Damnit, damnit, damnit -- again I stayed too long. Let Lawrence sucker me in: >>And he's [Steinbeck] become that unfashionable and embarrassing thing, a >>patriot. "I believe," he wrote at the end of his life, that out of the whole >>body of our past, out of our differences, our quarrels, our many interests >>and directions, something has emerged that is itself unique in the world: >>America-complicated, paradoxical, bullheaded, shy, cruel, boisterous, >>unspeakably dear, and very beautiful.<< What a crock of shit. If it's patriotic to champion the murder of 3 million innocent people then I insist you count me a subversive. Jesus Christ in heaven, are there still such lost souls who believe that our war in Vietnam had any moral justification whatsoever? I was well aware that John Steinbeck, once a compassionate human being, had turned hawk, knew it back then when he did, but that he lost his humanity is his tragedy -- mourn that, don't celebrate it for Christ's sake. And I do mean for Christ's sake -- really, especially if you're a Christian. I'm not, but I still agree with Christ quite often. I also consider myself a super patriot, meaning I am super serious about the values that I was raised to believe America embodies. Apparently others have other ideas what America is all about -- such as killing anyone who gets in our way, especially our economic way. And most especially if they don't have atomic weapons. Get atomic weapons, World. That's my advice to the world. Or hope and pray that Obama wins and brings America back to being America. Mike Geary Memphis ----- Original Message ----- From: Lawrence Helm To: Lit-Ideas Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 3:20 PM Subject: [lit-ideas] Travels with Charley and later novels http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21264 Robert Gottlieb has written a review of the The Library of America's Travels with Charley and Later Novels, 1947-1962 by John Steinbeck. In earlier years I tried to like Steinbeck's novels but never quite managed. I read this review thinking that maybe Gottlieb would convince me that I was wrong and that certain of Steinbeck's novels were masterpieces, but Gottlieb's view of Steinbeck is like mine, albeit more comprehensively so. But the review is interesting. I was especially interested in the end of the where Gottlieb writes, 'During the Sixties he had become a kind of cultural ambassador for the United States, close to people like Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Dag Hammarsjköld. He had always been less radical than people thought he was-the outrage over injustice and poverty in The Grapes of Wrath and In Dubious Battle was personal, not ideological. He was, in fact, a liberal, middle-of-the-road Democrat-passionate about FDR, an ardent campaigner for Adlai Stevenson, and eventually close to Lyndon Johnson, whom he liked and vigorously supported, particularly on the Vietnam War. This position did nothing to improve his standing with intellectuals, but it was sincere. He believed the Viet Cong were murderers, despised the draft-card burners back home, and admired the American troops he encountered as a war reporter on a trip to Southeast Asia in 1966, only two years before his death. Young John was in Vietnam, and Stein-beck managed to get himself helicoptered to an exposed hill outpost where John was fighting. In a surreal moment, the mutually antagonistic father and son found themselves under fire together. The son was to write, "I saw my father behind some sandbags overlooking my position with his M-60 at the ready.... I mean, who, in God's name, was producing this movie?" Steinbeck's final work years were spent on journalism, and his subject was almost inevitably America. A collection of think pieces and nostalgia called America and Americans (1966) reveals him at his most characteristic. He's moralizing, he's didactic, he's searching for big answers to big questions. He's generous and vulnerable and touchy. And he's more and more dismayed by what he sees around him: "I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security-out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism." You could say that by the end he had evolved into a kind of minor and irrelevant prophet, both disillusioned and irredeemably optimistic. And he's become that unfashionable and embarrassing thing, a patriot. "I believe," he wrote at the end of his life, that out of the whole body of our past, out of our differences, our quarrels, our many interests and directions, something has emerged that is itself unique in the world: America-complicated, paradoxical, bullheaded, shy, cruel, boisterous, unspeakably dear, and very beautiful. Somewhere along the way, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" had turned into "My Country, 'Tis of Thee."'