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Greenwood Lane was besieged with the noise of neighborhood building, which nearly drove them to distraction. By midsummer, hoping for permanent sanctuary, they decided to buy the secluded Biddle Ranch, a forty-seven-acre spread on Brush Road in the Santa Cruz Mountains above Los Gatos. Even though it was the most stunning location they had seen, its original homestead was in disrepair, so besides buying the land they would also have to build a new house, and that too became a source of added distractions. The Steinbecks didn’t move in until November 1938, a month after the novel was finished (final typing of the manuscript and corrections of the typescript and galley proofs took place at the Biddle Ranch fromNovember 1938 to early February 1939), but preparations for its purchase ate a great deal of Steinbeck’s time and energy from mid-July onward.
    August proved the most embattled period. Early in the month Stein-beck noted in his journal: “There are now four things or five rather to write through—throat, bankruptcy, Pare, ranch, and the book.” His litany of woes included Carol’s tonsil operation, which incapacitated her; the bankruptcy of Steinbeck’s publisher, Covici-Friede, which threatened to end their only source of income and posed an uncertain publishing future for the novel he was writing; Pare Lorentz’s arrangements for making a film version of
In Dubious Battle;
the purchase of the Biddle Ranch, which Carol wanted badly and Steinbeck felt compelled to buy for her (they argued over the pressure this caused); and the book itself, still untitled (and therefore without “being”), which seemed more recalcitrant than ever. By mid-August, roughly halfway through the novel, Steinbeck took stock of his situation: The Viking Press had bought his contract, hired Pat Covici as part of the deal, and planned a first printing of 15,000 copies for Steinbeck’s collection of short stories,
The Long Valley;
a string of famous house guests had either just departed or were about to arrive; and he and Carol had closed on the Biddle property for $10,500. “Demoralization complete and seemingly unbeatable. So many things happening that I can’t not be interested…. All this is more excitement than our whole lives put together. All crowded into a month. My many weaknesses are beginning to show their heads. I simply must get this thing out of my system. I’m not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people…. This success will ruin me as sure as hell.” Four days later, on August 20, Lorentz arrived for the weekend. His visit broke Steinbeck’s depression and log jam. Though their film project would fall through, Steinbeck was encouraged by Lorentz’s prescience that his novel would be one of “the greatest novels of the age.” Steinbeck kept up his daily stint (he aimed for 2000 words at each sitting, some days managing as few as 800, some days, when the juices were flowing, as many as 2200) through what Carol agreed were the “interminable details and minor crises” of August and September.
    In early October, rebuked often by his wife (Ma Joad’s indomitableness owes as much to Carol’s spirit as it does to his researchinto Robert Briffault’s anthropological treatise
The Mothers
), Steinbeck roused himself from another bout of “self indulgence” and “laziness” to mount the final drive. Like a gift, the last five chapters of the novel came to him so abundantly that he had more material than he could use. Now the full force of Steinbeck’s experience at Visalia eight months earlier came into play, propelling his metamorphosis from right-minded competency to inspired vision. What Steinbeck had witnessed in that “heartbreaking” sea of mud and debris called forth every ounce of his moral indignation, social anger, and empathy, which in turn profoundly affected his novel’s climax. His internal wounding opened the floodgates of his affection, created
The Grapes of Wrath
’s compelling