May 172011
 

The other day I posted a BBC story that pondered the lack of socially committed writers in America today. Where are today’s Steinbecks? the author asked (and I asked by extension). Mark Lupinetti wrote such a passionate and inspiring comment to that post that I decided to lift the comment out of the box and put it up as an essay. Flavian Mark Lupinetti, a writer and cardiothoracic surgeon, obtained his MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.  His work has appeared in Barrelhouse, Bellevue Literary Review, Cutthroat, and ZYZZYVA.  He lives in central Oregon with his dogs, the Four Weimaraners of the Apocalypse.

Here’s what he wrote:

The salient features of 2011 America include hyperconcentration of wealth for the few, increasing vulnerability for the majority, and impoverishment for many. Wasteful wars motivated by expansionist goals consume vast resources, jeopardizing minimal standards of social welfare. While corporate power rages unchecked, fundamental rights of workers are subject to relentless attack. Were Steinbeck alive today he would recognize a society little changed from the first half of the last century, a time when he wrote his era’s most moving and cogent novels of the class war. DG raises the pertinent question, “Where are today’s Steinbeck?”

 All right, Doug. I’ll take a crack at it.

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Where are today’s Steinbecks?

By Mark Lupinetti

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I

Before we search for today’s Steinbeck, let us consider our treatment of the Steinbeck that we have. I use the present tense because Steinbeck will be with us always, whether we’ve read the text or listened to Henry Fonda narrate Tom Joad’s soliloquy. We can take comfort that, “Whenever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Whenever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there.” And so on.

When The Grapes of Wrath appeared in 1939 it received a generally favorable response from both critics and the public. Some, however, called it sentimental. Others condemned Steinbeck’s portrayals of “the greedy bastards responsible” for the Depression, as if the tender feelings of politicians and landowners might ache from this characterization. Still others accused him of being a socialist or a communist.

Steinbeck’s personal politics defied simple characterization, as exemplified by his support for American aggression in Vietnam. Yet today his reputation and his standing in the literary canon is jeopardized less by attacks on his politics than by those directed at his craft. Even some who sympathize with the politics of his novels consider him a propagandist.

A peculiar feature of the modern literary establishment is its demand for drilling into the core of the human being in terms of psychology, sexuality, relationships, spiritual beliefs–but as soon as the political aspect of the individual is brought into play, an additional test presents. Now it becomes necessary to prove one has no “agenda.”

And there can be no doubt that Steinbeck did write with an agenda. No one can conceive of Steinbeck contemplating, “A middle-aged guy . . . I’ll call him Tom . . . suffering from ennui. He lives in New York City and he writes books. No, he’s an accountant. Oh, wait, I’ll put him in Oklahoma, and make him bored by life in the Midwest. I’ll call it Ledgers of Wrath.”

Nobody would argue that even the most compelling and articulate political position can stand the test of literary excellence by itself, that craft does not matter, that storytelling and character may be dispensed with if the politics are sufficient. To accuse Steinbeck of melodrama or sentimentality, however, suggests that he inflated the harsh conditions of cannery work or sharecropping or itinerant labor for dramatic purposes. In fact Steinbeck softened these portrayals, believing a truer reflection would prove too troubling to the reader.

Contemporary educators show limited respect for Steinbeck. If he appears on the curriculum at all, it is mostly at the high school level, where the historical and sociological value of his work receives the greatest emphasis. Creative writing classes at any level tend to disparage his literary merit. Thus, if today’s writers don’t aspire to be Steinbeck’s heirs, perhaps one cause is the lack of honor paid to the original.

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II

The class war remains the central internal conflict of post-Civil War America, with one side firing all the weapons and the other taking all the casualties. Yet to use the phrase “class war” is to be regarded as a boor, a barbarian, and a propagandist. Steinbeck’s America did not suffer our modern bashfulness at the acknowledgement of class, which helped his novels resonate with his readership.

Indeed, the political landscape of the country was more favorably disposed to embrace the subject of Steinbeck’s work than it is today. When The Grapes of Wrath appeared in 1939 America had a President dedicated to Social Security, rural economic development, and the rights of labor unions. He didn’t win many fans among his opponents. Nor did he care to. “I welcome their hatred,” said President Roosevelt. Not only were the brand name parties more distinct in 1939, Americans had other political movements to choose from, not least of which was an effective Communist Party that contributed to the strength of unions and the fight against racial injustice.

In contrast, today’s nominally Democratic President couldn’t be more averse to inspiring hatred by his opposition. Instead, he compromises traditional Democratic values in the interest of “getting things done,” the “things” being unspecified, and upheld with the larger goal of, one supposes, getting even more things done. This week the President’s stated priority has nothing to do with jobs, nothing to do with controlling Wall Street’s voracious appetite, nothing to do with preventing the next economic bubble that we can see already being inflated. Instead, he has set a goal of more drilling for oil, something that, because American petroleum production remains a trivial part of the international market, will not lower the price at the pump by one penny according to the oil companies themselves.

During these doldrums of two interchangeable political parties, a weakened labor movement, and an intellectual class that has thrown in the towel, a novelist touching Steinbeck’s subjects today finds herself with an audience that has accustomed itself to lesser evils so many times that the “evil” part of the phrase is forgotten. We settle for “lesser,” in our leaders and in our writers, and a writer who challenges the “evil” may fear becoming marginalized in a way that Steinbeck did not.

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III

Writers often revel in seeing themselves apart from economic realities. We find comfort in regarding our art as outside mere commerce, immune to market forces. Yet obtaining wide readership traditionally requires agents, publishers, editors, marketers, and store owners whose livelihoods depend on selling books. The importance of selling books has assumed gargantuan proportions, as I note with sadness while reading today’s Sunday New York Times Book Review. Over the first three or so decades that I followed this publication, its Best Seller list occupied a single page. Today Best Seller statistics, further subcategorized by Print, Ebooks, Print + Ebooks, Paperback, etc., has metastasized to fill six pages. This malignant expansion necessarily occupies space that could accommodate more book reviews. This unfortunate trend to focus on the business of art is not limited to literature of course. Even a casual radio listener cannot avoid hearing what last weekend’s movies grossed, an important thing to know, I suppose, for the person with points or a back-end deal. Why they broadcast this information in, say, central Oregon, where cattle futures, rainfall, and ski conditions have greater impact, escapes me.

The need to sell is inescapable. If writers today find it difficult enough to sell apolitical books, they can’t help but notice the huge sales (often due to bulk purchases by right-wing think tanks and religious organizations) of books that cater to conservative sympathies. Furthermore, neophyte authors may be cautioned to avoid political controversy. I once attended a writer’s meeting that featured a keynote address by a writer of political novels. More accurately, he wrote novels with political characters and settings. I remember his speech for one particular line, “Be careful about expressing your own views, because you don’t want to alienate half your potential audience.” This author, who sold a lot of books, called to mind Michael Jordan’s response to the question of why he didn’t use his influence in North Carolina to work for the defeat of Jesse Helms, “Republicans buy sneakers too.”

The audience may be changing as well. Of last year’s graduating class at Harvard, roughly fifty percent of those who obtained jobs after graduation went to work in one of two areas: finance and consulting. One might hope that these putatively best and brightest with their years of liberal education and refined literary taste would not hesitate to read authors who challenge, rather than flatter. How do we think that will really work out? I will hazard a guess that the break room at Goldman Sachs isn’t exactly littered with copies of The Grapes of Wrath. It likely won’t be littered with a modern version, either. Venturing into the contemporary literary market as an advocate for the downtrodden hardly looks like a smart career move.

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IV

For all of the obstacles and disadvantages, we have living among us writers whose work demonstrates the influence of Steinbeck.

Some effectively skewer the economic forces that plague us now, such as Gary Shteyngart (Super Sad True Love Story), and Teddy Wayne (Kapitoil). These novels, however, are written from the perspective of the insider rather than exploring the worlds of our latter-day Joads.

Writers who reflect a more consistent working class sensibility include Ron Carlson, Ivan Doig Richard Chiappone, and Denis Johnson. Before Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter and its sequels, his short story collection Rock Springs plumbed the depths of hardscrabble working men and women. There is Robert Olen Butler’s Wabash. There is Robert Ward’s Red Baker. My own benighted state of West By God Virginia has given us Jayne Ann Philips, Ann Pancake, Glenn Headly, and Breece D’J Pancake.

Contemporary writers such as these have the inclinations and the talent to claim the mantle of “the next Steinbeck.” Whether our ailing economy influences these authors to elevate their politics and the art to produce work as important as The Grapes of Wrath remains to be seen. But one can hope.

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V

One can hope, because here’s who else can be the next Steinbeck: You. Me. All of us. The stories are out there. The people are out there, like the fifty-six-year old waitress at the bus station in Weirton, West Virignia, who sold a ticket on the last Greyhound the town will ever see. Or her brother, one of a thousand workers in a steel mill that once employed twelve thousand. The machinist in Long Beach who built airplanes for thirty years but won’t build any more. The snowplow driver driven bankrupt by his hospital bills. The social worker whose job depends on throwing one of two clients off food stamps. The Vietnam veteran living on the beach in Hawaii (no, not in a house on the beach). Don’t focus exclusively on the victims; also tell the stories of the union rep who doesn’t let the factory’s scare tactics make him accept a bad contract and the nurses who refuse to negotiate away their own medical coverage and the environmental activists who won’t let the maw of the logging company consume old growth forests. These aren’t idealized figures but real people whose stories are compelling and need to be told. They NEED to be told. And you, me, all of us can tell them.

Oh, you’ll have some challenges, mostly name-calling. Pamphleteer. Agitator. Propagandist. They called Steinbeck the same thing. And Zola. And Sinclair Lewis. So you’ll be in good company. They’ll call you a communist and a socialist. I suggest you respond with a self-deprecating smile and a sincere, “Thank you.” On the other hand, you’ll make lots of friends and get invited to the best parties.

Here’s the good news. Here’s the most charming, egalitarian, liberating, funnest part of the class war: Everyone gets to choose sides. Doesn’t matter if you’re rich or your poor. Doesn’t matter if you’re highly educated or a high school dropout. Maybe your daddy’s a bank executive, maybe your momma’s on food stamps. Everybody gets to choose what side to stand on.

Start standing. Start writing.

—Mark Lupinetti

  12 Responses to “Where are today’s Steinbecks?| Essay — Mark Lupinetti”

  1. Jesus, Mark. I love your fervent voice.

  2. What a fantastic piece.

    You can add Keith Maillard to that list of West Virginian authors, too.

  3. Hear, hear! An eminently quotable essay.

  4. What a cogent essay, and a call to arms. Never in the post-World War II era have we needed a Steinbeck more. And how telling that he is being freshly attacked for possibly “making up” parts of “Travels with Charley,” a book whose essential truths cannot be disputed.
    It’s also true that the “big” authors who could be the next Steinbeck are so wrapped up in the microcosmic that they have nothing to say about the state of America today.

    • The state of America’s fisheries sadly parallels the era of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. Take up your pen, Betty!

  5. Mark, it’s fantastic to see this comment expanded into a post. The original BBC post left me feeling dejected about the state of the literary confluence between politics and fiction. I was also struck by the idea of Steinbeck’s work being considered “sentimental” … it seems that writers who broach encompassing political realities without buffers of satire or irony are subject to be considered as such. This essay actually gives me hope that political milieus, characters, events and epochs can expand beyond hints of mere context or Betty’s idea of the “microcosmic.” Wonderful essay.

  6. Ledgers of Wrath…I love it.

    Cogent, smart, and funny. That’s Lupinetti for you.

  7. Writing in a different context, Huston Smith (scholar of comparative religions) said: ‘”. . .the noisiest postmodernists have called into question the very notion of truth by turning claims to truth into little more than power plays. According to this reading of the matter, when people claim that what they say is true, all they are really doing is claiming status for beliefs that advance their own social standing. This relativizes science’s assertion radically and rules out even the possibility of its closing in on the nature of nature.”
    Steinbeck and his successors (who are relegated to niche markets) had confidence that their art had the possibility of closing in on the nature of social justice in daily life. A postmodernist, consumerist culture discourages that kind of confidence.

    • The paradox of the Enlightenment is that reason has led us to the point at which we can no longer speak of the truth or the good while wishing we could (which was the reason for becoming reasonable in the first place).

  8. More thoughts as this essay continues to rattle around in my brain. First, I wonder if we shouldn’t cast our net wider in looking for Steinbecks. Juniot Diaz, for example, in his insistence in looking at the underbelly of the global economy and the colonial legacy in a language that combines sociocultural analysis and street talk. Or maybe, these days, our Steinbecks write CNF rather than fiction, like Barbara Ehrenreich.

  9. Fantastic, Mark! Grapes of Wrath has long been my favorite novel because the ending is the best I’ve ever read, so absolutely cohesive with all of the novel’s themes. Steinbeck studied biology or microbiology and thought of the human species, the planet, the cosmos as one massive organism, with each part affecting the whole. Perhaps there are no sides so much as noticing symptoms and seeking out cause and effect. Aren’t the bankers and landowners in his novel nameless, faceless? Would today’s writers seem cowed if they were to not name such destructive influences? Yet, if they did name them, would they become political, radical? I’m not sure, but you’ve inspired me Mark! I know why the air traffic controllers were asleep, now I’m going to write, write, write!
    Thank you.

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