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one wonders if he read the novel at all. Quite a few critics, in fact, seemed eager to rewrite the book. Writing for the New York World Telegram, John Barkham said that the “narrative is an example of the approach oblique where the approach direct was needed.” What would have grated in that review was the accompanying notion that Steinbeck had betrayed his own reputation by being inconsistent. For the whole of his long career, John Steinbeck resisted consistency. Each book was an “experiment” in his eyes, and with each, he felt, reviewers wanted him to turn back to some previous triumph—usually his work of the late 1930s.
    Not all reviews were soggy, however. In a blurb published on the dust jacket of the first edition, Saul Bellow said that Steinbeck had returned to the “high standards” of Grapes, and he advised critics who “said of him that he had seen his best days” to “prepare to eat crow.” Newsweek concurred: “Steinbeck in his old, rare form.” And so did William Hogan of the San Francisco Chronicle: “I am happy that one of my old heroes is back swinging his talent at a subject that makes him mad.” Steinbeck as social critic was the man America wanted, even if the critique was served raw; popular McCall’s magazine ran it in four parts, and Reader’s Digest Book Club selected it a month after publication.
    But in spite of these endorsements, Winter would be his last fictional swing. John Steinbeck never wrote another novel. Stung by negative reviews, he was further battered by his own country’s response to the October 1962 announcement that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. The spokesman for the Nobel Prize committee, Dr. Anders Osterling, had included this last novel on the list of those that had swayed the committee’s decision, for the Swedish Academy felt that Steinbeck had an “unbiased instinct for what is genuinely American, be it good or wicked.” The acclaim of the world, however, did little to silence American voices of disapprobation—at least in Steinbeck’s own mind. The writer who, since his first novel in 1929, had experimented again and again with fictional techniques, structures, and voices was nearly drowned by human voices.
    But not quite. He did not stop writing in 1960. In his last eight years of life, John Steinbeck composed two thoughtful and engaging works of nonfiction, Travels with Charley and the somber and prophetic America and Americans, as well as a series of articles about Vietnam. For Steinbeck, as for Ethan, as for all his wounded heroes, the light does not go out. Hope for human creativity and belief in empathetic engagement remain steady flickers throughout John Steinbeck’s long career as a fiercely engaged American artist.
     
—SUSAN SHILLINGLAW

Suggestions for Further Reading
    Baker, Carlos. “All That Was in the Cards for a Man Named Ethan Hawley,” in John Steinbeck: The Contemporary Reviews, eds. Joseph R. McElrath Jr., Jesse S. Crisler, and Susan Shillinglaw. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
    Benson, Jackson. The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer . New York: Viking, 1984; Penguin, 1990.
    Cederstrom, Lorelei. “The Psychological Journey of Ethan Allen Hawley,” in Steinbeck Yearbook, vol. 1, The Winter of Our Discontent . Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000: 1-24.
    Combs, Robert. “Reconstructing Ethan Hawley: A Dramatic Perspective on the Crisis of Masculinity in The Winter of Our Discontent,” in Steinbeck Yearbook, vol. 1, The Winter of Our Discontent. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000: 25-46.
    DeMott, Robert. Steinbeck’s Reading: A Catalogue of Books Owned and Borrowed. New York: Garland, 1984.
    Ditsky, John. “Rowing from Eden: Closure in Later John Steinbeck.” North Dakota Review 60, no. 3 (Summer 1992): 87-100.
    Fensch, Thomas. Conversations with John Steinbeck . Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988.
    Fontenrose, Joseph. John Steinbeck: An Introduction and Interpretation . New