On September 12, 1936, The Nation magazine published John Steinbeck’s article “Dubious Battle in California.” This Depression era article about California labor migrants helped the author develop ideas for his fictional novel, “The Grapes of Wrath.” Here is an excerpt:
“The drought in the Middle West has very recently made available an
enormous amount of cheap labor. Workers have been coming to California
in nondescript cars from Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas, and other states,
parts of which have been rendered uninhabitable by drought.
Proverty-stricken after the destruction to their farms, their last
reserves used up in making the trip, they have arrived so beaten and
destitute that they have been willing at first to work under any
conditions and for any wages offered. This migration started on a
considerable scale about two years ago and is increasing all the
time.”
Video: “Critics’ Picks: ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ — NYTimes.com/Video”
In October 1936 Steinbeck continued his work on this topic with a seven-part series for the San Francisco News called “The Harvest Gypsies.”
“John Steinbeck based much of his fiction on actual events and
experimented with several genres of nonfiction, including personal
essays, travel writing, and political and social commentary. His
interest in journalism, however, is often treated as ancillary to his
writing of fiction, which is regarded as his real work and true
calling. Steinbeck scholars allude to journalism when discussing
Steinbeck’s development as a writer or when chronicling and
categorizing his work, but to date they have not investigated
Steinbeck’s role as a literary journalist with the same analytical
zeal they bring to the study of his fiction. ‘The truth is that
Steinbeck was really a journalist at heart,’ Gore Vidal said in 1993
interview with Steinbeck biographer Jay Parini. ‘All of his best work
was journalism in that it was inspired by daily events, by current
circumstances. He didn’t ‘invent’ things. He found them.'”— “To Do Some Good and No Harm: The Literary Journalism of John Steinbeck”
By Jan Whitt, Steinbeck Review, 2006
