Still not getting your point, Phil. It's customary to start things out with some sort of expository chapter, or at least a paragraph. I'm trying to figure out where you're going with your Tom Joad/Woody Guthrie link. Yes, Woody wrote a song about Tom Joad after seeing the 1940 Grapes of Wrath movie. And yes, Woody grew up in Oklahoma and moved to Los Angeles - but Woody moved to LA to seek stardom, not to farm the Central Valley. So, where does the "Tom Joad myth" fit into all this?

I haven't read Cray and Kaufman, so I can't comment about them; but Joe Klein's biography doesn't mythologize Woody. Klein portrays Guthrie as a troubled person, perhaps made so by his Huntington's disease. Now, it's true that Woody's 1943 "hard-driving, truth-telling autobiography" Bound for Glory is generally viewed as self-aggrandizing myth - and David Carradine perpetuated that myth in the 1976 movie.

So, Phil, I think it would be good for you to take the time to explain to us where you're going with this.

-Joe Offer-