Sept. 8, 2008
BOOK REVIEW: 'Obscene in the Extreme': Book Burning, Banning in Pre-WWII California
By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
Rick Wartzman's "Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath'" (PublicAffairs, $26.95, 320 pages) had its genesis in a photo that Wartzman came across while he was writing -- with co-author Max Arax -- "The King of California."
Reproduced in the book, the photo shows three men on a sun-baked street in Bakersfield, Kern County, California, on Aug. 24, 1939. Farm worker Clell Pruett sets afire a copy of John Steinbeck's novel, "The Grapes of Wrath." It was a staged photo for the local newspaper, the Bakersfield Californian, and Pruett is accompanied by his boss, Bill Camp, and a powerful man in the Associated Farmers organization named L.E. Plymale.
Steinbeck's novel featuring the extended Joad family, late of Oklahoma and now trying their luck in the fields of California's Central Valley, had been published in April 1939 and was a blockbuster success. It was praised by critics and by both President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
It was anything but popular in Kern County, the setting of most of the California part of the book of the "Okie" family forced off their farm in Oklahoma. Just before the burning, the Kern County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution condemning the novel and ordering it banned from the county's public libraries and schools. The title of Wartzman's book is a quote from one of the giant farm operators in the county referring to the novel's frank -- for its time -- sexual references. The operator who came up with the description of Steinbeck's book was a member of the Associated Farmers and an ally of the Kern supervisors.
The county librarian who opposed the ban, Gretchen Knief, is one of the many unforgettable characters in the book -- a work that reminds us that the opposite site of the coin of California as a liberal, reform-minded state was a right-wing movement led by the Associated Farmers that saw in Steinbeck's novel a call for armed insurrection and Soviet-style collective farms run by interlopers like the fictional Joads.
Wartzman notes that California in the late 1930s had just elected its first Democratic governor of the 20th Century, Culbert Olson, a political protege of longtime socialist Upton Sinclair. Sinclair (1878-1968), author of many "muckraking" books but perhaps most famous for his 1906 novel "The Jungle," had run for governor of California as a Democrat in 1934 on a radical platform that promised to "end poverty in California." Olson had appointed to a high state post Carey McWilliams, whose "Factories in the Field," a nonfiction counterpart to Steinbeck's novel, had called for collectivization of the state's huge agribusiness operations. McWilliams later went on to become the editor of The Nation, a progressive magazine.
As preparation for this review and to find out why "The Grapes of Wrath" still sells 100,000 copies a year and is required reading in many schools, I reread the novel. It was powerful when I first read it decades ago and it's still a strong indictment of the forces of organized agribusiness in the Golden State. Having lived for 16 years in California, I always thought the state's liberal reputation was often undeserved.
Before he became a liberal icon as Chief Justice of the United States, Earl Warren was a leader in calling for the internment of Japanese Americans in such infamous camps as Manzanar in the wake of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Warren, a Republican, was attorney general of California at the time and in November 1942 was elected governor. The internment was opposed by none other than the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover.
Another character in the book, Wartzman's favorite, was a blind ACLU lawyer named Raymond Henderson, hired to fight the book ban. Wartzman was impressed by Henderson's sense of humor and his statement that often concluded his letters: "May the pork chops never be wanting." It caught the spirit of the hungry times in the depths of the Great Depression.
"Obscene in the Extreme" is exhaustively researched and thorough readable. It's must reading for those who say -- echoing the title of Sinclair Lewis' 1935 novel of a fascist takeover of America -- "It Can't Happen Here." Read Steinbeck's immortal novel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and read Wartzman's book -- deserving of a major prize -- to understand the despair and strong feelings that prevailed only a few generations ago -- "Only Yesterday" to borrow the title of Frederick Lewis Allen's book of the early 1930s.
Publisher's web site: www.publicaffairsbooks.com
Share This Story:
Make HNN Your Homepage (IE Users Only)
BOOK REVIEW: 'Obscene in the Extreme': Book Burning, Banning in Pre-WWII California
By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
Rick Wartzman's "Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath'" (PublicAffairs, $26.95, 320 pages) had its genesis in a photo that Wartzman came across while he was writing -- with co-author Max Arax -- "The King of California."
Reproduced in the book, the photo shows three men on a sun-baked street in Bakersfield, Kern County, California, on Aug. 24, 1939. Farm worker Clell Pruett sets afire a copy of John Steinbeck's novel, "The Grapes of Wrath." It was a staged photo for the local newspaper, the Bakersfield Californian, and Pruett is accompanied by his boss, Bill Camp, and a powerful man in the Associated Farmers organization named L.E. Plymale.
Steinbeck's novel featuring the extended Joad family, late of Oklahoma and now trying their luck in the fields of California's Central Valley, had been published in April 1939 and was a blockbuster success. It was praised by critics and by both President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
It was anything but popular in Kern County, the setting of most of the California part of the book of the "Okie" family forced off their farm in Oklahoma. Just before the burning, the Kern County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution condemning the novel and ordering it banned from the county's public libraries and schools. The title of Wartzman's book is a quote from one of the giant farm operators in the county referring to the novel's frank -- for its time -- sexual references. The operator who came up with the description of Steinbeck's book was a member of the Associated Farmers and an ally of the Kern supervisors.
The county librarian who opposed the ban, Gretchen Knief, is one of the many unforgettable characters in the book -- a work that reminds us that the opposite site of the coin of California as a liberal, reform-minded state was a right-wing movement led by the Associated Farmers that saw in Steinbeck's novel a call for armed insurrection and Soviet-style collective farms run by interlopers like the fictional Joads.
Wartzman notes that California in the late 1930s had just elected its first Democratic governor of the 20th Century, Culbert Olson, a political protege of longtime socialist Upton Sinclair. Sinclair (1878-1968), author of many "muckraking" books but perhaps most famous for his 1906 novel "The Jungle," had run for governor of California as a Democrat in 1934 on a radical platform that promised to "end poverty in California." Olson had appointed to a high state post Carey McWilliams, whose "Factories in the Field," a nonfiction counterpart to Steinbeck's novel, had called for collectivization of the state's huge agribusiness operations. McWilliams later went on to become the editor of The Nation, a progressive magazine.
As preparation for this review and to find out why "The Grapes of Wrath" still sells 100,000 copies a year and is required reading in many schools, I reread the novel. It was powerful when I first read it decades ago and it's still a strong indictment of the forces of organized agribusiness in the Golden State. Having lived for 16 years in California, I always thought the state's liberal reputation was often undeserved.
Before he became a liberal icon as Chief Justice of the United States, Earl Warren was a leader in calling for the internment of Japanese Americans in such infamous camps as Manzanar in the wake of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Warren, a Republican, was attorney general of California at the time and in November 1942 was elected governor. The internment was opposed by none other than the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover.
Another character in the book, Wartzman's favorite, was a blind ACLU lawyer named Raymond Henderson, hired to fight the book ban. Wartzman was impressed by Henderson's sense of humor and his statement that often concluded his letters: "May the pork chops never be wanting." It caught the spirit of the hungry times in the depths of the Great Depression.
"Obscene in the Extreme" is exhaustively researched and thorough readable. It's must reading for those who say -- echoing the title of Sinclair Lewis' 1935 novel of a fascist takeover of America -- "It Can't Happen Here." Read Steinbeck's immortal novel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and read Wartzman's book -- deserving of a major prize -- to understand the despair and strong feelings that prevailed only a few generations ago -- "Only Yesterday" to borrow the title of Frederick Lewis Allen's book of the early 1930s.
Publisher's web site: www.publicaffairsbooks.com
Share This Story:
Make HNN Your Homepage (IE Users Only)
