Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath more relevant than ever
After storms ravaged Iowa last summer, devastation wasn't the only thing that people found amid the flood waters. Scores of out-of-work electricians from Michigan, hard hit by auto industry cutbacks, spied opportunity.
Trekking hundreds of miles from home, where the unemployment rate of 8.5 percent is the highest in the United States, they were eager to scoop up jobs rewiring Cedar Rapids -- even if it meant sleeping in a tent for weeks on end.
To some observers, the desperate scene evoked an unmistakable image. 'The Joads leaving Oklahoma is exactly what we are seeing coming out of Detroit now,' said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at the University of California, Berkeley.
Nearly 70 years after it was published, John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath' -- which tells of the dirt-poor Joad family's epic migration from drought-plagued Oklahoma to fruitful (if unfriendly) Central California -- continues to resonate as few novels have. In fact, the book may well be more relevant today than at any time since it first appeared in April 1939.
Read entire article at Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Story by Rick Wartzman, director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. His new book is 'Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's '
Trekking hundreds of miles from home, where the unemployment rate of 8.5 percent is the highest in the United States, they were eager to scoop up jobs rewiring Cedar Rapids -- even if it meant sleeping in a tent for weeks on end.
To some observers, the desperate scene evoked an unmistakable image. 'The Joads leaving Oklahoma is exactly what we are seeing coming out of Detroit now,' said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at the University of California, Berkeley.
Nearly 70 years after it was published, John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath' -- which tells of the dirt-poor Joad family's epic migration from drought-plagued Oklahoma to fruitful (if unfriendly) Central California -- continues to resonate as few novels have. In fact, the book may well be more relevant today than at any time since it first appeared in April 1939.