Citizen Steinbeck: Giving Voice to the People (Contemporary American Literature) - Hardcover

Robert McParland is professor of English and chair of the Department of English at Felician College. His books include Charles Dickens’s American Audience (Lexington, 2010) and Beyond Gatsby: How Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Writers of the 1920s Shaped American Culture (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).

"Citizen Steinbeck: Giving Voice to the People provides a wonderful and fascinating overview of the life and literary achievement of John Steinbeck. English professor Robert McParland tells a detailed story about Steinbeck's life. As a writer, Steinbeck went beyond being a regionalist to become one of America's most famous writers. Citizen Steinbeck is a treat for those who have read Steinbeck's writing. The book is rich in factual details about his life and times and literary creations. One gets a fuller sense of the writer here, but there are subjects too large for this book, especially for readers with postmodernist, feminist, and sociological concerns. Steinbeck was a controversial writer who represented his times, finding his success in the Great Depression years and the turbulent and difficult times that followed." - Ryder W. Miller, Electronic Green Journal 1.41 (January 1, 2018).

In the introduction to Citizen Steinbeck: Giving Voice to the People Robert McParland writes that Arthur Miller once commented about John Steinbeck that no other American author "with the possible exception of Mark Twain, so deeply penetrated the political life of the country." (ix) This is a good quotation to keep in mind as one reads McParland's book, because it helps to clarify its overarching purpose...In some ways the book is a critical biography, in some ways it is a thesis-driven argument, and in some ways it is a casebook for students and Steinbeck fans who want a basic introduction to the writer's works. The theme that Steinbeck was politically and civically engaged as an artist is the one thread that holds the book's three approaches and uses together.     The structure of the book lends itself well to the third use. After an introduction that lays out the title concept of Steinbeck as a "citizen" writer throughout his career, a twenty page biographical sketch is followed by a chapter devoted to the writer's early fiction. This chapter surveys his quest to capture the language and social sense of everyday people but also to depict heroic/mythic figures like the pirate Henry Morgan and Merlin. By the end of this chapter McParland has convincingly demonstrated that Steinbeck found his voice by foregrounding literary and social realism-and sometime naturalism-but also by including mythic and symbolic layers in his work.... Starting on the third chapter, on In Dubious Battle, McParland concentrates on the Steinbeck as citizen thesis and examines his commitment to social justice, his New Deal liberalism, and his speaking for fellow citizens who were increasingly disenfranchised by the Great Depression, especially in California. To me this chapter is especially good because McParland lays out the case for the other side... - Steinbeck Review, Thomas E. Barden, Vol.14, No.1 (2017): 95-98. 

Polymath Robert McParland writes fiction, music, and literary criticism. His books have focused on American readers' responses to such diverse writers as Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In Citizen Steinbeck, McParland provides a review of how readers learn empathy and ethical practice from Steinbeck's work...In fact, this is a useful, respectable handbook on Steinbeck's life and writing enhanced by ample notes and a scholarly bibliography. The book reviews screenplays, film adaptations, and readership controversies, asking for a reappraisal of the Nobel Prize winning author. McParland assesses Steinbeck's relevance in conjunction with contemporary concerns such as human rights, social justice and global crises. Particularly pertinent is McParland's discussion of a small town's resistance to Nazi occupation in Steinbeck's 1942 novel The Moon is Down. McParland's case for reviving Steinbeck should inspire teachers and professors to put Steinbeck back on the syllabus. - Choice

McParland provides a comprehensive overview on the life and work of John Steinbeck. Yet, what makes this critical study different from other treatments of the novelist is the emphasis on what McParland calls "the public value of Steinbeck's work" and "what readers today may discover in his stories." The author is particularly interested in how teachers instruct their students to value the relevance of Steinbeck's novels to their lives today. This fascinating study is recommended to anyone who cares about the significance of Steinbeck the man and the writer. - Library Journal, Morris Hounian, September 1, 2016.