John Steinbeck's Short Stories (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations)

147 Pages·2011·0.61 MB·English

by  Harold Bloom

Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations
Th e Adventures of Th e Grapes of Wrath One Flew over the
Huckleberry Finn Great Expectations Cuckoo’s Nest
Th e Age of Innocence Th e Great Gatsby One Hundred Years of
Alice’s Adventures in Gulliver’s Travels Solitude
Wonderland Hamlet Othello
All Quiet on the Heart of Darkness Persuasion
Western Front Th e House on Mango Portnoy’s Complaint
Animal Farm Street Pride and Prejudice
Antony and Cleopatra I Know Why the Ragtime
Th e Awakening Caged Bird Sings Th e Red Badge of
Th e Ballad of the Sad Th e Iliad Courage
Café Invisible Man Romeo and Juliet
Beloved Jane Eyre Th e Rubáiyát of Omar
Beowulf John Steinbeck’s Short Khayyám
Black Boy Stories Th e Scarlet Letter
Th e Bluest Eye Th e Joy Luck Club A Separate Peace
Th e Canterbury Tales Julius Caesar Silas Marner
Cat on a Hot Tin Th e Jungle Slaughterhouse-Five
Roof King Lear Song of Solomon
Catch-22 Long Day’s Journey Th e Sound and the
Th e Catcher in the into Night Fury
Rye Lord of the Flies Th e Stranger
Th e Chronicles of Th e Lord of the Rings A Streetcar Named
Narnia Love in the Time of Desire
Th e Color Purple Cholera Sula
Crime and Macbeth Th e Sun Also Rises
Punishment Th e Man Without Th e Tale of Genji
Th e Crucible Qualities A Tale of Two Cities
Cry, the Beloved Th e Merchant of Venice Th e Tempest
Country Th e Metamorphosis “Th e Tell-Tale Heart”
Darkness at Noon A Midsummer Night’s and Other Stories
Death of a Salesman Dream Th eir Eyes Were
Th e Death of Artemio Miss Lonelyhearts Watching God
Cruz Moby-Dick Th ings Fall Apart
Th e Diary of Anne My Ántonia Th e Th ings Th ey
Frank Native Son Carried
Don Quixote Night To Kill a Mockingbird
Emerson’s Essays 1984 Ulysses
Emma Th e Odyssey Waiting for Godot
Fahrenheit 451 Oedipus Rex Th e Waste Land
A Farewell to Arms Th e Old Man and the Wuthering Heights
Frankenstein Sea Young Goodman
Th e Glass Menagerie On the Road Brown

Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations
John Steinbeck’s
Short Stories
Edited and with an introduction by
Harold Bloom
Sterling Professor of the Humanities
Yale University
Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: John Steinbeck’s Short Stories
Copyright © 2011 by Infobase Learning
Introduction © 2011 by Harold Bloom
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
John Steinbeck’s short stories / edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom.
p. cm. — (Bloom’s modern critical interpretations)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60413-271-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4381-3745-2 (e-book)
1. Steinbeck, John, 1902–1968—Criticism and interpretation. I. Bloom, Harold.
PS3537.T3234Z71569 2011
813'.52—dc22
2010052557
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Contributing editor: Pamela Loos
Cover design by Takeshi Takahashi
Composition by IBT Global, Troy NY
Cover printed by Yurchak Printing, Landisville, Pa.
Book printed and bound by Yurchak Printing, Landisville, Pa.
Date printed: April 2011
Printed in the United States of America
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Contents
Editor’s Note vii
Introduction 1
Harold Bloom
The God in the Darkness:
A Study of John Steinbeck and D. H. Lawrence 3
Richard F. Peterson
The Red Pony: Commitment and Quest 17
Louis Owens
The Red Pony: “The Desolation of Loss” 27
John H. Timmerman
A Search for Meaning in “Flight” 47
Robert M. Benton
“The Chrysanthemums”: Steinbeck’s Pygmalion 55
Susan Shillinglaw
Longing for the Lost Frontier:
Steinbeck’s Vision of Cultural Decline
in “The White Quail” and “The Chrysanthemums” 65
Christopher S. Busch
“Your Own Mind Coming Out in the Garden”:
Steinbeck’s Elusive Woman 75
John Ditsky
vi Contents
Faulkner and Steinbeck: Thematic and
Stylistic Resonance in the Early Stories 87
Mimi Reisel Gladstein
“Surrendering to the Feminine”: Implied Author
Compassion in “The Chrysanthemums”
and “Hills Like White Elephants” 97
Stephen K. George
Lonely Ladies and Landscapes: A Comparison
of John Steinbeck’s “The White Quail”
and Eudora Welty’s “A Curtain of Green” 105
Charlotte Cook Hadella
Chronology 117
Contributors 121
Bibliography 123
Acknowledgments 127
Index 129
Editor’s Note
My introduction doubts the permanence of the liberal and humane Stein-
beck, his better stories, such as “The Chrysanthemums,” not leaving the
indelible mark they should. While Richard F. Peterson acknowledges Stein-
beck’s debt to Lawrence, the former received some of the influence but none
of the anxiety, which led to stagnation in his writing. Louis Owens then
sketches the hero’s quest as it unfolds throughout The Red Pony.
John H. Timmerman concedes to Th e Red Pony’s simplicity of tone and
point of view while praising the collection’s forceful grappling with death.
Robert M. Benton turns his attention to “Flight,” another example of sim-
plicity coming at the expense of detail, complexity, and plausible motivation.
Susan Shillinglaw compares “Th e Chrysanthemums” to Pygmalion,
after which Christopher S. Busch notes parallels between the story and “Th e
White Quail.”
John Ditsky examines the portrayal of women in Th e Long Valley, after
which Mimi Reisel Gladstein explores affi nities between Steinbeck and
Faulkner in the early stories.
Stephen K. George returns to the women question, this time inevitably
bringing Hemingway into the discussion. Charlotte Cook Hadella concludes
the volume on a similar impulse, juxtaposing “Th e White Quail” with Welty’s
“A Curtain of Green.”
vii

HAROLD BLOOM
Introduction
It would be good to be able to say that the liberal and humane Steinbeck
achieved permanence as a fiction writer. Alas, rereading the best of his
novels and stories is a very mixed experience. The Grapes of Wrath is a period
piece and, inevitably, will follow the path of all popular fiction and will be
read only by social antiquarians.
An ambitious writer asks to be judged alongside the strongest of his
contemporaries. Try to read William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying in conjunction
with Th e Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck is obliterated, as he is by Willa Cather
and Th eodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald, Nathanael
West and Flannery O’Connor. Th is saddens me, because I want Steinbeck to
have been a great writer on the left. We lack such a fi gure, though Heming-
way attempted to fi ll the lack in For Whom the Bell Tolls and failed. And yet
even his failures remain more readable than Steinbeck’s popular successes.
Th e late Anthony Burgess, a wise critic and undervalued novelist,
remarked that Hemingway was Steinbeck’s trouble. Take “Oklahoma” out of
the fi rst sentence of Th e Grapes of Wrath and substitute “the Basque lands,”
and you could drop the book’s fi rst two paragraphs into several contexts in
Th e Sun Also Rises. What Steinbeck thought to be his own quasibiblical style
is Hemingway all the way. What Steinbeck thought were his own portraits of
enduring but frustrated women were D.H. Lawrence’s. Compare Elisa Allen
in “Th e Chrysanthemums,” one of Steinbeck’s better short stories, to March
in Lawrence’s “Th e Fox.” Infl uence without anxiety produces stagnation; a
touch of the anxiety of infl uence might have benefi ted Steinbeck.
Th ere are other diffi culties in trying to reread Steinbeck with any rigor.
Th e Okies of Th e Grapes of Wrath never were: Steinbeck knew Oklahoma
1