Sweet Thursday Read Online Free PDF

says words he believes them, even if he thinks he is lying,” she is suggesting that language (not only experience) is a reality, and a seductive one at that.
    Far from being a pooped-out failure because he abandoned critical realism after The Grapes of Wrath , Steinbeck was a prophetic postmodernist, a journeyer in a literary fun house, and a traveler in the land behind the mirror of art. In Sweet Thursday the mirror had become nearly silverless, so that we see his hand at work behind the curtain of realism, calling attention to the house of words he is building. For that reason, traditional disciplinary literary criticism won’t work effectively with a textual construct like Sweet Thursday or, for that matter, with much of what Steinbeck wrote in the last phase of his career. Authoring these texts, he authored himself anew and vice versa.
    Perhaps Sweet Thursday is not an overstuffed turkey but more like the gull that presides over the novel’s conclusion—earthbound on occasion but still capable of some startling flights of fancy, humor, and goodwill. Pascal Covici was correct—the novel sold with abandon—and while its commercial success justified Covici’s faith in Steinbeck as an enduring popular writer, just as its success fueled some critics’ scorn, there is, as with all Steinbeck’s work, a historical and personal context that provides background for understanding this delightful satiric novel. Sweet Thursday , the last book Steinbeck ever wrote about California, became at once an elegy to the departed Ricketts and a demonstration of creativity, as well as an homage to Steinbeck’s newly found emotional existence with Elaine and a farewell to the beloved landscape of his native state.
    R OBERT D E M OTT

Suggestions for Further Reading
    PRIMARY WORKS BY JOHN STEINBECK
    Note: Steinbeck’s long-lost handwritten manuscript of Sweet Thursday and a portion of early drafts of its predecessor, “Bear Flag,” which he gave to Broadway producer Ernest H. Martin, were discovered among Martin’s possessions in 2004 and subsequently auctioned by Pacific Book Auction Galleries in 2007. See http://www.pbagalleries.com. The typescript, carbon copy, and unrevised galley proofs of Sweet Thursday are housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, in Works, 1926–1966, Box 8, Folders 2–5. See http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/steinbeck.html#works.
    Steinbeck, John. “About Ed Ricketts.” The Log from the Sea of Cortez. New York: Viking Press, 1951, vii–lxvii.
    â€”——. Cannery Row . New York: Viking Press, 1945.
    â€”——. “Critics, Critics, Burning Bright” (1950). Steinbeck and His Critics: A Record of Twenty-five Years . E. W. Tedlock and C. V. Wicker, eds. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957, 43–47.
    â€”——. “Introduction.” The World of Li’l Abner by Al Capp. Foreword by Charles Chaplin. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Young with Ballantine Books, 1953, i–vi.
    â€”——. “Introduction Mack’s Contribution.” Unpublished autograph manuscript, typescript, and galley proofs of original extended Prologue to Sweet Thursday . Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, TX.
    â€”——. “Rationale.” In Tedlock and Wicker’s Steinbeck and His Critics , 308–9.
    Steinbeck, John, and Edward F. Ricketts. Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research . New York: Viking Press, 1941.
    CORRESPONDENCE, INTERVIEWS, ADAPTATIONS
    Fensch, Thomas. Steinbeck and Covici: The Story of a Friendship . Middlebury, VT: Paul S. Eriksson, 1979.
    Rodgers, Richard, and Oscar Hammerstein II. Pipe Dream. New York: Viking Press, 1956.
    Steinbeck, John. Conversations with John Steinbeck . Thomas Fensch, ed. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988.
    â€”——. Letters to