Souder: The bottom fell out of the economy and the Great Depression worse. And then everybody was broken. There was no shame in it at all. And so
William Souder: The motivation for leaving wasn't there, you know, for for Hemingway and Fitzgerald. There was a there was a lifestyle in Europe that they appreciated, you know,
William Souder: There was no prob. There was no prohibition in Europe. So you could you could drink freely there although you could drink pretty freely in America too, but it was more
William Souder: Out in the open, I guess. And, but it wasn't expensive to do that, but I think you're absolutely right. I think that I think Steinbeck did gain some special leverage by virtue of the fact that he was not he was not part of that club and and as I said it earlier.
William Souder: For a long time Steinbeck wasn't sure what to write about. And it took him a while to find his way. And when he realized what he could write about were
William Souder: Were people that he understood and heard that a lot of other people didn't understand and didn't hear. And I think that I think that he was home free them and
William Souder: So yeah, the fact that he missed the war he missed going to Europe, I think probably contributed. Usually you know enormously to success and he is finding his way.
Nicholas Taylor: So next up is Jeremiah Davis Jeremiah do question.
Jeremiah Davis: Yes, thank you. Ah, first, Mr solder. Thank you for doing this and I'm from Minnesota, so I can empathize with your conversation about that the snow.
Jeremiah Davis: I wanted to ask, so what do you make of the academic reception of Steinbeck were there seems to be waves of interest, followed by periods of
Jeremiah Davis: Popular academic opinion kind of viewing him as like a high school writer, where there's there's times where he's he's hot. And then there's times where he's not and there there's he's not as widely loved as maybe that people here would would like
William Souder: Well, this is, this is one of the big questions and problems around Steinbeck and
William Souder: There are
William Souder: Very there was a famous, famous episode, I think it was 1989 what yeah what have been the 50th anniversary of the grapes of wrath and it was the
William Souder: It was the, the National Steinbeck center was doing their annual festival and they invited Leslie Fiedler one of the foremost critics in the country to come and give the keynote address and
William Souder: feelers stood up and horrified and annoyed, and in general pissed off the entire crowd by saying that Steinbeck was
William Souder: His work was middlebrow Schlock and anybody who enjoyed reading john Steinbeck had a second rate mind. This is the keynote address at the annual Steinbeck festival. And I think that little story illustrates the depth of the animosity that
William Souder: A significant portion of the academic community has towards john Steinbeck, which I think is undeserved and unfortunate and hard to explain, other than as a kind of snobbery and
William Souder: You mentioned sign that kind of going in and out of fashion in academia. I think he's mostly out of fashion.
William Souder: But I can tell you, and I want to, I want to alert everyone that there is a wonderful new book I've had a chance to read the galleys on that's coming from a Stanford professor and Gavin Jones and I think it will be out next year that I think is going to go a long way towards
William Souder: Enhancing Steinbeck's reputation in academia and it may finally convince
William Souder: Some college literature professors that he's worth teaching in college, not, not just in in middle school Steinbeck's crime.
William Souder: Is that he is for many
William Souder: American school kids. The first serious writer, they encounter.
William Souder: You know, often in middle school, often with works like the red pony or or the pearl or mice and men are sometimes. The Grapes of Wrath maybe more in high school and so
William Souder: He tends to be kind of
William Souder: Left Behind, you know, in the amber of
William Souder: Childhood Education for a lot of people, and I don't think that's right. I don't know why that is.
William Souder: But it's, it's the case and so
William Souder: Steinbeck's reputation is is in flux.
William Souder: But I think it may be taking a turn for the better. If I'd helped it along with a little push, that would be great. But I think that Professor Jones. This book is going to go a long ways, and next year. So I commend it to all of you. I don't know what the final title is but
William Souder: The working title is I was reclaiming Steinbeck so
Nicholas Taylor: Great William Gilly asks the passage you read from Cannery Row about good versus bad qualities is an almost verbatim passage from Sea of Cortez
Nicholas Taylor: Many of Steinbeck's ideas, including non teleological thinking are also embedded in grapes of wrath. Did you come across any other examples like this and you're reading and research.
William Souder: Well, thank you, Dr. Kelly.
William Souder: Bill galeas is a good friend of mine. I spent a lot of time with him when I was working on California and nobody knows more about the Gulf of California then then Kelly does
William Souder: I don't know if I did. Now, what I will say, just to expand on what you just mentioned the, you know, there is this famous, famous passage and Sea of Cortez the the Easter Sunday sermon when when Ed Ricketts according to the according to the narrative.
William Souder: The entire crew sort of hung over from the night before and but they're having a kind of philosophical discussion on the decks of the Western flair. Kind of like
William Souder: Kinda like Socrates and his buddies in the symposium right so that's that's another hung over party that gets into very deep, deep water anyway records, it goes through this whole sort of non teleological
William Souder: Thinking lecture which most of you probably know as a kind of promo existential concept that that the basic idea is
William Souder: That the most important word in in comprehending our existence is simply is, we, we are things are and and although the universe changes and evolves. It doesn't strive towards some purpose and
William Souder: Assign back presents that's in Sea of Cortez as if it actually happened. And in fact it didn't. That whole passage is lifted directly from an essay that
William Souder: Ricketts had had written and Steinbeck borrowed it was one of several that he could have used, and that's the, that's the one he chose so
William Souder: But to to Professor Gillies point
William Souder: There are many things that appear many themes and characters that appear over and over again and Steinbeck and records is in at least four or five of his books.
William Souder: Into of in three of them in dubious battle Cannery Row and sweet Thursday as a character named doc and and so as time goes a great recycler and and enjoyed kind of referencing his own work from one book to the next.
Nicholas Taylor: So just to clean up a couple of loose ends here. Kevin hurl replied about this is about the historian who left
Nicholas Taylor: Yes, it's deliberately in their work. He said jack Benson did in his biography of Steinbeck he wrote that Esther and Beth Steinbeck's to have Steinbeck's three sisters preceded him at Stanford, when in fact they both graduated from Mills College.
Nicholas Taylor: Anyhow,
William Souder: Well, um, I guess. I don't know the answer. I do know that Esther went to Stanford. There are letters, letters from olive Steinbeck to Esther when when when Steinbeck's father lost his job that was concerned that Esther would not be able to stay
William Souder: Excuse me at Stanford. And so her mother Raj reassure that that it would be okay. I believe she was talking about transferring to Berkeley.
William Souder: The Mills College and kind of rings a bell and
William Souder: So I don't know if that was intentional thing or not you know jack Benson and I really admire.
William Souder: Professor Benson's book it's, it is the seminal cradle to grave. It's the Bible that we all rely on and refer to it and it's great and I i looked at a fair amount of his research material at the National Steinbeck center. And it's important to remember that.
William Souder: That book, which I think took him 15 years right he had to do everything by letter and my phone call and by personal, personal interview. I mean, it's not like
William Souder: You know, today you're just a couple of keystrokes away from finding out stuff, but it wasn't that way back in
William Souder: In the late 60s and 1970s when he was getting going on this, he had to actually write letters and wait for the mail to come back, find out things. So it's a it's a tour de force of research.
William Souder: But he was also having to negotiate with the estate and with family as to what he couldn't couldn't put in and and so it wouldn't surprise me if and
William Souder: Peak. He said, we decided to sort of you know plant a little something there for people to find in the future, just to kind of annoy everybody but but i don't know that to be the case.
Nicholas Taylor: In software that's called an easter egg.
Nicholas Taylor: Yeah, exactly. This is something
Nicholas Taylor: Professor Luton Lee has a question. Blue Chen, would you like to ask a question.
Luchen Li: Sure.
Luchen Li: I feel it's great. I got the book here in friend that right in front of me. I don't know what they can see there or not. I got it actually yesterday, a friend of mine from California.
Luchen Li: Who heard about the book in the media, apparently the book have made the big news so he bought it from Amazon is shipped to me. So I just got it. What time up to a gift, you're
Luchen Li: Referring to. Yeah, it's great to hear you talk about the book at the beginning of our conversation tonight. You talk about that you, you said here I quote, The Steinbeck. It was really mad.
Luchen Li: At people in power, as I think I that's what I heard, and also the top. The title of the book. It's a powerful one as well Steinbeck basic mad at the world, for example.
Luchen Li: Could you elaborate a little bit about your perspective of how you came up to this with his conclusion. The standard was mad to the world. I do know he was quite method to Joseph Campbell and Hemingway.
William Souder: Like
Luchen Li: A different reason.
Luchen Li: Yeah, and I also know he was
Luchen Li: quite close to the three US presidents, for example, those were in power FDR JFK and I mean that Johnson, for example, Sola. Could you shed some light about your conclusion, how you came up with us, please.
William Souder: Sure, sure. So when Steinbeck was in grade school. He lived across the street from another kid named Glenn graves and Glenn grades was a
William Souder: Smaller boy and and he he got picked on a lot at school people teased him and and didn't treat it very nicely and Steinbeck befriended him.
William Souder: And and when some of the other kids asked him about this and why you hanging out with Glenn. Nobody likes going and in Steinbeck's answer was, was really simply said
William Souder: Somebody has to look out for him and he was probably eight or nine years old at the time. And so I think he was born with that sensibility that some
William Souder: People are stronger than others. And it's that that that imbalance of power. It's so much that he didn't like or resented anybody who had power. What he didn't like was the exercise of power against
William Souder: Another person or an institution that lacked or had less power and so that it was this sort of differential that was upsetting him. He didn't like bullies and and he particularly I think didn't like
William Souder: What was happening in California in the 1930s that led to some of his greatest work you know he
William Souder: He was appalled by what was happening to the migrants that had come from not just Oklahoma. But, but many, many other states in the middle part of the country to California here they were
William Souder: A necessary part of the agricultural machine.
William Souder: These were people that the big land owners and big farm interests absolutely needed, and yet those same land owners and corporate interests despise the migrants and abuse them terribly and you know it was a Steinbeck saw this vicious bargain.
William Souder: By which
William Souder: This kind of dream of the have a better life and
William Souder: In California was was being sold was being peddled to people who were not sufficiently sophisticated to understand that they're being taken advantage of. And then wouldn't be true.
William Souder: And that someone else someone else would profit by their lack of understanding. And so with that software itself what was happening with these these refugees.
William Souder: He was, he was enraged
William Souder: Many of them are living, not in nice camps, but in roadside ditches and absolute squalor, many of them are starving to death. And many of them were sick.
William Souder: When when terrible floods came to
William Souder: Parts of California in the mid 1930s and and these migrants were sort of living exposed to.
William Souder: exposed to the elements
William Souder: It was almost impossible to get any kind of help to them because the landowners wouldn't permit it. And so these things really drove Stein that to
William Souder: To an extreme exasperate and extreme anger that
William Souder: were central to how he
William Souder: To how we approach, certainly. The Grapes of Wrath a book that he wrote in 100 days in a in this kind of fevered rush of of anger and so I Lucien, I hope that I love so much. And I hope that's answering your question a little bit. He didn't like seeing anybody get pushed around
William Souder: And he had an unusual talent for empathizing with people who were being pushed around and he had an unusual ability
William Souder: To speak with their voice.
William Souder: When you, when you read the dialogue in tortilla flat when you read the dialogue and the grapes of wrath, you actually hear real people that for the most part, you never hear because they usually lack of voice and Steinbeck was their voice and he was an angry voice.
Nicholas Taylor: So there's a comment here that just came in from Elaine graves. Thanks so much for mentioning my father Glenn graves. I'm Glenn grave.
William Souder: Oh, that's wonderful.
Nicholas Taylor: I was always been so proud of his childhood friendship with john Steinbeck I have not heard that story that he stood up for my father. Thank you.
William Souder: Well I Glenn makes a number of appearances in the book. And that's all I'll say about it, but he is. He's a very important element in the story.
Nicholas Taylor: And is he someone that you discovered through the tapes at the National Steinbeck center.
William Souder: Yeah. Yes, he was interviewed by volume Pearson and he lived across the street from john Steinbeck and there was a
William Souder: Woman who Carol late Carol robots who worked at
William Souder: The Steinbeck center used to do these tours during the annual Steinbeck festival in which she would always make a stop at the graves house which is right across Central Avenue from the Steinbeck house the graves PLACE WAS A LITTLE BIT bit. They have a little bit of
William Souder: Land attached to the house, apparently, and it was a place that was often referred to as people had these places they talked about them that say, yeah, a farm in town because they had a little bit, maybe they have some animals, I don't know, but it was a little bit more spacious
Nicholas Taylor: So I want to go to Kathleen Hicks Kathleen. Do you have a question.
Kathleen Hicks: Sure. Thank you. Hi, Mr. Solder thank you so much for doing this. My books on the way. I can't wait to get it. I'm going to try to sneak in two questions. The first one is very simple. I wanted to know if Steinbeck was familiar with Carson in her work and, secondly,
Kathleen Hicks: You know I'm mega Steinbeck nerd. I want to say it's been part of my life for good 25 years now. He's almost become a
Kathleen Hicks: Voice of my conscience and I can't tell you how many times recently I've said oh my god Steinbeck would be rolling over in his grave if he saw this or that. Would you comment on you know what you think he'd have to say to Americans today if he had the chance
Yeah.
William Souder: Well, let me take the first part first. I never came across any direct reference to Rachel Carson and a letter or anything else that Sam I grew up, however.
William Souder: I can assure you that he would have known who Rachel Carson was and Steinbeck was a voracious reader. I'm sure he would have read her books about the ocean, you know, marine biology was close to his heart, he'd written a book about the ocean and himself and so
William Souder: In the way that everybody in america new Rachel Carson was in the 1950s, he would have known that he would have certainly read her her books.
William Souder: What would he say this is a question that comes up all the time. People would ask me, you know what what Rachel Carson say about
William Souder: The world we live in now and and
William Souder: And so it's an interesting thought exercise.
William Souder: We are in a peculiar moment.
William Souder: I mentioned earlier that
William Souder: Steinbeck cannot abide a bully. And I think that without without starting a different kind of conversation. I'll just say that there's
William Souder: A pretty good example, maybe a an example for the ages of a bully right now that we are dealing with that, I'm sure Steinbeck with disapprove of
William Souder: And and be appalled by, I think that he, I think that john Steinbeck would would be puzzled by the state that the country is in
William Souder: You know if when you read travels with Charlie or another book that he worked on called America and Americans Steinbeck had a
William Souder: Kind of holistic view of the country. He thought and this sounds almost quaint. Now although you know just, it seems only a few years ago, this would have been kind of common sense, take
William Souder: It seems it seems quaint that that we used to think that Americans have much more in common than then they have that separates them that are differences are much smaller.
William Souder: And less consequential than our, our similarities that we are people that share a history in a perspective and a personality that is
William Souder: That it has some universality to it. And of course, as we have learned recently, there are divisions in this country so deep that they appear to be insurmountable unbridgeable
William Souder: And so I think Steinbeck would find this current moment that we're in, where the country is basically divided into tribal camps opposing tribal groups.
William Souder: And have that have become incapable of talking to each other in capable of understanding each other and for whom there is no longer an agreed upon reality.
William Souder: You know, if, how do you stand that would wonder how a country can function if it can't at least agree on what's real and what what his actual as opposed to what is a fantasy and and of course he would be
William Souder: I think he would find, you know, the digital world, the world that we're on right now.
William Souder: Unfortunate
Nicholas Taylor: So we have time for just we have time for. I think a couple more if you're if you're game bill.
Nicholas Taylor: Absolutely. Okay. Gabriel Thompson, they really have a question.
Gabriel Thompson: Yeah, first, just really looking forward to reading the book sort of a craft question. I wrote a biography of someone who was really inspired by Steinbeck, a man named Fred Ross, who ran the migrant camp.
Gabriel Thompson: That Steinbeck had visited our in our oven.
Gabriel Thompson: And
Gabriel Thompson: And no one had written a biography of Ross and so it's sort of easy. You know, I wasn't didn't have any other books to
Gabriel Thompson: Look at which I think could have been helpful. But I'm also wondering as a biographer writing a book about someone that has had previous books written about him.
Gabriel Thompson: How you approach that because I would think that it could be helpful that it might point you some ways but also
Gabriel Thompson: At one point, at some point I want to just perhaps toss them all aside and going on path and not constantly be obsessively comparing
Gabriel Thompson: Whether I looked in this folder in this archive and what didn't flow. You know, like trying to weigh it and it just was curious to hear how you, how you manage that process of of
Gabriel Thompson: Doing Barbara biographies.
William Souder: So I, my background is in journalism. I was, I was a reporter and I was actually a film critic for number of years and and I did a lot of sort of newspaper, magazine reporting.
William Souder: For most of my career, actually. And one of the things that you learn to do in journalism is to identify a story and and so I that's that's the lens. I look at everything. So where's the story and and it's a good thing to do because
William Souder: Telling stories is how you get readers to go from one page to the next. So in my mind when I'm when I'm thinking about
William Souder: A book. And when I'm actually working on one that the question that I always want the reader to be asking as. And then what happened and and this is one of the reasons that I like biography is because
William Souder: You start with a main character, and you start with a kind of a chronology a narrative that you know basically runs through the course of someone's life. And so you're sort of in business from the start, because you've got a story to tell and so
William Souder: However, some biographies kind of lose sight of in the course of telling the life they lose sight of putting life into the into the narrative. And so for me.
William Souder: It's, it's not so much about
William Souder: Comparing what I'm doing to what's been done before, or trying to do something totally different. I don't even really think about that. I think about what how
William Souder: How would I, how would I tell this story to you and make you really, really want to know what happens next to stick with me to the bitter end
William Souder: What could I leave out
William Souder: What could I emphasize it hadn't been emphasized before what context, could I provide you know there's a bunch of stuff in my in this book about American history about what was happening at the time that Steinbeck was working because
William Souder: That context is so important is his work into, I think, to the flow of the of the story. And so
William Souder: Yeah, it's about telling it. It's about telling
William Souder: A captivating
William Souder: tale about someone's life you know we're all interested in what other people are like, and what they did and and what went wrong and what went right and not for nothing. One of the things that attracted me to Steinbeck was that he was far from a perfect person.
William Souder: In a very messy. Personal life
William Souder: He could be he could be pretty prickly you'd be pretty mean
William Souder: It's not absolutely necessary that you love the character that you're writing about the person that you're reading a biography of but you have to find them consequential and interesting and you have to be able to fashion a narrative around the events of their life that you think
William Souder: will push the reader through to the end. I don't know if that's answering the question, I don't. Excuse me. I don't look at
William Souder: I don't look at the material and ask myself, how do I assemble this I look at the material. And I asked myself, What, what's that about
William Souder: What's he about and if you walked up to me and said, Tell me about john Steinbeck. The book is what I would, what point to as that would be my answer. That's how I think about it.
Nicholas Taylor: So we have a question from Gail Steinbeck yell.
Gail Steinbeck: Me unmute it's such a joy to read your book. Thank you so much for the great research, you've done
William Souder: Thank you, Gail.
Gail Steinbeck: Eloquently written, you are utterly brilliant, you should be writing fiction as well.
Gail Steinbeck: You're so you're so eloquent, but I did have one question. Where did you locate some of these images. I haven't seen some of these images before
Gail Steinbeck: And it was
William Souder: Um, well, let's see. Well, each one of them has the there's a credit on each one that tells you where they came from. But if you came from. Next, Nick tailor shop.
William Souder: I think I got a bunch of them. They're the the image on the cover the Dorothea Lange photo and there's one on the inside as well, at least one on the inside those come from the National Archives and Dorothea Lange, of course, was essentially a government boy he worked for the
William Souder: I forget which one of the agencies, she did her photography for but all of those photographs are kind of owned by all of us there in the public domain. So you and I have access. If you haven't looked. If you're looking for stuff like that.
William Souder: Go to the National Archives. Go to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt library, which is part of its under the rubric of the National Archives
William Souder: And you can find hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of images like this and they're they're wonderful from from that that time period. The photograph of
William Souder: When conquer. I got from
William Souder: Ron Seymour, whose father took the portrait. So, he added, and then of course the first piece from use of cars I got from the conscious state that photos been around. Everybody knows that photo but nobody ever used it before and I thought it should be used because it's great.
Gail Steinbeck: Did you do any research on the images from the University of Arizona.
William Souder: I did not. What do they have
Gail Steinbeck: A lot from what I understand, I'm going to be going there. Pretty soon to see what they have.
William Souder: A wonderful No I did not. I didn't, I didn't know that they had a collection and Nick, you know, BUT THAT DOES ARIZONA HAVE A bunch of great
Nicholas Taylor: Images. Well, I know that they they manage the rights for some images.
William Souder: Okay.
Nicholas Taylor: It could. It could be those. I'm curious to see what you find out, Gail. Let me know.
Gail Steinbeck: I'm working on Tom's memoir. So I'm looking for just right now as well. And yet,
Gail Steinbeck: You feel similar actually were the first year. The first research biographer that I have read that came close to touching on the heart of Steinbeck and I'm so far I'm not finished with your book yet but I'm deeply moved by what you've done. And I'm very grateful. Thank you.
William Souder: Oh, that's really nice Gail and I, you know, I'm so sorry that I didn't get to meet
William Souder: You know, I think I had it in my head that I was kind of working toward that. And then, you know, unfortunately he passed before we had a chance to do that, but I really thank you for calling in and and i means a lot to me that you are reading the book. So I thank you.
Gail Steinbeck: Know it's wonderful. It's one I'm going to review and it's wonderful. Thank you.
Gail Steinbeck: Thank you.
Nicholas Taylor: Thanks for the great questions, everyone, and thank you, Bill, for taking time and staying up late to
Nicholas Taylor: In the snow. I mean, it's not like you'd be outside tonight. But thank you so much for for doing this event with us.
William Souder: It was a pleasure. Nick and a real honor to be
William Souder: Able to talk with such a knowledgeable group of people and
William Souder: I'll just say thank you to all of you for not
William Souder: Pointing out something some terrible mistake that I made or
William Souder: I overlooked or should have done.
Differently.
William Souder: It was really nice and
William Souder: I am
William Souder: I miss my visits to to San Jose and to Salinas, and to specific grove and hopefully the time isn't too far off when we can. When I can come that way again and hope to see some of my friends out that way. So Nick, thanks very much.
Nicholas Taylor: My pleasure, Bill. Good night, everyone.
William Souder: Thank you pick up you
Nicholas Taylor: Be sure to pick up your copy of the book available pretty literally wherever books are sold
Nicholas Taylor: You can the publisher would like me to say, go to the WW Norton com website and they will link you to whatever your favorite venue is
Nicholas Taylor: Get your hands on this book. It's fantastic.
William Souder: And if you have a if you have a good local independent bookstore that you patronize or have thought about patronizing.
William Souder: Please do they they need your help. Right now, as many small businesses do and and and they're doing a wonderful job of selling this book for me. So if you have an opportunity, by all means do that but but wherever you get it will be okay.
Great.
Nicholas Taylor: Thanks, everyone. And I'll be archiving this video and putting it online. So if you have a friend who wants to follow the conversation. Check the Steinbeck center for Steinbeck studies website in a couple days and we'll be right there.
Nicholas Taylor: All right. Good night.
William Souder: Good night.