Everybody wants to be somebody

I’ve somehow become singularly focused on learning more about John Steinbeck for the past few days. One morning last week, I felt like I should read The Grapes of Wrath so I walked to Powell’s City of Books on my lunch break that day and bought a copy of it. I’ve since been reading it, but rather than blaze through the contents so I can move on to another piece of Americana, I have been taking the scenic route. I normally take my time when I read a book. Getting to the end is not my main priority. I read a couple of chapters in the morning on the train ride to work, and that’s usually the only time I will read a book. Sometimes I will read a couple of chapters on the train ride home, but I normally listen to music podcasts to unwind.

I explored academic websites and checked out his Wikipedia page for other potential sources of information. I am kind of ashamed to admit that I did not know he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. Another piece of information I was interested to learn a bit about was his popularity in Japan. From what I’ve gathered, books written by John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner were some of the first to be introduced after occupying forces came to Japan following the surrender of the Empire of Japan in World War 2. I’ve not read Hemingway or Faulkner, so I cannot make informed comments on their work right now. However, the early introduction of these authors’ works to Japan likely had a significant impact on how the United States of America was perceived by the Japanese in the years following the end of the war.

Steinbeck’s affinity for the connection between the land and the people who are living on that land is easily recognized in his work. After all, he himself was billed as an ecologist. In the opening chapters of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck writes a scene about how the connection between the land and the person working that land is diminishing. He writes how working of the lands is turning into people using huge machines to rip the lands apart. People using tractors pulling rows of shining, slicing metal disks followed by giant metal hooks to break up clods of dirt, all to be pierced by the phallic seeding devices to grow crop more efficiently for the sake of “margin a profit”. This violence being inflicted upon the land for the sake of some nameless, insatiably hungry monster is an image that has yet to lose its intensity the further along in the story I go. I feel compelled, for the land’s sake, for Pa’s sake after he was gored in the chest and died on the same land being ripped apart for the banks to feed themselves, to read on.

I feel real emotion when I read this book. I feel a sense of despair for the economic situations as they’re described. The humorous dialogue feels genuine to the times, it’s just funny, and the way the words are written seems pretty true to how these men may have spoken (at least, it’s how I spoke sometimes growing up in Oklahoma). I feel angry when I read about why the Joads’ house is sitting all crooked on its foundations. I feel exposed to the world in some ways, and not all in comfortable ways. But I don’t want to stop reading. It’s been a while since I’ve felt connected to a story like this.

Until next time.

I started reading John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath in the last week or so. The book starts out in Oklahoma during the dust bowl. I was born and raised in Oklahoma, and upon closing the book after reading a few pages on the train ride home, I wondered why this was my first time reading this book. I didn’t have an answer for that thought so I just kept silently chiding myself for not having done so sooner as I walked back to my apartment. During my workout that evening, I found myself thinking about where I’d first heard of The Grapes of Wrath.

My dad passed away in 2017. He was 79 years old. He was born in a small community in southern Oklahoma in 1938. This placed him solidly in the Silent Generation. When I was going through school, I could tell he was a bit older than the other dads. As I grew up and started understanding the world a bit more, I realized that he raised me in a way someone with whom I went through school may have grown up if they were raised by their grandparents. Sometimes on Saturday nights when I was young, dad would make some popcorn on the stove and my brother, sister, dad, and we’d all sit and listen to big band music on the radio for a couple of hours. I didn’t think much of it at the time; it sounded like music I’d hear in an antique store. I eventually realized he probably grew up listening to big band music in the mid-to late ’40s. Old time radio had long since been replaced with television in the late ’90s so it must have been really something for him to be able to share that with us. Compare this experience to another kid’s watching Nick at Night on Nickelodeon on cable TV.

Speaking of TV, our family bought our first television set just after Y2K. We got six or seven local channels with an indoor antenna, and the reception was suspect during storms. But if it was storming outside, that usually meant the power would go out inside, so there’s really no use in complaining. I remember watching old TV shows like Bonanza and M*A*S*H on a 19-inch color television. One weekend, my dad mentioned we’d be watching a movie from 1940 on one of those classic movie TV specials on PBS. This was my first black and white film, and it was also the first time I heard of The Grapes of Wrath. I couldn’t have been older than 11 or 12 at the time, so needless to say, I didn’t really understand what the movie was about. My dad seemed to really enjoy it though.

Some 24 or 25 years later, I am reading the book that the black and white film was based on. I just started the book so I don’t have any thought-out things to say about the story yet. I find I’m reading the dialogue in an Oklahoman accent. The words the characters use and the way they’re written evoke a strong nostalgia for the state I grew up in. A few years ago, my wife asked me in Japanese, “アメリカ人って何ですか？” Translated to the English, this means “what is an American?” I had a hard time coming up with an answer to that question when she asked me. I figured the easiest way to learn something new is by reading an old book. One of the most recognizable names in the literature of Americana is John Steinbeck. It took me a couple of years, but I started wondering what the answer to that question was more and more. And it is in the middle of the dust bowl in Oklahoma that I will start my journey. Thanks for your recommendation, dad.

Until next time.