Sweet Thursday - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора John Steinbeck (ч. notes)

Notes

1

DEDICATION: Elizabeth R. Otis (1901–81), Steinbeck’s literary agent and confidante, and cofounder in 1928 of New York literary agency McIntosh and Otis. Steinbeck’s voluminous correspondence with Otis covered thirty-seven years, from 1931 to his death in 1968; a sampling is available in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters (1975), Letters to Elizabeth (1978), and in the Appendix to The Acts of King Arthur. The main collection is housed at Stanford University Library’s Department of Special Collections and University Archives. Access the individual Container List of the Steinbeck–Otis correspondence in the John Steinbeck Collection, 1902–1979, at content.cdlib.org/view?docId=tf3c6002vx&chunk.id=dsc-1.8.6.

2

PROLOGUE: Originally titled “Introduction Mack’s Contribution,” a much longer version of the prologue (156 lines long as opposed to 47) appears in the original autograph manuscript, the typed manuscript, and the unrevised galley proofs of Sweet Thursday (all housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin). It is not known why Steinbeck excised such a large portion of the text.

3

that book Cannery Row: Steinbeck’s earlier roman à clef novel (1945), set in pre–World War II Monterey, featuring the protagonist Doc (based on Edward F. Ricketts) and including in its cast of characters numerous other lightly fictionalized, loosely disguised real-life persons. The novel is dedicated “For Ed Ricketts / who knows why or should.” On the dedication page of the copy Steinbeck presented to Ricketts, he wrote, “with all the respect and affection this book implies.” In his memoir “About Ed Ricketts” (1951), Steinbeck wrote:

I used the laboratory and Ed himself in a book called Cannery Row. I took it to him in typescript to see whether he would resent it and to offer to make any changes he would suggest. He read it through carefully, smiling, and when he had finished he said, “Let it go that way. It is written in kindness. Such a thing can’t be bad.” But it was bad in several ways neither of us foresaw. As the book began to be read, tourists began coming to the laboratory, first a few and then in droves. People stopped their cars and stared at Ed with that glassy look that is used on movie stars. Hundreds of people came into the lab to ask questions and peer around. (pp. lvi–lvii)

4

Cannery Row: Site of numerous fish canneries, fish reduction plants, and processing and packing houses along Ocean View Avenue, Monterey. The street was renamed Cannery Row in 1958. That section of town was called New Monterey, which, Susan Shillinglaw explains in A Journey into Steinbeck’s California (2006), was “not Spanish Monterey, not Methodist Pacific Grove, but the shoreline and sloping wooded hills between these places…” (p. 107)

5

“As with the oysters in Alice…”: From “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” a poem in chapter four of Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871), by British writer and mathematician Charles L. Dodgson (1832–98), whose pseudonym was Lewis Carroll: “ ‘O Oysters,’ said the Carpenter, / ‘You’ve had a pleasant run! / Shall we be trotting home again?’ / But answer came there none—/ And this was scarcely odd, because / They’d eaten every one.”

6

pilchards: California sardine (Sardinia caerulea). At eleven to fourteen inches in length, it was the state’s most important commercial fish until midcentury. According to a graph in Richard F. G. Heimann and John G. Carlisle’s The California Marine Fish Catch for 1968 and Historical Review, 1916–1968, reprinted in Michael Hemp, Cannery Row (1986), in 1941–42, the Monterey area sardine catch was a record 250,287 tons. The canning boom driven by World War II saw Monterey become “the Sardine Capital of the World,” though in 1947–48, around the time of Doc’s discharge from the army, the catch was 17,630 tons (p. 110). Marine scientist Ed Ricketts studied the sardine extensively during his later career, and in his final article on the subject, published in the Monterey Peninsula Herald in 1948 (shortly before his death) and reprinted in Ricketts, Breaking Through (2006), concluded that if “conservation had been adopted early enough, a smaller but streamlined cannery row…would be winding up a fairly successful season, in stead [sic] of dipping, as they must be now, deeply into the red ink of failure” (p. 330). As Katherine Rodger asserts in her Introduction to Breaking Through, his “pleas for moderation fell on deaf ears…” (p. 73). In 1953 to 1954, the year Sweet Thursday was published, a greatly reduced Monterey fleet brought in fifty-eight tons.

7

Doc: Marine biologist, pioneering ecologist, and intellectual polymath Edward Flanders Robb Ricketts (1887–1948) was the model for Steinbeck’s fictional Doc. Steinbeck’s portrayal of Doc is often biographically accurate regarding Ricketts’s physical gestures and appearance, his personal habits and tastes, and his cultural interests (especially in music, literature, and philosophy). Steinbeck embroiders, too: Ricketts attended the University of Chicago (1919–22) but never graduated, whereas his fictional counterpart holds a PhD from that institution. The research award Doc receives from Old Jingleballicks in chapter 37 may have been compensation for Ricketts’s failure at winning a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947. On the other side, in order to emphasize Doc’s romantic adventures, Steinbeck ignores Ricketts’s role as a husband and a father to three children from his marriage to Anna “Nan” Maker in 1922. (The couple later separated but were never legally divorced.) “Half-Christ and half-goat,” Steinbeck summed him up in his 1951 elegy “About Ed Ricketts,” itself an exercise in paradox, selective memory, and impressionism. Steinbeck’s eighteen-year relationship with Ricketts was profoundly beneficial, as Richard Astro established in John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts (1973). Besides their collaborative book, Sea of Cortez (1941), Steinbeck drew on Ricketts’s ideas so deeply and so often that after Ricketts’s death in May 1948, Steinbeck told mutual friends in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters (1976): “Wouldn’t it be interesting if Ed was us. And that now there wasn’t any such thing or that he created out of his own mind something that went away with him. I’ve wondered a lot about that. How much was Ed and how much was me and which was which” (p. 316). Excellent resources with which to survey the world of Ed Ricketts are Katharine A. Rodger’s Renaissance Man of Cannery Row (2002) and her Breaking Through (2006), as well as Eric Enno Tamm’s Beyond the Outer Shores (2004).

8

Old Jingleballicks: Eccentric Old Jay’s prototype has never been positively identified by scholars, though it is possible he was in some way connected with Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station, perhaps its onetime director W. K. Fisher, who was initially critical of the quality and nature of Ricketts’s scientific work. In “About Ed Ricketts” (1951), Steinbeck says only that Ricketts “hated one professor whom he referred to as ‘old jingleballicks.’ It never developed why he hated ‘old jingleballicks’ ” (p. xviii).

9

Western Biological Laboratories: Doc’s business was modeled on Edward F. Ricketts’s Pacific Biological Laboratories, cofounded in 1923 in Pacific Grove with Albert Galigher (his former University of Chicago roommate). In the late 1920s, Ricketts, by then the lab’s sole owner, moved the business to 740 Ocean View Avenue in Monterey. Later, the street was renumbered, then renamed, with Ricketts’s lab becoming 800 Cannery Row. The building, now a private social club, still stands. Recently it received a California Governor’s Historic Preservation Award.

10

our victory: Victories by Allied forces over Germany and Japan that ended World War II took place in May and August 1945.

11

Palace Flop house: A shed, once owned by Horace Abbeville and used to store fish meal, that figures prominently in Cannery Row (1945). The Palace Flop house was deeded to Chinese merchant Lee Chong as payment for a grocery debt.

12

“Rock of Ages…St. James Infirmary”: “Rock of Ages” (1776) written by Augustus M. Toplady; “Asleep in the Deep” (1897) written by Arthur J. Lamb, with melody by Henry W. Petrie; “St. James Infirmary,” a folk song of indeterminate authorship, was recorded by many artists, including Louis Armstrong in 1928.

13

Bear Flag: The Bear Flag, so named because it featured a grizzly bear (once native to California), was raised at Sonoma, California, on June 14, 1846, by a group of American settlers led by Captain John C. Frémont in a revolt against Mexican rule. In 1911 California’s state legislature adopted it as the state flag.

14

G.I. bill: The popular name for the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act (1944), which provided college or vocational education for returning World War II veterans.

15

Fort Ord: Originally called Camp Gigling when it was established in 1917, the Fort Ord Military Reservation (1940–94) was located on the Monterey Bay Peninsula between Marina and Sand City. At more than twenty-seven thousand acres, it was one of the largest U.S. Army bases on the West Coast and housed as many as fifty thousand troops. After World War II it became a facility for basic combat and advanced infantry training. Part of the base is now the site of California State University, Monterey Bay.

16

Point Pinos: Located at the northern end of the Monterey Peninsula, Point Pinos was named by Spanish explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno in 1602. It became the site of the oldest continuously operating lighthouse on the West Coast (established in 1855).

17

egg-heady: Highly academic, intellectual, or studious.

18

pachucos: Members of Mexican-American youth gangs in the southwestern United States from the 1930s to the 1950s. The pachuco style and culture originated in El Paso, Texas, but moved quickly westward and became especially prominent in East Los Angeles. Pachucos sported loose-fitting “zoot suits” (oversized trousers and jacket, with a characteristic broad felt hat), which presented an exaggerated version of gangster clothing of the 1930s. Pachucos spoke a unique dialect called Calo, a hybrid blend of formal Spanish with English and Gypsy words.

19

lagged with loaded pennies: Joseph and Mary may have used illegally weighted pennies for the coin toss that determined who would be first to break (“lag”) at pool.

20

badger game…Spanish treasure: Illegal or unethical confidence games. The badger game, for instance, is a dishonest trick in which a person is lured into a compromising situation and then blackmailed.

21

François Villon: French poet, thief, and general vagabond (ca. 1431–ca. 1474).

22

muggles: A slang term for marijuana.

23

wetback: Derogatory name applied to undocumented Mexican immigrants in the United States. The term is thought originally to refer to people crossing the border by swimming across the Rio Grande. Generally, Steinbeck’s use of racially charged terms such as “Chink” and “spick” reflects the attitudes and habits of his characters, not necessarily of the author. His attitude toward Mexican nationals—if not exactly fully realistic or authentic—is nonetheless generally positive and respectful, especially when it is noted that Sweet Thursday appeared during the same year the United States government’s Immigration and Naturalization Service launched Operation Wetback (1954), which targeted illegal Mexican nationals in the southwestern United States and eventually succeeded in deporting eighty thousand of them.

24

Espaldas Mojadas: Joseph and Mary’s group is Wetbacks.

25

“Ven a Mi…que Llora”: Spanish song titles: “Come to Me, My Sorrowful Girl,” “Woman from San Luis,” and “The Little White Cloud That Cries.”

26

charro: The Spanish word for the colorful, even gaudy, traditional outfit of the Mexican cowboy.

27

I. O. O. F.: In de pen dent Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization devoted to improving and elevating the condition of humanity through friendship, love, and truth. Derived from seventeenth-century British orders, the first American I.O.O.F. lodge was chartered in Baltimore, Mary land, in 1819. In 1851, membership was extended to women.

28

Velella: Velella velella, commonly known as By-the-Wind Sailor or Purple Sail, is a jellyfish that resembles a miniature Portuguese mano’-war. Usually blue in color, these jellyfish travel by means of a small stiff sail that catches the wind. They can become stranded on beaches by the millions.

29

Sistine Choir: Recordings of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel Choir.

30

William Byrd: William Byrd (1540?–1623) was one of the most celebrated English composers of the Renaissance. His three famous masses (in Latin) were written between 1592 and 1595.

31

Faust of Goethe: German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s tragedy of a man who sells his soul to Mephistopheles the devil in exchange for unlimited power. Part I was published in 1808 and revised in 1828–29; part II was published in 1832, the year Goethe died.

32

Art of the Fugue of J. S. Bach: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 O.S.–1750 N.S.) was a prolific German composer and organist of sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments. His final (and unfinished) collection of fugues and canons was composed between 1745 and 1750, and published after his death in 1750. See below pp. 80, 135, and 201.

33

Diamond Jim Brady: James Buchanan Brady (1856–1917), American businessman, financier, and philanthropist of the Gilded Age, whose appetite for food was legendary.

34

Lao-Tse: Major Chinese philosopher said to have lived in the sixth century BCE; however, many historians place his life in the fourth century BCE. He was credited with writing the seminal Taoist work, the Tao Te Ching, and he was recognized as the founder of Taoism.

35

Bhagavadgita: The Bhagavad Gita is a passage of 701 verses in the epic Mahabharata and is revered as a sacred text of Hindu philosophy. Bhagavad Gita, a conversation between divine Krishna and Arjuna, proposes that true enlightenment comes from growing beyond identification with the Ego, the little Self, and that one must identify with the Truth of the immortal Self (the soul, or Atman), the ultimate Divine Consciousness. Through detachment from the personal Ego, the Yogi, or follower of a particular path of Yoga, is able to transcend his mortality and attachment from the material world, and see the Infinite.

36

Prophet Isaiah: Jewish prophet (eighth–seventh centuries BCE) who prophesied during the reigns of four biblical kings and is generally regarded to have authored the Book of Isaiah, which delivers messages of peace, compassion, and justice.

37

Dr. Horace Dormody: In 1930, Dr. Horace Dormody (1897–1984), with his brother Dr. Hugh Dormody, opened Peninsula Community Hospital (renamed Community Hospital of Monterey Peninsula in 1961).

38

Great Tide Pool: An especially rich ecological zone and consequently one of Doc’s prime specimen collecting sites. It is located off Monterey’s Ocean View Boulevard at the western foot of the Point Pinos light house. In chapter 4 of Cannery Row, Steinbeck wrote:

It is a fabulous place: when the tide is in, a wave-churned basin, creamy with foam, whipped by the combers that roll in from the whistling buoy on the reef. But when the tide goes out the little water world becomes quiet and lovely. The sea is very clear and the bottom becomes fantastic with hurrying, fighting, feeding, breeding animals.

39

kraken: Legendary tentacled sea monster of gargantuan size, perhaps inspired by giant squid.

40

Charles Darwin and his Origin of Species: Steinbeck is creating a myth here. According to Brian Railsback in Parallel Expeditions (1995), Darwin never claimed his theory “flashed complete” in such a way. However, the inductive process the novelist suggests, in which a theory emerges after a gathering of facts, does indicate his knowledge of Darwin’s method. Further, Steinbeck is essentially correct in stating that the naturalist spent the rest of his life “backing it up” (Darwin produced six editions of The Origin of Species in his lifetime, the last in 1872, ten years before his death). (p. 26)

41

“Stormy Weather”: Blues song written by musician Harold Arlen (1905–86) and lyricist Ted Koehler (1894–1973) in 1933, about a heartbroken woman who has lost her man. Its first stanza sets the tone for the whole song: “Don’t know why, there’s no sun up in the sky / Stormy weather, since my man and I ain’t together / Keeps raining all the time.” Ethel Waters first sang it at the Cotton Club in Harlem, but it was also memorably performed by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Lena Horne, who sang it in the movie of the same name in 1943. In 2004 it was chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.

42

Jack Dempsey: William Harrison Dempsey (1895–1983). World heavyweight boxing champion (1919–26) known as the “Manassa Mauler.” Fifty of his sixty wins were by knockout.

43

spick: Insulting, derogatory term for a Hispanic person.

44

The Great Roque War: An American variant of croquet (the name was derived by removing the first and last letters), roque is played on a rolled sand court with permanently anchored wickets. The mallets, with which the ball is struck, have a short handle (approximately twenty-four inches), and the ends of the mallet are faced with stone. According to Susan Shillinglaw’s A Journey into Steinbeck’s California (2006), “There was no such war, with Greens squaring off against Blues,” though in 1932–33 a local tempest erupted in Pacific Grove over attempts to remove the roque courts. Voters resoundingly defeated the move (p. 95).

45

Pacific Grove: Sedate Pacific Grove, Monterey’s next-door neighbor on the Peninsula, began in 1875 as a summer Methodist tent camp and religious retreat (on property owned by land baron David Jack), then in 1879 became the site of a Pacific Coast arm of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, modeled on the Methodist Sunday school teachers’ training camp established in 1874 at Lake Chautauqua, New York. Pacific Grove’s roots, as Steinbeck notes, were religiously, philosophically, and politically conservative.

46

Whom the Gods Love…: Parody of a line by Greek tragic dramatist Euripides (480 BCE–406 BCE): “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

47

Sorrows of Werther: The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), loosely autobiographical novel of love and suicide by German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832).

48

A and C: “Ass and collar”—a bouncer’s move, used to grab hold of and then eject a patron. Steinbeck mentions the technique in chapter 23 of Cannery Row as well.

49

Jackson fork: A mechanical hay fork, used for lifting large amounts of hay.

50

William Henry Harrison: Harrison (1773–1841) was an American military leader, a politician, and the ninth president of the United States (1841), who died thirty days into his term—the briefest presidency in U.S. history and the first U.S. president to die while in office.

51

Quod erat demonstrandum: Latin for “that which was to be demonstrated,” indicating that something has been clearly proven. Its acronym, Q.E.D., often appears at the conclusion of mathematical proofs.

52

Harun al-Rashid: Harun (ca. 763–809), fifth Abbasid caliph, who ruled from 786 to 809, was a munificent patron of letters and arts, and under him Baghdad was at its apogee. He became a great figure to the Arabs, who tell about him in many of the stories of the Thousand and One Nights.

53

djinni: In Arabian and Muslim mythology, djinni, or jinni, are intelligent spirits of lower rank than the angels. They are able to appear in human and animal forms and to possess humans.

54

yerba buena tea: Yerba buena (Clinopodium douglasii) is a sprawling aromatic herb of the western and northwestern United States, western Canada, and Alaska, and is used to make tea that is both a medicinal and a refreshing drink. Its name, an alternate form of hierba buena, which means “good herb,” was given by the Spanish priests of California.

55

Holman’s Department Store: According to the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History (www.pgmuseum.org), this landmark Pacific Grove store was started in 1891, when R. Luther Holman bought Towle’s dry goods store on Light house Avenue near Seventeenth Street. By 1924, when the store moved over two blocks to its new location at 524 Light house Avenue, son Wilford Holman was in charge of operations. Holman’s Department Store, with more than forty different departments, was the largest store on the Pacific coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and Highway 68, also known as the Holman Highway, was built in part to bring customers to its doors. The store, having hired a flagpole skater to promote business, appears in chapter nineteen of Cannery Row.

56

“lets concealment…his damask cheek”: Mack quoting Shakespeare is one of the incongruous comedic effects Steinbeck strove for in Sweet Thursday. Spoken by Viola in act II, scene 4, line 111 of William Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night, or What You Will (ca. 1601–02):

“A blank, my lord. She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,

Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,

And with a green and yellow melancholy

She sat like patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?”

57

Lefty Grove: Robert Moses (Lefty) Grove, one of the greatest pitchers in major-league baseball history. Grove (1900–75) retired in 1941 with a career record of 300-141. His .680 lifetime winning percentage is eighth all-time, but none of the seven men ahead of him won more than 236 games. Grove was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1947. In 1999, he was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.

58

absinthe: A distilled, highly alcoholic, anise-flavored spirit derived from herbs including the flowers and leaves of the medicinal plant wormwood (Artemisia absinthium).

59

Woolworth’s: The F. W. Woolworth Company was a nationwide retail corporation whose five-and-dime stores became a nearly universal presence in America. The first Woolworth’s store was founded in 1878 by Frank Winfield Woolworth; the chain closed in 1997.

60

Flower in a Crannied Wall: “Flower in the Crannied Wall” (1869), by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92), a popular English Victorian poet and the poet laureate of En gland from 1850 to 1892: “Flower in the crannied wall, / I pluck you out of the crannies, / I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, / Little flower—but if I could understand / What you are, root and all, and all in all, / I should know what God and man is.”

61

Joe Elegant: Various candidates have been proposed as the model for Joe Elegant—notably mythologist Joseph Campbell and novelist Truman Capote—though, given the self-parodying nature of Sweet Thursday, Louis Owens, in John Steinbeck’s Re-Vision of America (1985), plausibly offers the “…young John Steinbeck, author of such ponderously mythical novels as Cup of Gold and To a God Unknown with their naive and heavy-handed wielding of symbols” (p. 194).

62

fusel oil: An oily, colorless liquid with a disagreeable odor and taste. It is a mixture of alcohols and fatty acids, formed during the alcoholic fermentation of organic materials. Fusel oil is used as a solvent in the manufacture of certain lacquers and enamels (it dissolves nitrocellulose). It is poisonous to humans.

63

Oakland Polytech: Oakland Technical High School, in Oakland, California, known locally as Oakland Tech, is a public high school located on 4351 Broadway in North Oakland. It is one of six comprehensive public high school campuses in Oakland. Founded in 1917, it is the alma mater of Clint Eastwood, Rickey Henderson, Huey P. Newton, and the Pointer Sisters.

64

Coca-Cola calendar girls: Illustrators for the Atlanta-based soft drink giant pioneered a type of graphically appealing and colorful calendar art that featured Coca-Cola’s Calendar Girls, who, though provocatively posed in bathing suits, were intended to portray wholesomeness as well as beauty. Steinbeck had used the ubiquitous advertising image in chapter one of The Wayward Bus (1947).

65

Romie Jacks: Romie Jack was one of the seven surviving children (out of nine) of wealthy and controversial Scottish-born Monterey County land baron David Jack and his wife, Maria Christina Soledad Romie. Romie served as manager of the family’s David Jack Corporation–owned Abbot Hotel (later Cominos Hotel) in Salinas. The Cominos Hotel is featured in Steinbeck’s short story “The Chrysanthemums.”

66

The Playing Fields of Harrow: Harrow School (founded in 1572), an exclusive, elite British men’s boarding (public) school near London, was famous for its tradition of Harrow football (begun in the nineteenth century), a unique hybrid game exclusive to the school, which combines elements of both soccer and rugby (but which uses a spherical-shaped leather ball). Because Fauna tutors her girls in social/sexual gamesmanship as a route to victory in matrimony, Steinbeck might also be alluding to a statement, allegedly by the Duke of Wellington, that “The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.”

67

Parcheesi: Brand name of a once-popular board game based on Pachisi, an ancient royal game of India created around 500 BCE, which utilized slave girls and concubines as red, yellow, blue, and green pawns on palace grounds. The trademark name was registered in 1870 by a New York game manufacturer.

68

high Elk: The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the USA (B.P.O.E.), which began modestly in 1868 as a private drinking club to circumvent New York City laws governing the opening hours of public taverns, has evolved into a major American fraternal, charitable, and service order. Headquartered in Chicago, it has local lodges throughout the nation. Both Monterey and Salinas had active Elk Lodges.

69

haute monde: French for “fashionable society.”

70

A and P: The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, better known as A&P, is a North American supermarket chain. The company was founded in 1859 by George Huntington Hartford and George Gilman in Elmira, New York, as The Great American Tea Company. It was renamed “The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company” in 1870, and over the next eighty years went on to become one of the dominant grocery chains in the United States.

71

Arbor Day: American holiday, first observed in 1872, that encourages the planting and care of trees. National Arbor Day is observed on the last Friday of April, but each state has its own date. California’s observation occurs March 7–14.

72

Watch and Ward: Steinbeck was both intrigued by and suspicious of civic, social, professional, or special-interest organizations, whether real (Woodmen of the World[128] and I.O.O.F.) or imagined (Rattlesnake Club and Forward and Upward Club). In America and Americans (1966), he said, “Elks, Masons, Knight Templars, Woodmen of the World, Redmen, Eagles, Eastern Star, Foresters…the World Almanac lists hundreds of such societies and associations, military and religious, philosophic, scholarly, charitable, mystic, political, and some just plain nuts. All were and perhaps still are aristocratic and mostly secret and therefore exclusive. They seemed to fulfill a need for grandeur against a background of commonness, for aristocracy in the midst of democracy” (p. 360). His satire on civic hypocrisy is especially sharp here, for he refers to what was probably a local chapter of the New En gland Watch and Ward Society, founded in Boston in 1878 as the New En gland Society for the Suppression of Vice, and in 1890 renamed the Watch and Ward Society. It functioned as a watchdog agency against vice and led successful censorship campaigns against books it deemed obscene or pornographic.

73

Breeder’s Journal: Perhaps The Guernsey Breeder’s Journal, the oldest dairy breed magazine published by a U.S. breed organization.

74

Sterling North: Thomas Sterling North (1906–74), author of numerous books for adults and children, including the best seller So Dear to My Heart (1947).

75

The Little Flowers of Saint Mack: The Little Flowers of Saint Francis of Assisi, the name given to a classic collection of popular legends about the life of St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1256) and his early companions as they appeared to the Italian people at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

76

Suzy Binds the Cheese: An early step in the cheese-making process requires the addition of rennet (plant-or animal-derived substance that contains the enzyme rennin), which binds or coagulates milk.

77

“I love true things…”: Cf. Steinbeck’s appraisal of Ed Ricketts in “About Ed Ricketts” (1951): “He loved true things and believed in them” (p. XVI).

78

“Home Sweet Home”…“Harvest Moon”: “Home, Sweet Home” was composed in 1852 by Sir Henry Bishop (1786–1855) from an adaptation of Clari, or the Maid of Milan (1823) by American dramatist John Howard Payne (1791–1852); “Old Black Joe” was composed in 1860 by Stephen C. Foster (1826–64). The other two songs Steinbeck mentions here have resonance for the romantic plot of Sweet Thursday. Tell Taylor (1876–1937) wrote the words and melody of “Down by the Old Mill Stream” in 1910. Its chorus goes: “Down by the old mill stream where I first met you, / With your eyes of blue, dressed in gingham too, / It was there I knew that you loved me true, / You were sixteen, my village queen, by the old mill stream.” “Shine On, Harvest Moon,” a popular song written by entertainer Nora Bayes (1880–1928) and her husband, songwriter Jack Norworth (1879–1959), debuted in Florenz Ziegfeld’s Follies of 1908: “Shine on, shine on harvest moon / Up in the sky, / I ain’t had no lovin’ / Since January, February, June or July / Snow time ain’t no time to stay / Outdoors and spoon, / So shine on, shine on harvest moon, / For me and my gal.”

79

Jiggs and Maggie: Bringing Up Father, a comic strip created by George McManus (1884?–1954) that ran from 1913 to 2000, was often called “Jiggs and Maggie,” after its two main characters.

80

Sarajevo…Pearl Harbor: World War I was precipitated by the assassinations of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo. The roots of Europe’s entrance into World War II occurred on September 29, 1938, when Adolf Hitler orchestrated the Munich Agreement (signed by Germany, Italy, France, and Britain), which allowed the Third Reich to expand its control over the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia. The Battle of Stalingrad, during which Soviet troops defeated the German Sixth Army and other Axis troops, began on August 21, 1942, and lasted over five months. On December 19, 1777, George Washington’s ragtag Continental Army entered their winter encampment at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where they remained for seven months while being rigorously retrained and reorganized. Japan’s surprise air attack on the United States’ Pacific naval fleet at Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii, took place on December 7, 1941.

81

Down Beat: American magazine devoted to jazz. The publication was established in 1935 in Chicago, Illinois. It is named after the “downbeat” in music, also called the “one beat.”

82

“Tío mio”: Spanish for “my uncle.”

83

Hediondo Cannery: Steinbeck’s joke: “hediondo” means “stinky” in Spanish.

84

Imp of the Row: Perhaps a comic and reductive echo of Edgar Allan Poe’s theory of human perverseness (“overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong’s sake”) sketched out in “The Imp of the Perverse” (1845).

85

tom-wallager: Slang term that means humdinger, whopper, etc.

86

Orient Express: The Orient Express, which connects Calais, France, on the English Channel, with Istanbul, Turkey, on the Black Sea, is one of the most legendary luxury trains in Europe, and a symbol of exotic adventure.

87

Webster F. Street Lay-Away Plan: An inside joke: The drink was named for Steinbeck’s former Stanford classmate and Monterey friend, attorney Webster “Toby” Street (1899–1984).

88

Seconal: Registered name of secobarbital, a barbiturate sedative that reduces anxiety by slowing down brain and nervous system activity. Supposedly available only by prescription.

89

Bohemia beer: Extensive research proves Doc’s assessment to be correct. Alcoholic haze that pervades this novel aside, there is something fitting about bohemian Doc preferring this aptly named brand of beer. Brewed exclusively in Mexico since 1900 and named for the beer-brewing region of Czechoslovakia, Bohemia is a smooth, medium-bodied pilsner-style beer with some pronounced hops flavor.

90

Buxtehude…Palestrina: Dietrich Buxtehude (ca. 1637–1707) was a German-Danish organist and a highly regarded composer of the Baroque period. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (ca. 1525–94) was an influential Italian composer of Renaissance music.

91

Mozart’s Don Giovanni: Opera in two acts, based on the legend of Don Juan, with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91), and libretto in Italian by Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749–1838), first performed in Prague on October 29, 1787. At the opera’s end, Don Giovanni, unrepentant seducer, is visited by the ghost of a man he has murdered, and is offered the opportunity to save his soul. When he refuses, he is dragged to hell while he is still alive. The concluding chorus delivers the opera’s moral: “Thus do the wicked find their end, dying as they had lived.”

92

Giordano Bruno: Italian philosopher, priest, astronomer/ astrologer, and occultist. Bruno (1548–1600) is perhaps best known for his system of mnemonics and as an early proponent of the idea of extrasolar planets and extraterrestrial life. Burned at the stake as a heretic for his theological ideas, Bruno is seen by some as a martyr to the cause of free thought.

93

Olympus: At 9,570 feet high, Mount Olympus is Greece’s tallest mountain. In Greek mythology, it was considered the home of the pantheon of principal Greek deities, led by Zeus, king of the gods.

94

Armageddon: In the New Testament’s Book of Revelation (16:12–16), Armageddon is the site where forces of good and forces of evil assembled for an apocalyptic, climactic battle.

95

Tehuanos: Inhabitants, predominantly Zapotec Indians, of Tehuantepec, in Oaxaca, southeastern Mexico.

96

“Sandunga”: “La Sandunga,” unofficial regional anthem of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, was written by governor and military commander Máximo Ramón Ortiz (d. 1855). It is a sensual, graceful dance song that expresses the grief of a Tehuana (Zapotecan woman) over the death of her mother. The song moves from overwhelming sadness to a sense of acceptance of her loss.

97

Salinas Rodeo: The California Rodeo has taken place each summer at the Salinas Rodeo Grounds since 1911.

98

Life: In 1936, under new owner Henry Luce, Life (which began in 1883 as a humor magazine) became the first all-photography news-magazine in the United States. At its most popular, it sold more than thirteen million copies per week. It published a regular feature, “Life Goes to a Party.”

99

the picture: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a 1937 Walt Disney Productions movie, was the first animated film made in Technicolor.

100

O Frabjous Day!: From Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem “Jabberwocky,” which appears in chapter one of Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871): “ ‘And, hast thou slain the Jabberwock? / Come to my arms, my beamish boy! / O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’ / He chortled in his joy.”

101

Dementia praecox: Any of several psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, characterized by distortions of reality, disturbances of thought and language, and withdrawal from social contact.

102

Where Alfred the Sacred River Ran: Parody of “…Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man…” from “Kubla Khan or, a Vision in a Dream: A Fragment” (1816), a poem by British Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834).

103

1914 Willys-Knight: Willys-Knight automobiles were produced between 1914 and 1933 by Willys-Overland Company of Elyria and Toledo, Ohio. In an internal combustion engine, ring gear and pinions connect the car’s starter with the motor’s flywheel.

104

“A veritable fairyland”: According to Susan Shillinglaw in A Journey into Steinbeck’s California (2006), Steinbeck’s portrayal of the culminating costume party at the Palace Flop house may owe its inspiration to an outrageous benefit party, “Surrealistic Night in an Enchanted Forest,” thrown by artist Salvador Dalí at Monterey’s Hotel Del Monte on September 2, 1941 (pp. 76–77). See also the short film clip, “Dizzy Dali Dinner,” on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg6i4E0Woak.

105

“Whistle While You Work”: Song featured in Walt Disney’s animated movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), with music by Frank Churchill (1901–42) and lyrics by Larry Morey.

106

threshold of a great career: Old Jingleballicks echoes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s salutation to Walt Whitman, after the philosopher had read the first edition of the younger man’s Leaves of Grass (1855): “I greet you at the beginning of a great career,” he wrote Whitman on July 21, 1855.

107

Knight Templar’s hat: The Knights Templar is a Christian-oriented organization founded in the eleventh century. Originally, the Knights Templar were laymen who protected and defended Christians traveling to Jerusalem. These men took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and were renowned for their fierceness and courage in battle. All Knights Templar are members of the world’s oldest fraternal organization, known as “The Ancient Free and Accepted Masons” or, more commonly, “Masons.” The hat Steinbeck refers to is plumed.

108

“Wedding March”…Lohengrin: The Bridal Chorus from Richard Wagner’s romantic opera Lohengrin (1850). Traditionally played at weddings, it is commonly known as “Here Comes the Bride.”

109

Oh, Woe, Woe, Woe!: From American Modernist expatriate poet Ezra Pound’s parodic “Song in the Manner of House man,” which appeared in his fifth collection, Canzoni (1911). The final stanza reads, “London is a woeful place, / Shropshire is much pleasanter. / Then let us smile a little space / Upon fond nature’s morbid grace. / Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera…”

110

Mr. and Mrs. Sam Malloy: In chapter 8 of Cannery Row, the Malloys take up residence in this cast-off cannery boiler.

111

if the British impressed our sailors: During the administrations of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, the Royal Navy impressed thousands of seamen from American ships, claiming that they were British subjects. (The British refused to recognize American naturalization, and often disregarded protection documents issued to native-born American sailors.) American anger over impressment became one of the causes of the War of 1812.

112

“Fifty-four-Forty”: In 1844 James K. Polk was elected president on a platform calling for setting the northern boundary of Oregon at 54°40'N. The Anglo-American dispute over the boundary was settled in 1846 by a treaty setting the border at 49°N.

113

“My dear Anthony West…”: Steinbeck’s satire of Joe Elegant as a novelist continues here in this dig at Anthony West. The British author (1914–87)—novelist, essayist, biographer—published “California Moonshine,” an unflattering review of Steinbeck’s East of Eden, in the September 20, 1952, issue of the New Yorker: “Mr. Steinbeck has written the precise equivalent of those nineteenth-century melodramas in which the villains could always be recognized because they waxed their mustaches and in which the conflict between good and evil operated like a well-run series of professional tennis matches” (p. 125). In a letter to Carlton Sheffield on October 15, 1952, in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters (1975), Steinbeck registered his dismay: “I am interested in Anthony West’s review in the New Yorker [sic]. I wonder what made him so angry—and it was a very angry piece. I should like to meet him to find out why he hated and feared this book so much” (p. 458). Clearly, Steinbeck had the last word.

114

Fafnir: In German composer Richard Wagner’s Norse-inspired epic of four linked operas, Der Ring das Nibelungen (its first complete production took place in 1876), Fafnir, a giant transformed into a dragon, guards the golden treasure.

115

James Petrillo: James Caesar Petrillo (1892–1984) was a labor leader who became the influential president of the American Federation of Musicians from 1940 to 1958. He rigorously policed the practice of hiring nonunion musicians, such as the members of Joseph and Mary Rivas’s band.

116

Hopkins Marine Station: The Hopkins Seaside Laboratory of Stanford University opened in 1892 on Lovers Point, north of its current site at 120 Oceanview Boulevard, Pacific Grove. It has been located on Oceanview since 1917, when it was officially renamed Hopkins Marine Station. It is the oldest marine research facility on the West Coast. Steinbeck attended summer classes at Hopkins in 1923.

117

“Memphis Blues”: A song written in 1909 (published in 1912) by songwriter and bandleader William Christopher Handy, self-proclaimed “Father of the Blues.” “Memphis Blues” played a significant role in bringing African American music into the mainstream.

118

Henny Penny: English fairy tale of undetermined origin and variable plot, sometimes called “The Sky Is Falling,” “Chicken Little,” “Chicken Licken,” or “Henny Penny.” In one version Henny Penny is hit on the head by a falling acorn and believes that “the sky is falling” and that she must tell the king. The moral of the tale varies from version to version but certainly can be interpreted to mean that danger is imminent.

119

Il n’y a pas de mouches sur la grandmère: The English translation of the French is: “There are no flies on Grandmother.”

120

“no room of my own”: Suzy’s lament ironically and meta phorically echoes Virginia Woolf’s pioneering feminist essay, A Room of One’s Own (1929), delivered as lectures at Cambridge University in 1928. In the essay, Woolf claims that in order for a woman writer to be successful, she needs space to work in and money enough to support herself.

121

Lama Sabachthani?: From Matthew 27:46: “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

122

Monarch butterflies: Steinbeck has taken some license here by timing the arrival of the butterflies (Danaus plexippus) in spring. In reality, they appear annually by the thousands in October to begin their crucial overwintering period in the pine and eucalyptus groves in Pacific Grove, which has established a permanent Monarch Grove Sanctuary.

123

Kinsey Report: Alfred C. Kinsey (1894–1956), a biologist at Indiana University and the founder of its Institute for Sex Research, published the studies Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953).

124

petition for release of Eugene Debs: Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926), four-time Socialist Party presidential candidate, was convicted in 1918 under the Espionage Act for inciting disloyalty in the armed forces by making an antiwar speech in Canton, Ohio. He was sentenced to ten years in prison, but was freed on December 25, 1919, after President Warren G. Harding commuted his sentence.

125

March Hare: The March Hare appears in chapter seven, “A Mad Tea-Party,” in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), by British writer and mathematician Charles L. Dodgson (1832–98).

126

Salinas High School: Steinbeck’s alma mater; he graduated in 1918.

127

I’m Sure We Should All Be as Happy as Kings: Poem 25 (“Happy Thought”) by popular Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) in his A Child’s Garden of Verses and Underwoods (1913): “The world is so full of a number of things, / I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”

128

Woodmen of the World: Widespread national fraternal organization founded in 1890 in Omaha, Nebraska, by Joseph Cullen Root. Lodges, whose members are eligible for a wide array of insurance coverage, conduct volunteer, patriotic, and charitable activities that benefit individuals and communities. The organization is one of the leading donors of U.S. flags to schools and nonprofit groups.