The Critical Response to John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath

Subjects:

• Literature » American Literature

Reviews:

• A necessary volume for all academic collections.
  —Choice

• Endorsement From Roy Simmonds
  Author of John Steinbeck: The War Years, 1939-1945: Barbara Heavilin has, in editing this fascinating collection of reviews and essays and in her creatively analytical introduction, presented a persuasive case in calling for fresh approaches in the critical and scholarly assessment of Steinbeck's 1939 masterpiece. The book effectively charts the course and changes in the evolving critical attitudes toward The Grapes of Wrath (and, by both example and inference, of Steinbeck's total literary output) during the past sixty years, and points the way into the future. This is a volume which will inevitably stimulate much discussion among Steinbeck scholars and an essential book for anyone interested in Steinbeck studies.
• Endorsement From Robert DeMott
  English Department
  Ohio University: John Steinbeck composed The Grapes of Wrath in 100 days in 1938. What he wrote, and what he wrote about, in that creative burst 60 years ago remains with us, though we have not always done his greatest novel justice. Now, Professor Heavilin's useful collection traces Grapes controversial critical reception and challenges us to push our interpretative efforts even farther for the coming century.

Table of Contents:

• Series Forward by Cameron Northouse
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1939-1989 Looking Back on the First Fifty Years
• Review: The Grapes of Wrath: The Tragedy of the American Sharecropper by Charles Lee
• Review: The Grapes of Wrath Tops Year's Tales in Heart and Art by Charles Lee
• Review: Farm Tenancy Central Theme of Steinbeck by Fritz Raley Simmons
• John Steinbeck: Naturalism's Priest by Woodburn R. Ross
• Proletarian Leanings by George F. Whicher
• "The Grapes of Wrath" by Joseph Fontenrose
• Steinbeck and Hemingway: Suggestions for a Comparative Study by Peter Lisca
• Water Imagery and the Conclusion to The Grapes of Wrath by Collin G. Matton
• John Steinbeck's Spatial Imagination in The Grapes of Wrath by George Henderson
• Dialogic Structure and Levels of Discourse in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath by Louis Owens and Hector Torres
• The Squatters' Circle in The Grapes of Wrath by John H. Timmerman
• 1990-1999 Looking Forward to a New Millennium
• Steinbeck's Debt to Dos Passos by Barry G. Maine
• The World of Steinbeck's Joads by Robert Murray Davis
• Poor Whites: Joads and Snopses by Abby H.P. Werlock
• California Answers The Grapes of Wrath by Susan Shillinglaw
• Audience and Closure in The Grapes of Wrath by Nicholas Visser
• The Darwinian The Grapes of Wrath by Brian E. Railsback
• The American Cain and Steinbeck's Shifting Perspective by Barbara A. Heavilin
• A Postmodern Steinbeck, or Rose of Sharon Meets Oedipa Mass by Chris Kocela
• Steinbeck and His Critics: A Study in Artistic Self-Concept by Michael Meyer
• The Grapes of Wrath and the Literary Canon of American Universities in the Nineties by Mary Brown
• The Enduring Values of Steinbeck's Fiction: The University Student and The Grapes of Wrath by Kenneth Swan
• Review: Honoring an American Classic: Viking's 1989 Edition of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath by Linda Pelzer
• Review: The 1993 Everyman's Library Edition of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath by Barbara A. Heavilin
• Review: The 1996 Library of America Edition of John Steinbeck: "The Grapes of Wrath" and Other Writings by Barbara A. Heavilin
• Review: Viking's 1997 Edition of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath": Text and Criticism by Beverly K. Simpson
• Fermenting The Grapes of Wrath: From Violent Anger Distilling Sweet Concord by Michael Meyer
• Selected Bibliography
• Index