Thirty Years Before Cesar Chavez, a Bloody Struggle for a Living Wage
Written: Feb 28 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A passionate evocation of the struggle for farmworkers' rights in the 1930's.
Cons: Often lacking in subtlety and nuance.
The Bottom Line: The passion and commitment of early Steinbeck is here in undiluted, if often crude, form.
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| caravan70's Full Review: John Steinbeck - In Dubious Battle |
If you travel down Highway 101 these days through Gilroy, and cut over to the coastal location of the new California State University at Monterey Bay, you’ll pass through fields of artichokes, rows of asparagus and lifetimes of meaning and struggle. This is the land that John Steinbeck was born in, and the territory his characters fight and die over. Even if we’ve seen this land over and over through a windshield, we see Steinbeck’s characters there, moving on foot with a wagon in tow or coming into town, bottle of cheap Amontillado in hand, ever searching, hoping. In Dubious Battle is a 1936 production: it follows Tortilla Flat by a few months, and expands the struggle to the hinterlands. Though it’s not always convincing as a dramatic narrative, it’s a novel whose intent is as gallant as the goals of the men and women who fight for the goals it espouses and elevates.
Jim’s our reluctant protagonist – he tags along on an action his much more seasoned radical partner, Mac, is fomenting in the “Torgas Valley.” Apples are waiting to be picked, and there are plenty of men to pick them, but the pay and conditions are dismal. Jim and Mac are agitators, using the anger of the men who find themselves in unpleasant circumstances to foment discontent and rebellion. Mac’s even a midwife, delivering a child when its great-uncle proves useful to the cause. Mac teaches Jim to move, manipulate and triangulate: Jim comes to understand that playing off warring groups can be useful, and he becomes increasingly confident in his understanding of the dynamics that surround the Torgas Valley strike.
While it’s intriguing to discover why Mac and Jim are able to insinuate themselves into a shadowy world where breakfasts are provided by sympathetic cooks and remarkably understanding bookstore owners, it’s what Mac, Jim, and the men learn in their travels that creates our interest in their activities. Mac spends a great deal of time lecturing Jim about revolutionary tactics, but he’s vague when Jim seeks to acquire the knowledge that would make him leadership material. He has to discover that himself, and the book does a good job of chronicling Jim’s attempts to be useful, which sometimes succeed but often fail. He’s wide-eyed, and opportunistic: he wants to see the cultural detritus around him, and understand why it exists and his own role in creating it; more importantly, he gains a sense that the world isn’t quite the simple place that he thinks it should be.
In Dubious Battle demonstrates the strengths of Steinbeck as a storyteller even as it demonstrates his limits when it lapses into Daily Worker-style propagandizing. Our author is serious here, and he means for us to know it, even as we chuckle over the use of “swell” and “gosh” and find amusement in the labored dialectics that ensue when Mac gets the camp doctor into any room he can. There’s even talk of “group-man” and the dynamics of collective behavior as Steinbeck utilizes his limited dramatic tools: Mac “cries” (in a verbal sense); Doc provides us with such stunners as “It’s just the way I think of things.” We haven’t even been provided with the Frostian gift of portentous brevity in this instance.
Still, In Dubious Battle has its rewards. While Steinbeck’s characters are mostly undeveloped, and he lacks the self-mocking awareness of the state of things Dos Passos evinces in the U.S.A. trilogy, he’s a master at hooking and landing our emotions. Many of the people in this novel are mere shells – they exist only to further a philosophical point Steinbeck’s trying to make. This would be addressed and largely remedied in later books. But even with this limitation, it was possible for Steinbeck to create stunning situations with these characters that breathe life. He demonstrates his familiarity with the language of the camp-meeting and the day-wage striker in passages that often sound contrived but convince nevertheless:
But we’re getting the stiffs used to working together; getting bigger and bigger bunches working together all the time, see? It doesn’t make any difference if we lose. Here’s nearly a thousand men who’ve learned how to strike. When we get a whole slough of men working together, maybe – maybe Torgas Valley, most of it, won’t be owned by three men. Maybe a guy can get an apple for himself without going to jail for it, see? Maybe they won’t dump apples in the river to keep up the prices. When guys like you and me need an apple to keep our Goddamn bowels open, see? You’ve got to look at the whole thing, London, not just this little strike.
Steinbeck is definitely looking at “the whole thing,” and while his naivete is charming his commitment is searingly evident. Three years later, in The Grapes of Wrath, his interest in the plight of the common worker forced by circumstance to relocate would be articulated in one of the finest novels of the century. But In Dubious Battle is much like its youthful strike organizers: what it lacks in polish it more than replaces with charm, style and sheer determination.
This is a write-off organized by Stephen Murray that celebrates the 99th birthday of John Steinbeck. Other participants include Ed_Grover, Eplovejoy, Gabriella, GraceF, hadassahchana, Howard_Creech, Isinga, Jiahong, kchowell, Ladydagney1, Macresarf1, Murasaki, NFP, Skygirl, and our organizer, Stephen_Murray. I encourage you to check out their interesting takes as well.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
caravan70
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Member: Darren Shupe
Location: Sacramento, California
Reviews written: 35
Trusted by: 77 members
About Me:
Books, music, cans, bottles, CRV, truffles (both kinds), port, uncertainty, something good.
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