SOURCE: “The Sun Went Down with His Wrath,” in The Spectator, May 7, 1994, p. 28.

In the following review, Foot offers unfavorable assessment of John Steinbeck, finding Parini's depiction of Steinbeck disjointed and overprotective.

John Steinbeck’s great novel about the migrant workers of the American depression, The Grapes of Wrath, was published in May 1939. The original print was 19,804. By the end of 1939 it had sold 430,000. Every year since then, Jay Parini tells us, the novel has never sold less than 50,000.

At the time, not everyone rejoiced. The ‘Okies’ who fled or were evicted from the dustbowl were hard-working, puritanical farmers who were meant to be beneficiaries of the American dream. Yet the wonderful American economic system had treated them with cruel disdain. The people who profited most from that system were outraged that its shortcomings should be so eloquently exposed. Congressman Lyle Boren of Oklahoma made an angry speech...