HIS FALSEHOOD GOES MARCHING ON :

Steinbeck's myth of the Okies (Keith Windschuttle, June 2002, New Criterion)

John Steinbeck performed a rare feat for a writer of fiction. He created a literary portrait that defined an era. His account of the "Okie Exodus" in The Grapes of Wrath became the principal story through which America defined the experience of the Great Depression. Even today, one of the enduring images for anyone with even a passing familiarity with the 1930s is that of Steinbeck's fictional characters the Joads, an American farming family uprooted from its home by the twin disasters of dust storms and financial crisis to become refugees in a hostile world. Not since Dickens's portrayal of the slums of Victorian England has a novelist produced such an enduring definition of his age. . [...]

Unfortunately for the reputation of the author, however, there is now an accumulation of sufficient historical, demographic, and climatic data about the 1930s to show that almost everything about the elaborate picture created in the novel is either outright false or exaggerated beyond belief.

Gotta forgive a guy a little youthful Socialist enthusiasm don't we? He did write a couple better books later on : Of Mice and Men and Winter of Our Discontent. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 26, 2002 8:40 PM