Abstract
Reminiscent of the Arthurian cycle, the story collection focuses on the lives of paisano members of California culture. During the illnesses of Steinbeck’s parents, he and Carol become care givers. Steinbeck writes his first excellent story, “The Red Pony,” and the other stories grouped under that title. His agents place two of the four stories for payment.
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Notes
- 1.
Writers who did represent Depression times tended to emphasize the sociological—the causes of poverty, the tough working conditions in farming, lumbering, and textile and other manufacturing, the sorrows of not having much to eat, especially in the lives of children. The readers who found Steinbeck’s paisano stories were different from those who read Albert Halper, Robert Cantwell, Nelson Algren, Clara Weatherwax, and the dozens of pro-Communist writers who saw little help for America under capitalism.
- 2.
Correspondence between Steinbeck and his agents shows his questioning them about his reliance on the Arthurian legend. He has several plans for clarifying the source of Tortilla Flat, saying “The form is that of the Malory version—the coming of Arthur, and the mystic quality of owning a house.” He later asks, “What do you think of putting in an interlocutor, who between each incident interprets the incident, morally, aesthetically, historically, but in the manner of the paisanos themselves?”(Conversations 31 and see SLL 96).
- 3.
Steinbeck’s political consciousness is clear in his “Foreword” to the Modern Library re-issue of the book in 1937. “Had I known these stories and these people would be considered quaint, I think I never should have written them.… it did not occur to me that the paisanos were curious or quaint, dispossessed or underdoggish. They are people whom I know and like, people who merge successfully with their habitat. In men this is called philosophy, and it is a fine thing” (Notes 907).
- 4.
Steinbeck, who saw his books as children, had never pretended that he wanted to have children. Both Shillinglaw and Benson agree that he had made this clear from his early adulthood. To him, although he loved his dogs, children seemed only disruptive.
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Wagner-Martin, L. (2017). Tortilla Flat, the Book of the Others. In: John Steinbeck. Literary Lives. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55382-9_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55382-9_2
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