The Grapes of Wrath

So I finished Candide and wrote a few paragraphs on it in my journal, and that was the end of it. Now that I’m out of school, I’ve been voraciously devouring books of my own choosing, the most recent of which I decided would be John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. I read about a third of it before I realized that I didn’t like it, and for the very same reason that I considered Candide a literary failure: it is entirely transparent. The structure of The Grapes of Wrath is based around the odyssey of the Joads—a poor family that is forced out of Oklahoma—but against their plight is the generalized symphony of the entire nation: every other chapter delves into a new scene that depicts the state of the country in the 1930s. It is this system, which I could only describe as pretentious, that started to get to me. After the 140 pages that I read, I started to feel like I was being beaten over the head with what the book wanted me to understand; and readers that may be familiar with my pet peeves know that this will make me give up on a book faster than almost anything else. I realized that however wonderfully crafted the sentences might have been, they wove themselves into a tapestry that screamed repeatedly: Corporate America is destroying the lives of its people, do something! So I put the book down.

I’m curious to see what other people think, if you’ve read The Grapes of Wrath and found it more digestible, if you’ve read any blatantly political works and found them anything but annoying. To me it’s all an issue of transparency: if you’re going to write an obvious treatise designed to elicit a reaction, why not just publish an essay? There’s a certain artistry associated with literature, and its complexity deserves more than well-written propaganda. I’ll take that opinion to my grave.

The subjugation of art—and of cultural life generally—to political ends has been one of the great spiritual tragedies of our age. Among much else, it makes it increasingly difficult to appreciate art on its own terms, as affording its own kinds of insights and satisfactions. Critics who care about art… are forced to champion art’s distinctively aesthetic qualities against attempts to reduce art to a species of propaganda.

Having read Roger Kimball’s article “The End of Art” repeatedly, this is one section that sticks out in particular, and maybe that’s just because I’m against pieces with strong political agendas; but regardless, a point has been made here. I can’t speak much for what occurs in popular culture, and I’m especially ignorant when it comes to the world of “high art” galleries in New York, London, and Paris, but I can, at the very least, confirm my feelings on the subject: although there are a few exceptions, art with political aims pretty much entirely bores me.

In most cases, the minute I discover that a piece of literature is trying to steer me in a certain direction, working to get me to think in a certain way, or trying to instill specific feelings, I will shut down. If I perceive something as persuasive, it generally is blackballed as—and Kimball has chosen the perfect word here—propaganda. I distrust anything with a specific agenda, be it political, moral, ethical, etc. Naturally, this automatically discounts, for me, a great deal of literature: almost everything considered allegory. Like I said, there are a few exceptions—Saramago’s Blindness and Lowry’s The Giver are two that come to mind—however for the most part I become very easily exasperated with anything that is written for an explicit purpose. One could argue that everything was written for an explicit purpose, with one or more intended results, however it more or less boils down to a question of transparency: is this something a reader can pick up on a quick read?

There have been many pieces I’ve read over the years, many of them written by peers—aspiring writers—that are so heavy-handed in their approach that they might as well have made a poster for their specific cause and tacked it on a bulletin board at their local grocery store. If you’re going to reduce the vehicle of literature to a farce, just avoid it entirely and simply attack people with your beliefs via other mediums. Call people at home if you have to, at least then they won’t be confused by something that is supposed to be art but turns out to be an advertisement.

That said, I’m always up for something that can effectively challenge this model. If you know of a work of fiction that succeeds in both beauty and allegory, by all means, share it with me. If you feel it hasn’t been written yet, why not give it a try? It won’t be the first time I’ve tasted my own foot.