A forgotten Dust Bowl novel to rival The Grapes of Wrath

When The Grapes of Wrath came out 77 years ago, it was an instant hit. The story of a poor family escaping the Dust Bowl sold 430,000 copies in a year and catapulted John Steinbeck to literary greatness. But it also prevented the publication of another novel, silencing the voice of a writer with a closer connection to Oklahoma because she herself was a member of the immigrant community. Related Content This 1,000-Mile Storm Showed the Terror of Life in the Dust Bowl

Sanora Barb wrote The Name Is Unknown at the same time as Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath, using many of the same research materials. Although both novels are about displaced farmers heading to California, they are very different books. Barb's novel is a close look at several families that draw on her childhood in Oklahoma. Considered by many to be his masterpiece, Steinbeck's work is a novel full of metaphors and imagery. In many ways, these books are written on the same theme: one is redundant and detailed, the other grand and ambitious. One spent more time in Oklahoma and the other spent more time in California. One focuses on individual characters, the other attempts to tell a broader story about America. Preferring one novel to another is a matter of taste; Sanora Babu naturally prefers her own work.

"I think I'm a better writer," Barb told the Chicago Tribune in 2004 that his book was not as good as My Reality.

In 1938, Babb, a 31-year-old editor and writer, volunteered to join the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to help immigrant farmers flow into California. As the assistant to Tom Collins, manager of the Arvin health camp (the basis for One Week's Watch in The Grapes of Wrath), Barb traveled around the Central Valley, working with immigrants to create better living conditions. She was moved by the perseverance of the workers she met, and wrote to her sister: "How brave they all are. I did not hear a single exclamation! They are not broken and docile, but they are not plain.

Sanora Babu spent a long time researching and writing reports on immigrant farmers (Broadstreetonline.org)

Part of the job was to write field notes about workers' conditions, detailing activities, diet. , entertainment, speeches, beliefs and other observations, these are natural materials for a novel. Soon, Barb began to write a story based on what she saw in the refugee camp and her own experiences. The daughter of a restless gambler, she was born in Oklahoma in 1907. The family moved to Kansas and Colorado, then returned to Oklahoma when Barb was in high school (although The Gambler's Daughter" was not allowed to speak at her graduation ceremony, but Barb was valedictorian of her class.) She witnessed a major sandstorm while visiting her mother in 1934 and heard the impact of the crisis on the farmers she had known as a child. Impact.

She also learned what it was like to be poor. In 1929, she moved to Los Angeles to work as a reporter, only to find that her jobs dried up due to the stock market crash, and for a time she was homeless and forced to sleep. in the park until she was hired as a secretary at Warner Bros. She later found a job as a screenwriter at a radio station,

All this, plus the notes she took while visiting the camp, None were known. In 1939, Barb wrote four chapters to Random House editor Bennett Cerf, who recognized her talent and offered to publish the book. What Barb didn't know, however, was that Collins had given her notes to Steinbeck, who was busy working on The Grapes of Wrath. The two met in 1936, when Steinbeck was under the influence. Employed by the San Francisco News, he wrote a series of articles on immigration titled "Harvesting the Gypsies," which were later reproduced in a pamphlet by the Simon J. Lubin Society. Alongside Dorothea Lange's iconic photo helped the public understand the severity of the crisis, Tom Collins, the source of much of Steinbeck's research material, stood in front of a tent, where an American cinematographer had studied. Slender Man, Old Man and the Sea, Funny Lady, etc. They had to postpone their marriage until California lifted the ban on interracial marriage in 1948; they remained together until Howe's death in 1976.

Babb continued. She wrote several other books, including every essay in the memoir "The Owl," an unnamed book that would have cemented her status as a Depression-era writer like Steinbeck or Upton Sinclair, but instead It remained in a drawer. Finally, in 2004, the University of Oklahoma Press published the novel; Barb was 97.

This all raises the question: Did Steinbeck know he had a writer's notes? Most likely not.

"We have no evidence that Steinbeck used her notes," Dirkop said. We know her notes were for him, but we don't know if it was in the form of a Financial Services Authority report. .

If that were the case, he wouldn't have known they came specifically from her. So we don't know to what extent he used her notes, or not, but at the end, she was in the fields working with the settlers. It was her.

Shillinglaw firmly supports the Steinbeck team and he disagrees. "The idea that Steinbeck used Barb's notes undermines the fact that since 1936 he had done his own research through fieldwork, as well as using Tom Collins' research," she said. "What else could Barb add to this? I don't know.

Although the two books differ in story and tone, their mon backgrounds lead to strange similarities. For example, Both novels feature stillborn babies; Babb's baby is described as "curled up, wrinkled, and strange-looking" while Steinbeck's baby is a "blue, shriveled little mummy." They both describe company farms. The corruption of Panyu stores, the women giving birth in tents, and the small animals that struggle with the landscape, Babb's insects and Steinbeck's turtles are both based on Tom Collins, Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath". ” The work diary shows a man absorbed in creating a work of art, a task that drove and threatened him. He wrote: “If I can get this book right, it will be a really good book, one. A truly American book. ". "But I was troubled by my own ignorance and incompetence.

He was haunted by the thought that Babb might not have been in his mind at all, although she later said he had met her twice while researching the novel. Her situation was due to time and age. Sexism caused. The famous male writer's important work crushed the unknown female writer's efforts.

Babb died a year later, knowing that her first novel would eventually be rejected. Read, 65 years later, she wrote it.

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