NATIONALSTEINBECKCENTER NEWS ISSUE 70 | DECEMBER 2017 Drawing of Carol Henning Steinbeck, John’s frst wife Notes From the Director Susan Shillinglaw The National Steinbeck Center has enjoyed a busy, productive It may be well to consider Steinbeck’s role in each of these NSC fall: a successful National Endowment for the Arts Big Read of programs—all of which can be linked to his fertile imagination Claudia Rankine’s Citizen; a delightful staged reading of Over the and expansive, restless curiosity. John Steinbeck was a reader River and Through the Woods in the museum gallery as part of of comics, noting that “Comic books might be the real literature our Performing Arts Series, produced by The Listening Place; a of our time.” He was passionate about theater—Of Mice and robust dinner at the Corral de Tierra Country Men, written in 1937, was a play/novelette, an experiment in Club, the 12th annual Valley of the World writing a novel that could also be performed exactly as written fundraiser celebrating agricultural on stage (he would go on to write two more play/novelettes). leaders in the Salinas Valley; and the He wrote often and thoughtfully about American’s racial legacy, upcoming 4th annual Salinas Valley and Rankine’s hybrid text--part poetry, part nonfiction, part Comic Con, co-sponsored by the Salinas image, part video links—would no doubt intrigue a writer who Public Library and held at Hartnell insisted that every work of prose he wrote was an experiment: College in December—“We “I like experiments. They keep the thing alive,” he wrote in are Not Alone.” All are covered 1936. And although he tried to dodge awards and refused in this issue. honorary degrees (he didn’t get his Stanford Continued page 3 January 2-8, 2018 – Free Week Friday, January 5th, 5:00 PM Grand Opening of the at the National Steinbeck Center Steinbeck Museum gallery and reception for “Women’s Works,” quilts by local women. Also First Friday in Salinas. A week of activities to celebrate 20 years! 2018 also marks the 50th anniversary of Steinbeck’s Saturday, January 6th: Children’s Scavenger Hunt. death, December 1968. We have revamped our scavenger hunt for this special day. Visit the exhibit hall for a chance to find “golden” treasures Tuesday, January 2nd, 1:00 PM. Free tour of Historic throughout the museum and win prizes. Downtown Salinas with NSC docent John Mahoney. Learn Sunday, January 7th, all day: Museum Store Sale about the area’s rich history and connections to John To honor the NSC 20th anniversary, 20% off all Steinbeck Steinbeck’s works. books! 10% off all other items at Museum Store (excluding Wednesday, January 3rd, 1:00 PM Director’s Tour Collectors’ Corner and jewelry). with Susan Shillinglaw. Explore the Exhibit Hall and learn Monday, January 8th, 6:00 PM Movie Night! Join about exhibit restorations competed and those planned for us for a free screening of Cannery Row at Maya Cinemas. 2018. Introduction to film and 2018 Festival, “The Women of Thursday, January 4th, 1:00 PM Archives Tours with Steinbeck’s World” by Susan Shillinglaw: “Why Susy?” Lisa Josephs. Archivist Lisa Josephs will display items from the NSC’s archives, focusing on Steinbeck in the 1960s. Festival 2018 little eddies, little waterfalls, celebrates but the river, it goes right the women STEINBECK FESTIVAL on. Woman looks at it like Steinbeck that. We ain’t gonna die out. created, those People is goin’ on—changin’ he knew, and a little, maybe, but goin’ those who right on.” influenced mid- Join us in Monterey on century American culture. Friday and Salinas on Ma Joad inspired this theme. Saturday and Sunday for Late in The Grapes of Wrath, this year’s Festival. Visit Ma consoles Pa, who feels steinbeck.org for updated defeated by their losses: “Man, details and to purchase he lives in jerks—baby born tickets online! an’ a man dies, an’ that’s a jerk—gets a farm an’ loses his farm, an’ that’s a jerk. Woman, THE WOMEN it’s all one flow, like a stream, of Steinbeck’s World Leading Up to the Festival PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE April 29: “History Slam” at Japanese American Citizen Friday: Seminars at Hopkins Marine Station 1-5 League Hall, Monterey. Cash prizes! By April 15, submit 10-15 Richard Astro, author of John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts, minute presentations on Monterey History to Susan@Steinbeck. “Toni: A Remarkable Woman in a Remarkable Time: The Steinbeck- org. We will accept essays, films, photos. Submissions accepted Ricketts Chronicle” in six categories: Women, Ag, Fishing, Culture, Bandits, Beer milkshakes at Ricketts’s Lab, 5:15-6:45 Science. Cash awards for best and meatiest presentations! See Steinbeck.org for details. Cannery Row Banquet, Intercontinental The Clement, Monterey. Speaker TBA March 26-April 30: Women in Film Festival Stuart Chase, Executive Director, Monterey Museum of Art, Maya Cinemas, Salinas (tentative schedule) “Year of the Woman, 2018” March 26: Tortilla Flat, (1942) Introduction TBA, Saturday: Steinbeck’s Home Brew Fest and and Festival Hedy Lamarr speakers/tours at National Steinbeck Center and Salinas, 10-5 April 2: Harlan County Brian Duchaney, PhD candidate,“Two can play at that game…”: USA (1976). Introduction, Steinbeck’s Wartime Women and the Creation of the Literary TBA, women and strikes Mistress” April 9: The Ascent (1977) Mimi Gladstein, Professor of English at University of Texas, El Paso, Introduction TBA, women “Maiden, mother, crone: Steinbeck’s Tripartite Female.” and war Susan Shillinglaw, NSC Director, “Steinbeck’s Sisters” April 16: Frozen River (2008). Introduction, TBA, borderlands. William Souder, author of forthcoming Steinbeck biography, April 23: Twentieth Century Women (2016), Introduction “Steinbeck’s Literary Agents, Elizabeth Otis and Annie Laurie TBA, feminism Williams.” April 30: East of Eden (1955) Introduction by Susan Anthony Newfield, Actor, “Curley’s Wife Sings: The background of Shillinglaw: “Jo Van Fleet and Julie Harris: Kate, Abra and the musical version of Of Mice and Men” Prostitution in Monterey County” Saturday night, at The Western Stage, Hartnell College WEST May 3: “Farms to Incubators: Telling the stories of minority COAST PREMIERE (a staged reading) of Ira Bilowit’s 1958 musical of women entrepreneurs in agtech in the Salinas Valley and Of Mice and Men, adapted by Jon Selover, Western Stage beyond” a film on women in Ag Tech by Amy Wu. Reception and discussion to follow screening at Maya Cinemas Sunday: Red Pony Ranch and Monterey Tours + Education forum at Palma High school, focused on Dorothy Day May 4-6: Festival Weekend 2 Steinbeck biographer Notes From the Director, continued from page 1 Jack Benson in the Sierras degree, so why accept another, he reasoned), In early August, my husband and I stopped to see Jack he nonetheless loved to eat and drink and and Sue Ellen Benson at their cabin near Truckee. It’s acknowledge others’ achievements. Steinbeck an idyllic place, and Jack’s western sensibilities—open, planned birthday celebrations for wives and hearty, honest, warm—have always seemed most at friends as energetically as as Sandra Silva home in this tight cabin, shadowed by pines, protected by sharp orchestrates the Valley of the World. “If we’re peaks. We ate taco salad on the back porch, caught up on all things Steinbeck going to give him a party at all,” says Mack in and watched our dog Charley nose up to their dog Rufus. Cannery Row, “it out to be a good one.” Of In a roundabout way, I tried to interview Jack, a man who has been so vital to my course. career since 1989, when I first met him at a University of Alabama conference; whose work is woven into my own; whose love of western writers became my Which leads me, in a roundabout way, to own—he once took me to meet Wallace Stegner at his Los Altos home. That consider connections as well as a word that home and man were also one and the same. I think of : “when you Tortilla Flat Steinbeck relished, “participation.” Those speak of Danny’s house you are understood to mean a unit of which the parts two words—connection and participation— are men.” Those who live in place create units with the walls that surround them. convey something about John Steinbeck’s continued, ever more urgent relevance on All I really got from my “interview” with Jack that day was one sentence about the eve of 2018, the 50th anniversary of his his biography, “I typed that manuscript over and over again, hundreds of times.” death (December 1968) and the twentieth Instead we caught up with family news and watched the light play in the pine anniversary of the National Steinbeck Center trees. Well-rounded friendships, like stream-rounded pebbles, are like that— (June 1998). Connect the pieces of your physical proximity is enough. world—people, animals, human histories and natural histories. And participate fully in the lives of others. See. Understand. Empathize. Steinbeck touched chords that still vibrate: living in place, ecological sensibilities, social justice, patriotism, global awareness—hope: “…I do believe and see a Festival highlight! Of Mice constant improvement (in the long view) a constant and consistent struggle toward a better, kinder life, and I do see that the struggle and the impulse comes invariably and Men, the musical from the common people,” Steinbeck wrote in 1937, as he was polishing the draft of Sixty years ago, in 1958, the musical Of Of Mice and Men for the Broadway stage. Mice and Men opened off Broadway at the Provincetown Playhouse, “a new form, with Steinbeck’s empathy strikes an evergreen note in the human new freshness” announced the New York symphony.