Steinbeck Studies

Barbara Heavilin's study of and guide to John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men has much to recommend it. She provides interesting and informative chapters on the Contents, Texts, Contexts, Ideas, Narrative Art and Reception of the novel/play. There is also a brief bibliographical essay. Having gone over some of this same ground in my years of teaching what I consider a well constructed, almost perfect work of narrative art, it is always pleasing to me to find a writer who brings something new to the criticism, makes me look at the novel in a fresh way and gives me more ideas to introduce in the classroom discussion.

Heavilin's particular strengths are demonstrated during her explications of the narrative art of Steinbeck's novel. Particularly refreshing is her comparison of Steinbeck and Wordsworth, which is part of her more comprehensive argument about the poetic quality of the novel. She writes: "Steinbeck's intentions in writing his novel parallel the British Romantic William Wordsworth's stated purpose in Preface to the Lyrical Ballads: to write about 'humble, rustic people, using their own language or dialect' " (61). Heavilin then adroitly continues the comparisons, highlighting characterizations and poetic language. Her emphasis on the shared qualities of poetry and drama are right on point.

In a subsection of the chapter on "Ideas," Heavilin introduces the idea that Steinbeck wrote "lovingly and carefully" about some characters that society might consider "grotesques in their midst" (47). These she identifies as "the old and feeble, the mentally ill and mentally handicapped" and also those who might be considered grotesque because of gender or race. It is an interesting [End Page 145] image, one that Heavilin connects to Wordsworth's conception of the poet. I was surprised, however, that there was no discussion of Sherwood Anderson, whose influence on the writers of Steinbeck's generation was significant. Steinbeck considered him one of the inventors of the modern novel and was familiar with Winesburg, Ohio, in which Anderson coins the usage of the term "grotesque" to describe the people in his fictional small town who have been variously stunted or negatively affected, mostly psychologically, because of the familial and societal limitations of their environment. "The Book of the Grotesque" serves as an introduction to the novel. Heavilin's use of the term stimulated me to see many parallels in Steinbeck and Anderson, not only in Of Mice and Men, but also in the portrayal of characters in Pastures of Heaven and The Long Valley.

Heavilin's volume is brief, although there is a certain irony in the fact that it is longer than the work it is studying. While the brevity is not a problem in chapters such as the one on Content, other chapters might have benefited considerably by expansion. The bibliographical essay is particularly troublesome since this work is sub-titled "A Reference Guide" and as such should be a resource for students, writing papers and/or larger research projects. In the bibliographical chapter Heavilin produces a "Works Cited" list of only twenty-seven sources, which in itself might not be problematic if her "Works Cited" had been followed by a more comprehensive bibliography. There are brief lists of "Works Cited"' after each chapter, but there is none for the work as a whole. With nearly seven decades of criticism to draw from, a bibliographical essay that has such a meager bibliography is disappointing. The discussion of the criticism she does cite is adequate although Heavilin privileges the readings of Charlotte Hadella and Louis Owens, devoting half, some seven pages in a fourteen page section of the chapter called "Critical Trends," to their readings. Owens and Hadella have added much to the scholarly dialogue on Of Mice and Men , and I am a great admirer of their work, but by weighting the chapter so heavily toward two critics, many important essays are ignored. Just off the top of my head I note the absence of Mark Spilka, William Goldhurst, Anne Loftis, Marilyn McEntyre...