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of the new age: “Some day there’ll be big houses in the valley, stone houses and gardens, golf links and big gates and iron work.” The grand illusions and dreams of dynasty of the original settlers have been replaced by the commercial interests of the modem age, and the Edenic promise of a verdant nature has drifted back into the past, lost forever in the broken dreams and thwarted ambitions
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that once belonged to the Pastures of Heaven.
    John Steinbeck’s reputation as a writer does not rest primarily on Pastures, but it is a major work of American fiction, and it was pivotal in his career. In it he discovered the central subject of his greatest work, the simple people of the Salinas Valley, struggling against the odds, against economic deprivation and the legacy of a past that threatens to overwhelm them, ideas that inform The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden. His Naturalistic use of characters who are psychologically deformed, or obsessed, or driven by a curse, he was to use again and again, most brilliantly in Of Mice and Men and In Dubious Battle. Steinbeck went on to write other collections of interrelated stories, containing some of his very best fiction: Tortilla Flat and especially The Long Valley, which features perhaps his best known story, “The Red Pony.” Many of the themes of Pastures —the destructive potential of conformity, the dangers of self-delusion and false social values—he continued to explore throughout his career, even through The Winter of Our Discontent in 1961. Perhaps it is not too much to claim that the central components of the greatness of Steinbeck’s work, his basic style and subject and fundamental themes, have their origin not in his most celebrated novels but in an often ignored collection of stories that appeared, unceremoniously, in 1932, The Pastures of Heaven.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
    Astro, Richard. John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts: The Shaping of a Novelist. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1973.
    Benson, Jackson J. The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer. New York: Viking, 1984.
    Ferrell, Keith. John Steinbeck: The Voice of the Land. New York: M. Evans, 1986.
    Fontenrose, Joseph. John Steinbeck: An Introduction and Interpretation. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1963.
    â€”. Steinbeck’s Unhappy Valley: A Study of The Pastures of Heaven. Berkeley: Joseph Fontenrose, 1981.
    French, Warren. John Steinbeck. New York: Twayne, 1961.
    Gladstein, Mimi Reisel. “Female Characters in Steinbeck: Minor Characters of Major Importance?” Steinbeck’s Women: Essays in Criticism, ed. Tetsumaro Hayashi. Steinbeck Monograph Series No. 9. Muncie: Steinbeck Society, 1979, pp. 17-25.
    Hearle, Kevin. “The Pastures of Contested Pastoral Discourse.” Steinbeck Quarterly, 26, No. 1-2 (1993): 38-45.
    Hughes, R. S. Beyond The Red Pony: A Reader’s Companion to Steinbeck’s Complete Short Stories. Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1987.
    â€”. John Steinbeck: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1989.
    Ingram, Forrest L. Representative Short Story Cycles of the Twentieth Century: Studies in a Literary Genre. The Hague: Mouton, 1971.
    Levant, Howard. The Novels of John Steinbeck: A Critical Study. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1974.
    Lisca, Peter. The Wide World of John Steinbeck. New York: Gordian Press, 1981.
    Mann, Susan Garland. The Short Story Cycle: A Genre Companion and Reference Guide. Westport: Greenwood, 1989.
    Mawer, Randall R. “Takashi Kato, ‘Good American’: The Central Episode in Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven.” Steinbeck Quarterly 13 (Winter-Spring 1980): 23-31.
    Mortlock, Melanie. “The Eden Myth as Paradox: An Allegorical Reading of The Pastures of Heaven.” Steinbeck Quarterly 11 (Winter 1978): 6-15.
    Owens, Louis. John Steinbeck’s Re- Vision of America. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985.
    Peterson, Richard.