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The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck [1]

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First published in the United States of America by The Viking Press 1939

Published in a Viking Compass edition 1958

Published in Penguin Books 1976

Edition with an introduction by Robert DeMott published 1992

This edition with notes by Robert DeMott published 2006

Some of the endnotes are reprinted from The Grapes of Wrath and Other Writings, 1936-1941, edited by

of the United States. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968.

The Grapes of Wrath / John Steinbeck ; introduction and notes by Robert DeMott.

p. cm.—(Penguin classics)

eISBN : 978-0-143-03943-3

1. Migrant agricultural laborers—Fiction. 2. Rural families—Fiction. 3. Depressions—Fiction.

4. Labor camps—Fiction. 5. California—Fiction. 6. Oklahoma—Fiction. 7. Domestic fiction.

8. Political fiction. I. Title. II. Series.

PS3537.T3234G8 2006

813’.52—dc22 2005058182

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To CAROL who willed it.

To TOM who lived it.1

Introduction

“My whole work drive has been aimed at making people understand each other. . . .”

—Steinbeck in a 1938 letter

“Boileau said that Kings, Gods, and Heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can only write about what he admires. Present day kings aren’t very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation, and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor. . . . And since our race admires gallantry, the writer will deal with it where he finds it. He finds it in the struggling poor now.”

—Steinbeck in a 1939 radio interview

The Grapes of Wrath is one of the most famous novels in America— perhaps even in the world. When John Steinbeck wrote this book he had no inkling that it would attain such widespread recognition, though he did have high hopes for its effectiveness. On June 18, 1938, a little more than three weeks after starting his unnamed new manuscript, Steinbeck confided in his daily journal (posthumously published in 1989 as Working Days):

If I could do this book properly it would be one of the really fine books and a truly American book. But I am assailed with my own ignorance and inability. I’ll just have to work from a background of these. Honesty. If I can keep an honesty it is all I can expect of my poor brain. . . . If I can do that it will be all my lack of genius can produce. For no one else knows my lack of ability the way I do. I am pushing against it all the time.

Despite Steinbeck’s doubts, which were grave and constant during its composition, The Grapes of Wrath turned out to be not only a fine book, but the most renowned and celebrated of his seventeen novels. Steinbeck’s liberal mixture of native philosophy, common-sense leftist politics, blue-collar radicalism, working-class characters, homespun folk wisdom, and digressive narrative form

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The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck [1]

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