Notes from Donn Swain interview w/Bob Demott, author of Working Days
1. Summer 1936 – wrote ÒHarvest GypsiesÓ – seven articles about the government migrant camps based on field work as an investigative reporter for The San Francisco News
2. Wrote The Oklahomans – migration of farmers from Oklahoma to California to get land – and destroyed it
3. LÕAffaire Lettuceburg – based on Salinas lettuce workers strike in 1936 against corporate growers – vicious satire of vigilante response to strike – destroyed after writing 70,000 words – felt it was a trivialization of his talents and the cause – destroyed in mid-1938 – then began Grapes of Wrath which he wrote in 100 days
4. In Dubious Battle – failed agriculture strike – dispassionate and removed
5. Feb-March 1938 Steinbeck ÒsawÓ something that changed his point of view from 3rd person to 1st person.
6. Worked like an athlete – warmed up by journaling/diarying
7. Already famous for Of Mice and Men on Broadway
Over several weekends in the winter of 1937 Horace Bristol (1908-1997), staff photographer for LIFE magazine, traveled to California's Central Valley to photograph migrant labor camps. His traveling companion was the author John Steinbeck, and, according to Bristol, the pair planned to collaborate on a book project, with Steinbeck contributing text to accompany Bristol's photographs. Bristol also asserted that soon after the trip, in May 1938, Steinbeck decided not to be part of the proposed project, and instead completed the final draft of his classic novel The Grapes of Wrath which, unknown to Bristol, Steinbeck had been working on prior to their visits to the camps. When Steinbeck's novel debuted on 14 April 1939, Bristol's photographs remained unpublished. When the book became a bestseller -- it sold over 200,000 copies in its first two months of release -- LIFE published a few of Bristol's photographs, although not in the social documentary...