America the Pardoxical
“Paradox and Dream” is an essay published in a collection that was the last book to be published while Steinbeck was still alive. The subject of the essay is the persistent irony of the American dream; this is a work that constantly situates the paradox between what Americans think of themselves and how they actually act upon those images. For instance:
“Sometimes we seem to be a nation of public puritans and private profligates.”
“Some Thoughts on Juvenile Delinquency”
In 1955—at the height of the fear of leather jacketed thugs somewhat personified in the iconic TV figure Fonzie—Steinbeck published an article in the Saturday Review on the subject of juvenile delinquency which essentially boils the problem down to one of psychology. Parents don’t accept responsibility for their kids which leaves the kid looking elsewhere for the kind of social bond necessary to avoid thuggery. He frames this debate within a metaphor:
“I believe that man is a double thing—a group animal and at the same time an individual. And it occurs to me that he cannot successfully be the second until he has fulfilled the first."
New York City
In “The Making of a New Yorker” Steinbeck recalls his first glimpse of the only city he would ever call home as a young man from the country newly arrived in 1925 as he is forced to take in the whole perspective of the tall buildings and the bright lights glistening through the snowfall:
“There was something about monstrous about it”
Why "Camping is for the Birds"
May 1967. John Steinbeck explains why camping is for the birds and comes to a perfectly reasonable metaphorical conclusion:
“Anyone who doesn't prefer a good bed in a warm room to lumpy pine boughs and a sleeping bag that feels like a plaster cast is either insane or an abysmal liar.”
The 1930's
From the vantage point of 1960, Steinbeck published an article in 1960 in Esquire magazine titled “A Primer of the Thirties.” His characterization of the rough, long, difficult decade is typically unexpected in a perfect Steinbeck-esque way:
“The strange parade of the Thirties was drawing toward its close and time seemed to speed up.”
