SOURCE: "Art for Politics: John Steinbeck and FDR," in After The Grapes of Wrath: Essays on John Steinbeck in Honor of Tetsumaro Hayashi, edited by Donald V. Coers, Paul D. Ruffin and Robert J. DeMott, Ohio University Press, 1995, pp. 23-39.

In the following essay, Lewis explores John Steinbeck's efforts on behalf of Roosevelt during the Second World War.

The Nazi attack in Europe led to many American artists' participation in government war projects. Writer John Steinbeck was among those whom the Roosevelt administration called upon for assistance. Steinbeck's war contributions to the Roosevelt Administration included suggestions for an espionage program, recommendations to trust Japanese-Americans, and propositions for post-war domestic and foreign policy. And after the war Steinbeck was asked to write a farewell address to a New Deal leader. In Steinbeck's Washington eulogy (1946) for Roosevelt assistant Harry Hopkins, Steinbeck artfully defines a new myth in America's public consciousness...