Steinbeck and the Environment

"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