<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don’t feel like writing a formal literary essay about my recent rereading of The Grapes of Wrath<\/em>, so a rambling list of my thoughts has to suffice. I will say: it was a profoundly moving experience to read this novel again 35 years later. I had forgotten a lot of it, and most of my memories were connected to the movie. I will also say this: this novel needs to be read and reread. It might have more relevance today than it did when it was published in 1939, for the chief reasons of trying to understand how destitute Americans have changed since then. This book also provides insights into the current hatred of a certain class of destitute Americans, the Americans of a new diaspora that is unlike other ones in our country’s history. It is a diaspora that has people moving, some forced, some not\u2014and then not moving. This diaspora ends in stasis, in the willows or under the overpass, or stretched out on a tarp nearby a crap car that just crapped out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thought 1:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Steinbeck isn’t turgid or overwrought\nin this book like East of Eden<\/em>. He pulls well out of the\nnarrative every now and then to provide an overarching view of the\npolitics and economics that displaced the Joads from their land, but\nit doesn’t read like exposition at all. I can’t recall reading any\npassages like these in contemporary fiction that try to see and\nknow everything<\/em>. Steinbeck goes for the big view, not the tiny\none. Interestingly enough, some of the same issues affecting the\nJoads are still burning up America today: poverty, prejudice, lack of\naffordable housing, homelessness, income inequality, loss of hope,\nviolence, fear of immigration. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n You know there’s even a wall in The\nGrapes of Wrath<\/em> that tries to keep the Okies out of California?\nDoes anything really ever change in America? One wonders. I know we\naren’t segregated anymore and women are vying to become President,\nbut…<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thought 2:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I plan on modeling a few passages of my\nWestern after some riffs in the novel, especially the one for Chapter\n7 where Steinbeck writes about all the junkers and jalopies for sale\nto transport (barely) the diaspora from the Dust Bowl \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a new American Diaspora going\non. I see it all the time moving up and down Highway 101. The\nGrapes of Wrath<\/em> chronicled a different American Diaspora, the one\nresulting from the Great Depression and disastrous farm polices that\nproduced in the greatest man-made environmental disaster in American\nhistory, the Dust Bowl. As a small child, my father, after losing\nboth parents, was part of this diaspora, leaving the panhandle of\nTexas for Oregon. That’s why I am in Oregon. The Dust Bowl and The\nGrapes of Wrath <\/em>are my story. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the Joads are different than the\nnew seekers of the new diaspora. The Joads want to work. The current\nseekers apparently want to check out. They don’t seem to want\nanything but not to seek. When I read the novel, I had to ask myself\na question, and it goes mightily against my political grain to ask\nit: does our safety net, the very fragile, cobweb this one in\nAmerican society, enable or encourage this? It is a question worth\nasking. Another question: is the presence of the current bedraggled\ndiaspora a constant scary reminder to us to toe the capitalist\nconsumption line or\u2014this is what happens<\/em>. Think about that:\nwhat if a partial safety net helps sustain the diaspora and its\nchecking out and homeless going on in front of our faces, at our\nfeet. It is not hidden in America these days. It’s moving and camping\nand creating mischief and misery all around us. It’s building more of\na miasma every day. Don’t you feel it affecting you? How can you not\nif you feel anything for the downtrodden or displaced? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thought 3<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the things that struck me about\nthe Joads is that they never read or play games. They don’t even have\na Bible<\/em>. Their kids have no toys. The only recreation they\nhave is talking to one another, almost exclusively about their\nplight. There is one dance the younger Joads attend, but even that is\nmarred by violence. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Members of the current diaspora can\nstream endless shows on their smartphones and tablets. I’ve seen it\nalongside the roads, waysides and in grocery store parking lots. It\nall looks very strange to me, but perhaps it connects them to\nsomething. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can we live without our lives?\nHow will we know it’s us without our past? No. Leave it. Burn it,\u201d\nwrites Steinbeck, about leaving a place you are forced to leave. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the novel, several members of the\nJoad’s family and entourage simply disappear, with little or no\ntrace. They can’t take it anymore, the responsibility, the misery,\nthe hopelessness, and they’d rather go it alone and not talk about it\nthan make a plan that can’t possibly work. I think a lot of people\nstill do this in our society when bad times hit. We must reach out in\nboth directions when this happens. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thought 4<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Joads take only one of their three\ndogs (all nameless) on their journey west and leave the other two\nbehind with a neighbor who hadn’t lost his farm. The Joad’s dog gets\nhit by vehicle and dies not long after they depart. They don’t\ngrieve. They move on. They don’t even bury it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think they should have taken all\nthree dogs. The story might have turned out better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Interestingly enough, members of the\nnew diaspora have dogs, a lot of dogs, and would seem to never leave\nthem behind. What changed there? There’s a novel in that question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Joads’s are always fixing thing,\njury rigging, to continue the journey. You see members of the new\ndiaspora occasionally fixing their rigs on the side of the roads, but\nrarely. They just leave them behind. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Grapes of Wrath<\/em> migration\nwas forced. So is the new diaspora, some of it certainly caused by\neconomic dislocation, gentrification and declining wages, but\nsomething else, too. They migrated to give up. Their migration and\neventual settlement is one big giving up, a checking out, or a\nsubtle, but visible protest of the utter bankruptcy and daily brutal\nexploitation wrought by participating in our culture. They don’t\nparticipate, at least not the way they are supposed to, the way\nschools prepare them. And that makes a lot of people hate these\nnon-seekers and non-workers. I hear it all the time, even from\nliberals. The sound of seething is getting shriller, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One wonders if anything will come along\nto end the contemporary Grapes of Wrath-scenario like the New Deal\nand WW II did to Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. I can’t imagine what it\ncould be. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Did one presidential candidate in the\nrecent Democratic debates mention this issue? I mean really use the\nword \u201chomeless\u201d instead of the stock phrase \u201caffordable\nhousing?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thought 5<\/p>\n\n\n\n What exactly is the wrath in The\nGrapes of Wrath<\/em>? One character speaks about his dream of picking\ngrapes and squeezing the juice all over his face, but in reality, his\npicking of those grapes infuriates a landowner, the wealthy, a bank,\nthe law, and they bring down wrath, unrelenting wrath, upon the\npeople migrating west to start over and work the fields. Why so angry\nover people who want to come to a place and work where there is work?\nSound familiar? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n I taught this book one time in my\ncareer, to juniors at Taft High School. I wonder if any of them\nremember reading it? I barely remember the experience. There were\nearly warning signs of this new diaspora in Lincoln City then, but\nthe Great Recession of 2008 took it to another level, historic. Then\nthe so-called recovery that came slowly, the one that left out so\nmany wage workers, undermined the social fabric as well. As High Tech\nboomed and swallowed our lives, incomes became grossly unequal, rents\nand housing skyrocketed, the cities became City States that left\ndispossession in their wake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recently, I was listening to an\nalternate take of Bob Dylan’s \u201cMaggie’s Farm,\u201d a much more\nsnarling version than the album version. I was driving Highway 101 to\nwork and passed a few transients and the song really hit me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more \nIt could be\nthat simple. Is the work our culture has created (and its meager pay\nand mindless conformity and sucking up to corporations and their\nfactotums) induce or compel people to just refuse to do it and join\nthe new diaspora? Is checking out better than Maggie’s farm or Dollar\nGeneral or cleaning motel rooms? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nThought 6<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chapter 29 has perhaps the greatest\nrain riff in all of American literature, excepting of course, lines\nfrom Sometimes a Great Notion<\/em>. I can’t believe I didn’t recall\nand integrate them into my rain book. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Steinbeck’s rain is completely\ndifferent than Kesey’s rain. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Relentless rain floods the encampment\nwhere the remaining Joads are staying and they literally get washed\naway, out to the road, having lost everything, including their\njalopy. It’s still raining. They have no food, nothing. No one to\nhelp them. No government aid. Rose of Sharon has just given birth to\na still-born child. Tom isn’t with them anymore. They struggle down\nthe road until they find an abandoned barn. They find shelter in the\nbarn and encounter a boy and his sick father, who is dying from\nhunger. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you’ve the read the book, then you\nknow what happens. The most desolate ending scene of any book I have\never read. I cried. I almost verged on sobbing. Utterly hopeless for\nthe Joads, but, perhaps what Rose of Sharon does to save the dying\nman, offers a glimmer of…not hope, but something else. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read The Grapes of Wrath<\/em> and\nstart looking around you. We’ve got to do something. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don’t feel like writing a formal literary essay about my recent rereading of The Grapes of Wrath, so a rambling list of my thoughts has to suffice. I will say: it was a profoundly moving experience to read this novel again 35 years later. I had forgotten a lot of it, and most of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5250,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1056,1054,1055,405,1057],"class_list":["post-5249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","tag-american-diaspora","tag-grapes-of-wrath","tag-joads","tag-meth","tag-steinbeck","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5249"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5252,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5249\/revisions\/5252"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
I\nain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more
Nah,\nI ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more
Well,\nhe hands you a nickel
And\nhe hands you a dime
And\nhe asks you with a grin
If\nyou’re havin’ a good time
Then\nhe fines you every time you slam the door <\/em>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n