Working Days

For the last 16 years my favorite novel of all time has been The Grapes of Wrath. So I feel like a fool upon realizing for the first time just now that his journal while writing the book is a book.

While writing his greatest novel in 1938, Steinbeck kept a journal that chronicled his torments, self-doubts, late and false starts, reversals and other struggles to achieve his goal. There are references to his typist-wife Carol Henning, his agent Elizabeth Otis, his publisher Pascal Covici and to the documentary filmmaker Pare Lorentz, whose style strongly influenced the structure of Steinbeck's novel. Entry #100, 26 October 1938, ends, "Finished this dayand I hope to God it's good."