A New Reading of an Old Text in Eastern Europe: John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle

Notes

• John Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle (New York: Covici-Friede, 1936); Of Mice and Men (New York: Covici-Friede, 1937); The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Viking Press, 1939).
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• Steinbeck’s seven-part series of articles, ‘The Harvest Gypsies,’ was published in San Francisco News, 5–12 October 1936, and reprinted as The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, ed. Charles Wollenberg (Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 1988).
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• For a discussion about the impact of The Grapes of Wrath in the USA, see Robert DeMott’s Steinbeck’s Typewriter (Troy, NY: Whitston Publishing Company, 1997), 146–205. See also DeMott’s ‘Introduction’ in Steinbeck’s Working Days: The Journal of The Grapes of Wrath, ed. Robert DeMott (New York: Viking Press, 1989), xxi–lvii; and Susan Shillinglaw’s ‘California Answers’ in John Steinbeck: The Years of Greatness, 1936–1939, ed. Tetsumaro Hayashi (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press), 145–64.
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• Božidar Borko, ‘Beležke o avtorju,’ Ljudje in miši [Of Mice and Men] by John Steinbeck, trans. Meta Gosak (Ljubljana: Slovenski knjižni zavod, 1951), 135.
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• Danica Čerče, Reading Steinbeck in Eastern Europe (Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, and Plymouth, UK: University Press of America, 2011). See also Petr Kopecký’s ‘The Literary Front of the Cold War: John Steinbeck as an Ideological Object in the Eastern Block,’ Comparative American Studies 9 (September 2011): 204–16.
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• The first translation of the novel in Eastern Europe was the Czech translation in 1941, followed by the Slovene version in 1943.
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• George Levine, ‘Reclaiming the Aesthetic,’ in Falling into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature, ed. H. David Richter (Boston and New York: Bedford, St Martin’s, 2000), 378–91.
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• Quoted in Letitia Guran’s, ‘The Aesthetic Dimension of American-Romanian Comparative Literary Studies,’ The Comparatist 27 (May 2003): 94–116 (97).
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• Rapa Šuklje, ‘John Steinbeck: Negotova bitka,’ Naša žena (June 1954): 173–74; Juš Turk, ‘Steinbeck in njegov raj,’ Vzhodno od raja [East of Eden] by John Steinbeck, trans. Juš Turk (Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1980), 540–43.
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• Petr Kopecký, ‘The Story of John Steinbeck in Communist Czechoslovakia,’ Steinbeck Studies 16 (2005): 81–90 (88).
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• A. Starcev, ‘O socialnem romanu v Združenih državah Amerike,’ Novi svet 1–2 (1947): 130–37 (133).
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• Jaroslav Bouček, Trubaduri nenávisti: Studie o současné západní úpadkové literatuře (Praha: Československý spisovatel, 1952), 84; Stjepan Kresić, ‘Rijeć o djelu,’ Istočno od raja by John Steinbeck (Zagreb, Beograd: Kultura, 1952), 665–68 (668).
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• Marija Cvetko, ‘John Steinbeck: Potovanje s Charleyjem,’ Tedenska tribuna, 24 March 1964: 7.
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• Blaga Dimitrova first published her article, ‘A Public Letter to Mr Steinbeck,’ in the Bulgarian periodical Literarna fronta. It was translated into Slovene by Katja Špurova and published in the 1967 issue of Naša žena (92).
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• The only one of Steinbeck’s books published in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s was the Slovene publication of Tortilla Flat, trans. Ciril Kosmač (Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1995).
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• Although opinions as to whether the former Yugoslavia was behind the Iron Curtain are divided, the situation in Slovenia and Croatia, which were both Yugoslav republics (until 1991), was different from the situation in other communist countries. Immediately after World War II, the western borders were closed, but, after 1948, following the so-called Tito-Stalin split, they became increasingly relaxed, until they were opened fully in the first half of the 1960s.
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• John Steinbeck, The Moon Is Down (New York: Viking Press, 1942).
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• Donald V. Coers, ‘Introduction,’ in The Moon Is Down, John Steinbeck (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), vii–xxiii (xiii).
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• The Slovene version was entitled Negotova bitka [In Dubious Battle]. The book was translated by Rado Bordon and Aljoša Furlan and published in 1952 by Tiskarna Slovenskega poročevalca. Interestingly, 4,000 copies were printed (compared to 1,200 copies of Tortilla Flat in 1995 and 500 copies of each Steinbeck publication since 2005).
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• Danica Čerče, ‘“Man’s Eternal, Bitter Warfare with Himself” in John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle,’ Vestnik 1–2 (2003): 369–77. For a discussion of the critical fortunes of In Dubious Battle in Slovenia, see also my article ‘Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle as a Lesson of Commitment,’ Steinbeck Studies 15 (Winter 2004): 89–102. New viewpoints regarding this novel and Steinbeck’s fiction in general are also presented in my Pripovedništvo Johna Steinbecka [The Narrative Prose of John Steinbeck] (Maribor: Mariborska literarna družba, 2006).
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• Rado Bordon and Aljoša Furlan, ‘Beseda o Johnu Steinbecku,’ Negotova bitka [In Dubious Battle] by John Steinbeck, trans. Rado Bordon and Aljoša Furlan (Ljubljana: Tiskarna Slovenskega poročevalca, 1952), 245–46.
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• As quoted in Jackson J. Benson’s The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), in his letter to George Albee in mid-January 1935, Steinbeck wrote: ‘I don’t know how much I have got over, but I have used a small strike in an orchard valley as a symbol of man’s eternal, bitter warfare with himself’ (304).
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• Gerard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
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• Rapa Šuklje, ‘John Steinbeck: Negotova bitka,’ Naša žena 15 (June 1954): 173–74.
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• Cliff Lewis, ‘Art for Politics: John Steinbeck and FDR,’ in After ‘The Grapes of Wrath’: Essays on John Steinbeck, ed. Donald V. Coers, Paul D. Ruffin, and Robert DeMott (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1995), 23–39 (30).
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• Quoted in Petr Kopecký’s ‘The Story of John Steinbeck in Communist Czechoslovakia,’ Steinbeck Studies 16 (2005): 81–90 (85).
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• Stane Ivanc, ‘80 let prepozno,’ Tedenska tribuna, 4 December 1962: 7.
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• Dušan Mevlja, ‘John Steinbeck: Polentarska polica,’ Večer (23 November 1953): 17; Ivan Skušek, ‘Steinbeck: Ljudje in miši,’ Ljudska pravica 10 (1952): 18.
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• All quotations from In Dubious Battle refer to the 1992 Penguin edition.
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• Richard Astro, John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts: The Shaping of a Novelist (Minneapolis: University Press of Minnesota, 1973), 121.
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• Peter Lisca, The Wide World of John Steinbeck (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1958), 124.
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• Jackson J. Benson, The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 304.
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• John Docker, ‘A Study in Context: But the Dead Are Many,’ Arena 41 (1976): 48–61.
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• Harold Bloom, ed. John Steinbeck: Modern Critical Views (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987), 1.
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• See John Steinbeck, Steinbeck: A Life in Letters, ed. Elaine Steinbeck and Robert Wallsten (New York: Viking Press, 1975), 105.
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• Louis Owens, John Steinbeck’s Revision of America (Athens: University Press of Georgia, 1985), 92; Warren French, ‘Introduction,’ in John Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), vii–xxix (xxix).
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• Chris Kočela, ‘An Existentialist Reading of In Dubious Battle,’ The Steinbeck Newsletter 10 (Spring 1996): 6.
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• John Milton, Paradise Lost, Books 1 and 2, ed. T. Crehan (London: University of London Press, 1961), 1, 101–109.
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• For a detailed analysis of the parallels, see Joseph Fontenrose’s John Steinbeck: An Introduction and Interpretation (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1963).
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• Frank Hardy’s novel But the Dead Are Many (London: Bodley Head, 1975) is both a critical survey of the communist movement in Australia and the Soviet Union and a psychological study of a revolutionary. It is of no small significance that Hardy’s novel, reflecting the author’s disillusionment with the institutionalized communist ideology, is still virtually unknown to East European readers. To Slovene readers, the novel was introduced in my article: ‘Frank Hardy: Toda mrtvih je veliko—Pronicljiva študija o ideološki predanosti,’ Vestnik 37 (2000): 447–60.
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• In addition to But the Dead Are Many, inter-textual engagement with Steinbeck’s prose can be detected in several of Hardy’s books, including Power without Glory (1950), The Yarns of Billy Borker (1965), and The Great Australian Lover and Other Stories (1967). See my ‘“Was Ever a Book Written under Greater Difficulties?”: On the Parallels between Frank Hardy’s Power without Glory and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath,’ Journal for the Study of Australian Literature 9 (2009): 1–10; and ‘The Portrayal of Otherness: John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat and Frank Hardy’s The Great Australian Lover and Other Stories,’ The Comparatist 36 (May 2012): 196–206.
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• Kyoko Ariki, The Main Thematic Current in John Steinbeck’s Works: A Positive View of Man’s Survival (Osaka: Kyoiku Tosho, 2002), 218.
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