The Winter of Our Discontent Book

Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent was first published in 1961 and was his last novel.

It was also the latest book published prior to his winning the 1962 Nobel Prize for literature. Interestingly, when asked if he felt that he deserved the award, this "giant of American letters" said: "Frankly, no." Further, recent archives revealed that Steinbeck was a "compromise choice" for the award amidst a group described as "a bad lot". Although the committee believed Steinbeck's best work was behind him by 1962, committee member Anders Österling believed the release of his novel The Winter of Our Discontent in 1961 showed that "after some signs of slowing down in recent years, [Steinbeck has] regained his position as a social truth-teller [and is an] authentic realist fully equal to his predecessors Sinclair Lewis and Ernest Hemingway." - Wikipedia.

I read several of his works in HS, many moons ago, and last year returned to his canon with his short, brilliant work The Moon Is Down. Steinbeck is to me, the quintessential twentieth century American writer. Hemingway and Faulkner were bridges to an older time, almost lost in mythic dreams of the past. Steinbeck is forward looking, one who chronicles our struggles, reveals our sins and comments upon the path we are on now.

It is in this last endeavor where The Winter of Our Discontent fits. Steinbeck tells the tale of Ethan Allen Hawley, a tragic and lost son of old New England wealth, his connections to the Pilgrim / Pirate heroes of his old family all but lost after the money is gone, but the old house and the family name remain. The reader finds Ethan working as a grocery clerk, in a town his family once all but owned, and working for an Italian immigrant.

In this setting, Steinbeck goes on to describe a modern American morality play. From the town manager, to the judges, to the banker, and all the way to the fortune telling divorcee the town is corrupt and self-serving, but retaining the outward mask and appearance of civility and propriety. Ethan's dilemma, in the post World War II era, is one that still resonates today, but in amplified and exponential terms.

Now, I'll go out on a limb and compare Steinbeck's New Baytown to two unlikely later artists. I have noticed, especially in Philip K. Dick's Confessions of a Crap Artist that his descriptions of later 50s northern California was Steinbeckesque. I'm not sure that Steinbeck ever heard of Philip K. Dick, much less ever read his work, but a fan of Steinbeck's writing may be pleasantly surprised to visit PKD's short list of non science fiction works.

Also, and this likeness is more obscure - Peter Benchley's Jaws is the literary descendant of Steinbeck's east coast morality play. True, Steinbeck does not illustrate the killing rampage of a prehistoric predator on a summer hamlet - or does he? Steinbeck's monster is, like Benchley's (and more obscurely Melville's) really the elitist façade of correctness amidst a society being consumed from within.