Reclaiming John Steinbeck
Writing for the Future of Humanity

A reevaluation of John Steinbeck exploring his timely interests in climate change, ecology, and social injustice.

Gavin Jones (Author)

9781108844123, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 June 2021

262 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2 cm, 0.5 kg

'Careful, balanced, and well written, Jones's book is a pleasure to read … Highly recommended.' B. Diemert, Choice Magazine

John Steinbeck is a towering figure in twentieth-century American literature; yet he remains one of our least understood writers. This major reevaluation of Steinbeck by Gavin Jones uncovers a timely thinker who confronted the fate of humanity as a species facing climate change, environmental crisis, and a growing divide between the powerful and the marginalized. Driven by insatiable curiosity, Steinbeck's work crossed a variety of borders – between the United States and the Global South, between human and nonhuman lifeforms, between science and the arts, and between literature and film – to explore the transformations in consciousness necessary for our survival on a precarious planet. Always seeking new forms to express his ecological and social vision of human interconnectedness and vulnerability, Steinbeck is a writer of urgent concern for the twenty-first century, even as he was haunted by the legacies of racism and injustice in the American West.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Loving and Hating Steinbeck
1. Short Stories in School and Lab:'Tularecito' and 'The Snake'
2. Drought, Climate, and Race in the West: To a God Unknown
3. Race and Revision: 'The Vigilante' and 'Johnny Bear'
4. Becoming Animal: Theories of Mind in The Red Pony
5. What Is It Like to Be a Plant?: 'The Chrysanthemums' and 'The White Quail'
6. On Not Being a Modernist: Disability and Performance in Of Mice and Men
7. Emergence and Failure: The Middleness of The Grapes of Wrath
8. Borderlands: Extinction and the New World Outlook in Sea of Cortez
9. Mexican Revolutions: The Forgotten Village, The Pearl, and the Global South
Epilogue: The Aftertaste of Cannery Row
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB], Literature & literary studies [D]