A Political Companion to John Steinbeck

Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh, Simon Stow, Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh, Simon Stow

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780813147390, 9780813142029
• eBook ISBN: 9780813142036
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Though he was a recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature, American novelist John Steinbeck (1902–1968) has frequently been censored. Even in the twenty-first century, nearly ninety years after his work first appeared in print, Steinbeck's novels, stories, and plays still generate controversy: his 1937 book Of Mice and Men was banned in some Mississippi schools in 2002, and as recently as 2009, he made the American Library Association's annual list of most frequently challenged authors.

A Political Companion to John Steinbeck examines the most contentious political aspects of the author's body of work, from his early exploration of social justice and political authority during the Great Depression to his later positions regarding domestic and international threats to American policies. Featuring contemporaneous and present-day interpretations of his novels and essays by historians, literary scholars, and political theorists, this book covers the spectrum of Steinbeck's writing, exploring everything from his place in American political culture to his seeming betrayal of his leftist principles in later years.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Prologue: John Steinbeck in the 1930s: Living Under the Gun
• Introduction: The Dangerous Ambivalence of John Steinbeck
• Part I: Steinbeck as Social Critic
• Part II. The Cultural Roots of Steinbeck’s Political Vision
• Part III. Steinbeck in American Political Culture
• Part IV: John Steinbeck: Ambivalent American?
• Acknowledgments
• Selected Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index