CAPTURA, MEDIDAS DE ASEGURAMIENTO, LIBERTAD PROVISIONAL Y HABEAS CORPUS

(1966)

America and Americans was first published in Octo-

ber 1966 by VIKINGPRESS. While the project had

part of its origin in Viking Press chief HAROLD

GUINZBURG’s invitation to John Steinbeck to write

an introduction and perhaps the captions for a selection of photographs representing a cross- section of American life, it can also be traced back to Steinbeck’s own road trip across America, which had already resulted in the popular TRAVELS WITH

CHARLEY. Steinbeck became absorbed in the proj-

ect, and this contribution grew into a collection of nine essays, a foreword and afterword, with the photographs interspersed among them. Steinbeck had continued to write and publish throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, although none of the works

of this time matched the reception of his works of the 1930s and 1940s. What became his last novel,

THEWINTER OFOURDISCONTENT(1961), and his

narrative, Travels with Charley (1962), added to the body of work for which Steinbeck received the NOBELPRIZE IN LITERATUREin 1962 and the United

States Medal of Freedom in 1964.

This period when recognition of Steinbeck’s work became so tangible also corresponded with his growing friendship and influence with President LYNDON JOHNSON, a relationship that also influ-

enced the tone of America and Americans; and with great personal loss, the deaths of his friend and longtime editor, PASCALCOVICI, in October 1964,

and of his sister, MARYDEKKER, in February 1965.

In the months immediately following Guinzburg’s invitation, Steinbeck wrote about the project in several letters, but he seemed not to have worked on it much until after the deaths of his friend and sister, when he became more deeply engaged in the project and began writing regularly again. The let- ters in which he mentions the project suggest that he is somewhat eager to engage his critics and that he expects that at least some readers will take issue with what he has to say.

Steinbeck begins America and Americans with a foreword that indirectly suggests that his work seeks to correct an earlier conversation about America and Americanness that failed to include any “native work of inspection of our whole nation and its citizens by a blowed-in-the-glass Ameri- can.” While he claims he will not attempt to refute anti-American sentiment, he insists that his work will be informed by “a passionate love of America and the Americans.” Subsequent chapters take up the questions of who are Americans and how they became Americans, noting that the myth of easy assimilation and welcome has in reality been more difficult and resistant. Steinbeck takes a great interest in representing the contradictoriness of American values and culture, the “dream of home” held high alongside an incipient “restlessness,” leading him to suggest that Americans are often more attached to ideas than their realities.

Steinbeck also suggests that the many checks and balances institutionalized in the forms of gov- ernment both derive from and influence the devel-

opment of the paradoxical contradictions he describes. In the chapter titled “Genus Ameri- canus,” he applauds the proponents of the Ameri- can Revolution for seeking self-government, but he observes that the purported overthrowing of the class structure that later Americans impute to the Revolution has left space for the development of different kinds of class structures rather than the elimination of class. That space has been filled, he argues, by successive American capitalists whose self-interests, and whose successful selling of the idea of self-interest, have created the Corporation Man and replaced the idea of democracy with the machinations of capitalism. In “The Pursuit of Happiness,” Steinbeck criticizes the infantilization of American culture, with its unreflective emphasis on youth and fear of aging that is nevertheless con- tradicted by its underlying contempt of real child- hood and youth.

The last three titled chapters present Steinbeck’s perspective on American attitudes and behaviors regarding the land, or, in more contemporary terms, the natural environment, the world, and the future. The chapter on the land reiterates observations that can be found in his work of the 1930s—that Ameri- cans use the land and its resources without a thought that they are also using it up. The chapter on the world foregrounds Americans’ traditional tendency toward isolationism. Steinbeck explains this tendency as being at least partly environmental in its origin: the American continent was separated from Europe and from Asia by great bodies of water; the land itself was expansive and difficult to tra- verse. But Steinbeck hopes that the tendency toward isolationism is changing, and he bases that hope partly on his observations that Americans travel more than they once did and reflect more on their position in the world.

The chapter on the world also includes a remarkable analysis of the American tradition in lit- erature, in which Steinbeck traces the development of a national literature that is at the same time derived from its European inheritance and inde- pendently developed. He observes here the striking distinctiveness of American literature in its willing- ness to allow the profession of journalism as a legiti- mate training ground for the profession of belles

lettres. This unique experience of American writers, that they learned about Americans not simply by observing their fellows but by living and working in the midst of the society, has in Steinbeck’s words created a remarkable achievement: It “created a new thing and a grand thing in the world—an American literature about Americans. . . . it has the sweet, strong smell of truth.” Even as he applauds this phenomenon, Steinbeck wryly notes that these same writers are never truly honored by Americans without external validation—“only when our litera- ture was accepted abroad was it welcomed home again and its authors claimed as Americans.”

Steinbeck’s final chapter, “Americans and the Future,” and his afterword strike alternately dark and light tones. On the one hand the last chapter calls for a return to an ethical sensibility that Stein- beck feels has gotten horribly lost, in particular because it has lost sight of the value of a less tangi- ble purpose in the overwhelming plethora of mate- rial “things” that make up day-to-day American life. On the other hand, and in spite of his dismay at this loss of energy, Steinbeck ends with a state- ment of his hopes that Americans will choose to be inspired by a small chorus of leaders—he mentions Adlai Stevenson and John Kennedy by name— voices calling them back to act on their ideals. He ends with the observation that America’s past experience contains the seeds of its possible future success, if only Americans will commit to moving forward and do not, as he puts it, “slip back.”

While it may not be productive to impute the almost bipolar structure of America and Americans to the duality of satisfied accomplishment juxta- posed with grievous loss that characterized Stein- beck’s personal experiences at this time, it is important to note that America and Americans does not share the holistic sensibility of Steinbeck’s ear- lier, lengthy (compared with his wartime journal- ism) nonfiction works, SEA OFCORTEZand Travels

with Charley. Sea of Cortez most emphatically repre-

sents a dualism unified, in both form and content; the narratives of the crew’s experiences alternating with the accounts of collecting and cataloguing zoological specimens are consistently structured to flow almost tidally into one another, nicely reflect- ing the natural pattern of the biological processes

of rest and activity and the waxing and waning of the tides affecting the coastal pools that Steinbeck and his shipmates explore. This alternation works its way explicitly into Steinbeck’s narrative as a wholesome and necessary aspect of the work and its role in his text. Similarly, in Travels with Charley, an important aspect of this travel narrative is to represent what Steinbeck sees as the intrinsic like- ness of Americans, which he argues is their domi- nant feature, surely outweighing any superficial diversity that separates them. By contrast, America

and Americans is most strongly characterized by the

juxtaposition of paradoxical, irresolvable, and con- tradictory elements that occupy foundational posi- tions in the America Steinbeck represents here. It is perhaps to Steinbeck’s credit that he chose not to reconcile the vision in this book with his earlier tone—that he chose not to make America and

Americans match the vision of interrelatedness that

people seemed to have expected from him.

EARLY CRITICISM

When America and Americans was first published in 1966, it was received politely, partly because of the format, which encouraged reviewers to treat it some- thing like a coffee-table book, and partly because Steinbeck, as an established and honored American author, had written it. Some early critics took issue with the harshness of his criticism, but others also criticized his unwillingness to shy away from his admitted and unabashedly “passionate love” for his subject matter. In the first 15 to 20 years after its publication, scholars generally grouped America and

Americans with Steinbeck’s other nonfiction and

decreed that it was inferior to the fiction, especially the works of the 1930s and 1940s. Near the end of this “early” period, scholars began reconsidering these earlier estimations. During this process, a number of Steinbeck scholars argued, successfully, that Steinbeck’s fiction and nonfiction are stylisti- cally and thematically interdependent, and that reading the nonfiction texts as stories revealed a more deliberate structure and purpose to the works.

CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES

Since the late 1980s, Steinbeck studies in particular have more or less followed a general trend in Ameri-

can literary scholarship, that is, of reconsidering the relationship between what are thought of as the lit- erary and nonliterary works of major writers. Under the rubrics of New Criticism, Steinbeck’s fiction was dismissed as “timely” rather than “timeless” because of its connection to topical social issues, only to be reconsidered as New Criticism made space for other critical and theoretical paradigms. Consequently, growing interest in the study of prose nonfiction in general and nonfiction genres, such as travel writing and cultural criticism in particular, have encouraged scholars and other readers to return to Steinbeck’s nonfiction for another look. While earlier scholars saw America and Americans as a product of Stein- beck’s conflicted reaction to the times and the losses of his last years, more recent scholars have seen it as an extension and refinement of work he began delib- erately in Travels with Charley (see, for example, the editors’ introduction to the America and Americans section in the 2002 edition of America and Americans

and Selected Nonfiction). They have identified a more

sophisticated and carefully nuanced examination of the contradictions Steinbeck found but sought to minimize in the earlier work, and they have recog- nized that the essays did not refer only to the collec- tion of photographs that were their immediate cause. Recent scholars have also suggested that, along with Steinbeck’s last work of fiction, The Win-

ter of Our Discontent (1961), Travels with Charley and America and Americans form a sort of thematic

“boxed set,” illustrating the important relationship between Steinbeck’s fiction and nonfiction works, and the complementary relationship that existed between them throughout his career.

SYNOPSIS

Foreword

Steinbeck admits that the text and pictures in

America and Americans form a body of “unashamed

and individual” opinion. The book, he tells his readers, is “informed by America, and inspired by curiosity, impatience, some anger, and a passionate love of America and Americans.”

E Pluribus Unum

The author discusses how, in a span of only 400 years, a sense of nationhood was achieved among

the various peoples who settled in America. It was this very process of building the country, he says, that produced the American, “a new breed, rooted in all races.” A slow process of cruelty and resent- ment giving way to acceptance and absorption greeted members of each new ethnic group when they first landed on the American shores. He writes of the completeness of the transformation, mar- veling that Americans of widely varying description and ethnicity are immediately identified as Ameri- cans anywhere else in the world. Only two racial groups do not meet the author’s pattern: the Amer- ican Indian and the Negro. Steinbeck writes of the Indian’s persecution and near-extermination, fol- lowed by the 20th century’s official paternalism.

Paradox and Dream

Steinbeck notes that one of the generalities most often stated about Americans is that they are a “restless, a dissatisfied, a searching people,” a nature that results in a state of physical and mental turmoil. He outlines the paradoxes that stem from this condition, each one a generality of behavior opposing another generality of behavior. The great- est example of the American paradox, he writes, is the passionate belief in our own myths. For exam- ple, he writes of the American dream of Home, which persists even though the American family rarely stays in the same place for more than five years. The persistence of the American Dream, according to the author, provides a perhaps unachievable ideal, but its existence gives “an indi- cation of its possibility.”

Government of the People

Steinbeck writes that the American attitude toward government is a paradox. Americans have a deep fear and hatred of any perpetuation of power—political, religious, or bureaucratic—and this attitude has led to a national conviction that “politics is a dirty, tricky, and dishonest pursuit and that all politicians are crooks.” Americans, he argues, are increasingly cynical because of the great publicity given to any instance of official dishonesty despite the number of honest and hardworking politicians in American government. He writes of the presidential elections, during which “the rules of nonsense are suspended . . . as well as memories

of honesty and codes of decency.” Americans, he says, demand second-rate candidates and first-rate presidents. As to first-rate presidents, they almost miraculously seem to appear, whether or not Amer- icans appreciate them. As for the power of the American president, Steinbeck regards the execu- tive’s power as restrained by a “rebellious Con- gress,” a “half-obedient military,” a “suspicious Supreme Court,” a “derisive press,” and a “sullen electorate.”

Created Equal

Steinbeck addresses at length the civil rights prob- lem in America. He discusses the history of slavery, noting that in ancient Greece it was neither a crime nor a sin to own slaves, but rather an accepted institution. However, he says, masters must always live with the fear that their charges will revolt; and thus the paradox of slavery is that, “by its very nature, the slave becomes stronger than his master.” He observes that disease, diet, and hard work killed off the weaker slaves in America, resulting in the strong and resistant race that the Southern whites feared. If the North resisted slav- ery, he says, it is only because it was economically unsuitable for the region. He writes of the Civil War, admiring the bravery and ingenuity of the South against overwhelming northern superiority, and he blames the failures of Reconstruction for the 100 years of social injustice that followed it. Finally, Steinbeck tells the story of his Great-Aunt Carrie’s failed attempt to open a school for Negro children in the South.

Genus Americanus

Steinbeck writes about the American concept of the classless society. He describes the American paradox of distrusting position, property, and wealth that are inherited while admiring the same things if they are self-acquired. He describes the great millionaires of the 19th century, vital, boister- ous figures; modern millionaires, on the other hand, “live almost like fugitives, secret and shy.” The author argues that the corporation has replaced the capitalist as the premier creator of wealth. He describes the corporations’ struggle against labor, and the transformation of ownership as shares of stock become more widely distributed

in American society. The author criticizes the emer- gence of “the Corporation Man,” a man defined almost completely by his status, contributions, and worth to a faceless corporation. Nevertheless, he admires the efficiency achieved by corporations and the men who work for them, even if corporate effi- ciency stultifies creativity. He writes of the Ameri- can tendency to join lodges and secret societies, fulfilling a need “for grandeur against a background of commonness, for aristocracy in the midst of democracy.” He condemns the American tendency to denounce, threaten, and punish as “sickness of the soul,” and calls certain leaders, men such as Senator Joseph McCarthy, who instigated the 1950s Communist witchhunts, “screwballs.”

The Pursuit of Happiness

Steinbeck discusses the problem of youth and age in America. He complains of a “child sickness” that developed during the previous 60 years of material prosperity, during which children were hopelessly spoiled by their parents. The American approach, he argues, has “extended adolescence far into the future so that many Americans have never and can never become adults.” At the same time, he worries that longer life expectancies will lead to further problems.

Americans and the Land

Steinbeck writes of the “savagery and thoughtless- ness” with which the early settlers conquered and tamed the American continent, and connects it to the abuses of pollution and destruction that plague the cities and the countryside. He describes the land lust of the early pioneers who believed the continent to be limitless in size and bounty. This “land hunger” led to the poisoning of rivers and the leveling of forests, as well as the extinction of species such as the passenger pigeon. The author writes with particular passion of the destruction of the redwood forests native to the region of Califor- nia where he grew up. Steinbeck worries that when Americans make tools it becomes necessary to use them to prove that they exist, a tendency that led to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WORLDWARII. He writes that the creation and use

of the atomic bomb on these two Japanese cities is an act of which he is horrified and ashamed.

Americans and the World

America’s attitude toward foreign nations and for- eign people is shaped by its geographical isolation, Steinbeck writes. He complains of the hypocritical snobbery of the few foreign visitors that came to the country before World War I. The American insularity and shyness, he argues, is rapidly coming to an end. He discusses the development of Ameri- can literature, and the lofty respect awarded jour- nalists in America. An important element of American letters is that the writer is usually not a member of an elite, but rather is forced to work his