Clell Pruett burns a copy of The Grapes Of Wrath as Bill Camp and another leader of the Associated Farmers stand by. At the time this photograph was taken, Pruett had not read the novel. Years later, after he read the book at the behest of Rick Wartzman, Pruett declared that he had no regrets about burning it. (Kern County Museum)
Monday marked the beginning of the American Library Association’s 27th annual celebration of the freedom to read, more commonly known as Banned Books Week (BBW). As the ALA’s web site on BBW notes, “BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them.”
To personally celebrate that freedom, I have decided to feature a different banned (or challenged) book each day for the remainder of this week. Read on for more about the book being tossed into the flaming can above:
Listen to Woody Guthrie’s “Tom Joad”.
Watch a scene from the 1940 film The Grapes of Wrath.
John Steinbeck’s famous novel, The Grapes of Wrath (TGOW), depicts the migration of a typical depression era Okie family – the Joads, in this case – from dirty thirties Oklahoma to California’s Central Valley. It was published to widespread critical claim, winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and sold sensationally. Indeed, in his 1944 article on the reception of TGOW, the late Professor Martin Staples Shockley notes:
Mr. Hollis Russell of Stevenson’s Bookstore in Oklahoma City told me, “People who looked as though they had never read a book in their lives came in to buy it.”1
Not everyone loved the work, though. For his portrayal of the plight of the Dust Bowl refugees, including the deplorable conditions under which they were forced to live in the migrant camps of northern California, Steinbeck was treated by the FBI and conservative politicians is if he were a dangerous revolutionary, and TGOW was labled by many as communist propaganda. Collier’s ran an editorial claiming:
But we also think that The Grapes of Wrath, as charged by many critics, is propaganda for the idea that we ought to trade our system for the Russian system.2
The Associated Farmers of Kern County, California described TGOW as “obscene sensationalism” and “propaganda in its vilest form.”3 Steinbeck was also charged with exagerating the conditions of the migrant camps. Interestingly, though, Steinbeck claimed that he downplayed the horrendous conditions for fear that sensational description would ruin the quality of the story. That he at least downplayed his impression of the conditions is obvious when comparing TGOW with some of his non-fictional writings about his visits to the camps. What he wrote in TGOW was quite enough to get his work widely banned and sometimes, as in the pic above, burned. The Kansas City Board of Education banned TGOW from Kansas City Libraries and the Library Board of East St. Louis ordered the librarian to burn the three copies that their library owned.4
As is the case with some banned books, all of the attention proved beneficial as it skyrocketed TGOW into a place of grand importance (political and artistic) in our society. The uproar caught the attention of Eleanor Roosevelt and eventually led to congressional hearings on migrant camp conditions, hearings that changed labor laws in this country.5
In her unsuccessful attempt to have the Kern County ban overturned, librarian Gretchen Knief argued:
It’s [banning books] such a vicious and dangerous thing to begin…Besides, banning books is so utterly hopeless and futile. Ideas don’t die because a book is forbidden reading.6
Hear, hear, Gretchen!
1. Martin Staples Shockley, “The Reception of the Grapes of Wrath in Oklahoma,” American Literature 15, no. 4 (Jan., 1944): 351.
2. “Grapes of Wrath,” Collier’s 104 (2 Sept., 1939): 54.
3. Louise S. Robbins, Censorship and the American Library: The American Library Association’s Response to Threats to Intellectual Freedom, 1939-1969 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 13.
4. Shockley, 54.
5. “The Grapes of Wrath,” Morning Edition, February 25, 2002 <http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/grapesofwrath/> (accessed on September 30, 2008).
6. Lynn Neary, “‘Grapes Of Wrath’ And The Politics of Book Burning,” Morning Edition, September 30, 2008 <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95190615> (accessed on September 30, 2008).
good article