5 - In Dubious Battle (1936)

Summary

Joseph Henry Jackson.

“Tortilla Flat Author Produces Proletarian Novel of Sound Worth.”

San Francisco Chronicle,

1 January 1936,

Section D, p. 4.

One of the pleasant successes of last year's fiction crop was a very amusing yarn called Tortilla Flat, a story of a handful of carefree ragged edgers living in California's Monterey and getting along however they might, provided only that they had enough money or could develop enough schemes to get hold of a jug of wine sufficiently often. It was a gay, tenderly written little tale and it found thousands of admirers. People, indeed, went around telling other people they simply must read it, which in the end is the way best sellers are made.

Now, in this new novel, John Steinbeck has done something totally different; something as startling in its way (at least to those whose acquaintance with the author is limited to Tortilla Flat) as though, say, P. G. Wodehouse should have written Germinal. This In Dubious Battle is just as little like its immediate predecessor as you could very well imagine. It is a story of men on the thin edge of society, to be sure, but men who are workers rather than charming loafers, men who have to labor but want a fair return for the work they do. It is, in fact, a “proletarian novel,” and a better one than most that advertise themselves as such.

Mr. Steinbeck has chosen as his central figure not so much an individual as a working principle. The hero of his book is really The Strike. Naturally he needs an individual on whom he may hang his story; his character, Jim Nolan, serves that purpose.