SOURCE: “A Kind of Play: Dramatic Elements in Steinbeck's ‘The Chrysanthemums’,” in Wascana Review, Vol. 21, No. 1, Spring, 1986, pp. 62–72.

Below, Ditsky praises the “Lawrentian values” and interpersonal drama that Steinbeck achieves in “The Chrysanthemums.”

The longstanding critical assumption, routinely delivered and seldom questioned, that John Steinbeck represented an odd late flourishing of literary naturalism—rather than, as now seems increasingly clear, an innovative sort of romanticism—has had the predictable effect of retarding appreciation of his accomplishments. Among the latter are the ways in which Steinbeck's language emerges from his contexts: arises organically but not necessarily with “real-life” verisimilitude from situations which must therefore be seen as having demanded, and in a sense therefore also created, a discourse of a sometimes patent artificiality—of a rhetorical loftiness appropriate to the dramatic seriousness of the given subject matter, but unlikely as an instance of “observed” intercourse in English, American variety...