A Writer and Media: Frenemy?

"I shall revenge myself in the cruelest way you can imagine. I shall forget it." John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck, US novelist famous for Grapes of Wrath - one of my fav books - East of Eden, Of Mice and Men, and several others, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. Steinbeck was writing for several years before he won critical and commercial acclaim, both with Tortilla Flat, a short story cycle set in his beloved Monterey, California. 

Suddenly beset with interviewers, the intensely private writer found himself in the public eye. When journalist Ella Winter profiled him he was furious with the print article - apparently Winter had failed with his request that the profile feature his work, not his personality. The bemused journalist asked what he had found so personal.

"You mentioned I had blue eyes," Steinbeck replied.

Steinbeck is a writer I admire tremendously, both for his writing and the intensely humane nature of it. And I wonder how he'd respond to the all-pervasive media environment of today? Today a writer is encouraged to be active on social media - it is an essential marketing tool at a time when a writer needs marketing chops as much as he/she needs her solitude. And therein lies the crux: does this engagement with the world, daily, if not non-stop, impact writing? Would writing be 'purer' without this intrusion? Or is 'intrusion' just another reality of our world, which is what a writer reflects in their writing. 

Is Media the writer's new frenemy, an enemy in guise of a friend, or a true friend indeed?

Questions, questions, questions... Any writers out there - what do you think?

John Steinbeck accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature 1962 - the Steinbeck Museum, Monterey, California
© Manreet Sodhi Someshwar

Ambassadors From Another Time

I love trees - there is a grandeur and majesty to them, be it the tall slim bamboo that sways with the wind or the wizened banyan that grows an entire clan around itself with aerial roots that become serial trunks. No wonder then that I had always wanted to see the Giant Sequoias which occur naturally only in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.

Amongst the largest living things on earth, they are also some of its oldest, with some trees from 4300 years back.

Imagine my thrill when I sighted the famed Grizzly Giant in Yosemite National Park - among the largest Giant Sequoias in the world, it stands 209 feet tall!

An uprooted sequoia (possibly struck by lightning) in the Mariposa Grove of Yosemite Park is a photo-op magnet.

Wawona Tunnel Tree which was cut through in 1881to make a driveway for horse carriages! The tree still stands and our race has learnt a bit of respect for these living giants in the meantime.

For me the visit to Yosemite was a 'darshan' as we say in India, a pilgrimage - a homage to our living ancestors. John Steinbeck, a native Californian summed up so beautifully his beloved Redwood trees:

“The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.”

The Grapes of Wrath v/s The Plums of Plenty

Inside the National Steinbeck Center

When I first read The Grapes of Wrath, the Depression-era novel by John Steinbeck, I became a fan. When I read the preface to the novel which quoted from his speech at the Nobel-prize banquet, he ascended the pedestal where I keep my literary idols: Ghalib, Shakespeare, Dickens, Marquez, Llosa ...

John Steinbeck accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature 1962

This is what he had to say, which struck a chord with me:

The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.

Furthermore, the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit - for gallantry in defeat - for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally-flags of hope and of emulation.

Too much writing nowadays is the cookie-cutter MFA variety, or rehashing a formula in chase of bestseller lists. Honest writing, writing that tussles with life and living, is getting rare. I wasn't surprised therefore, when on my recent California vacation I'd mention my eagerness to visit the Steinbeck Center, and be greeted with blank looks - several Americans seem unaware of their Nobel laureate, others dismissed him as a 'Depression-era writer'; read moth-ridden and un-cool.

When The Grapes of Wrath was first published, its negative portrayal of a capitalistic society led to several burnings of the book and alternate renditions such as 'Grapes of Gladness' and 'The Plums of Plenty'

And yet, considering the current state of the US, couldn't the Americans do with a re-reading of John Steinbeck? At a time of 'Occupy Wall Street', increasing income inequality, and stagnant economic growth, Steinbeck is as relevant today.

'Of Mice and Men' is one of my favourite books. It is a key text in the UK for English Literature GCSE 

So, I had the pleasure of visiting the Steinbeck Center in Salinas with my family and what a lovely time we had! The Center brings the books alive through multimedia and my daughter had a fun time running through a quiz as we wound our way though the writer's life.

'Travels with Charley' is a recountal of Steinbeck's road trip with his poodle Charley across the US as he recorded the changing mores of his homeland

I'd like to end this post with the final words from Steinbeck's Nobel acceptance speech - nothing could be more appropriate.

We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God.

Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world - of all living things.

The danger and the glory and the choice rest finally in man. The test of his perfectibility is at hand.

Having taken Godlike power, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and the wisdom we once prayed some deity might have.

Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope.

So that today, St. John the apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man - and the Word is with Men.