Steinbeck and the Environment
Steinbeck and the Environment
Interdisciplinary Approaches
This interdisciplinary collection of essays explores in-depth a topic previously neglected by scholars: John Steinbeck's early continuing preoccupation with ecology and marine biology and the effect of that interest on his writings. Written by scholars from various disciplines, the essays offer a dynamic contribution to the study of John Steinbeck by considering his writings from an environmental perspective. They reveal Steinbeck as a prophet that was ahead of his time and supremely relevant to our own.
Few American literary figures have elicited so much response from the scientific community—and extremely lucid commentary at that—as Steinbeck. What is accomplished is a sharper definition of Steinbeck as environmentalist, a description previously used all too nebulously, an aspect of Steinbeck’s political awareness that has not been given its fair share of attention. . . . A most necessary addition.'
—Choice
What has been needed for some time has been an approach to Steinbeck on his own terms, valuing him for what he did say, rather than what he should have said. . . . It has taken three decades since his death for a collection of essays on the writer and his relationship to the natural world to appear. Each of the editors writes an introduction to the book, from the perspective of a literary scholar who is new to Steinbeck (Beegel), from the perspective of a Steinbeck specialist (Shillinglaw), and from the perspective of a field scientist (Tiffney). This pattern is carried out throughout the collection by the various contributors who are also non-specialist literary scholars, Steinbeck specialists, or scientists. The essays are well done and some are exceptional, but what raises this book above so many anthologies of criticism on a single author is once again the rich variety of approaches, which are, nevertheless, brought together into a unified whole.'
—South
Susan F. Beegel is the editor of The Hemingway Review and Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the University of Idaho. Susan Shillinglaw is Director of the Steinbeck Research center and Associate Professor of English at San Jose Sttae Univesity. Wesley N. Tiffney, Jr., is Director of the University of Massachusetts Nantucket Field Station and a field biologist specializing in human land use history and ecology.
