Obscene in the Extreme

June 23, 2008
During May of 1939, as the Nazis were burning books throughout Germany, the people of Bakersfield Calif., did exactly the same thing with John Steinbeck’s new bestseller, The Grapes of Wrath
. As Wartzman (The King of California
) shows in this intriguing account, the banning of Steinbeck’s masterpiece throughout California’s Kern County was orchestrated by rich local growers: men who were busy exploiting scores of Joad families, the very men Steinbeck exposed in his novel. As a pretext, the growers cited, among other things, Steinbeck’s use of “foul” language (“bastard,” “bitch”) and vivid scenes such as Rose of Sharon, having lost her baby, offering her milk-filled breast to a starving man. One lone librarian, Gretchen Knief, led the charge against the censors, but the book—by then a Pulitzer Prize winner—remained banned a year later. While all this was happening, Steinbeck was suffering the strains of his collapsing first marriage. In telling this unique tale, Wartzman artfully weaves the personal and the political in a book that readers will find engaging on more than one level.

September 15, 2008
On August 21, 1939, the Kern County (CA) Board of Supervisors voted to ban "The Grapes of Wrath" from its schools and libraries to the chagrin of librarian Gretchen Knief. Wartzman ("The King of California: J.G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire") uses the ban of Steinbeck's best-selling novel as a springboard to discuss the forces that led to itforces that had more to do with politics than morality. He uses the censorship case as an opportunity to shine a wider light on the political and economic climate of south central California in the wake of the 1930s dust bowl migration, exploring the larger issues that divided radicals and reactionaries, labor and management, social reformers and anticommunists. Detailed portraits of the local businessmen, politicians, and labor leaders caught up in the struggle enliven the text. Recommended for research libraries, especially those with strong collections in labor history and American studies.William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2008
By looking at just one book, this case study of an attempt to censor John Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath exposes the wrongheadedness of censorship in a way that more theoretical arguments often fail to do. It happened in 1939, just after the books publication, when Grapes was a massive best-seller. It was Stanley Abel, a member of the Kern County, California, Board of Supervisors, who started the movement to ban the book (in the novel, the Joad family settles in Kern County). He was supported by a cotton grower in the county and by a farmer who took personal offense to the way Steinbeck portrayed the county and its people. Luckily, there were also sensible people, like librarian Gretchen Knief, who spearheaded a movement to keep the novel out of the clutches of the book banners. This is a skillfully written, passionate book about a shameful episode in the history of American literature and politics. Wartzman has really done his homework, and he tells the story dramatically, using character and dialogue to propel the narrative.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)