BS: Steinbeck out of the closet...

Subject: RE: BS: Steinbeck out of the closet...
From: Riginslinger
Date: 04 May 07 - 04:11 PM

"Wow. Sweet Thursday is my favorite novel of all time"

            I liked "Sweet Thursday" as well, but I can't help but wonder if any publisher would release "Tortilla Flats" today.

Subject: RE: BS: Steinbeck out of the closet...
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 04 May 07 - 03:56 PM

I first made that pilgrimage to Canary Row in '62. Steinbeck was quite important to me then. Ed Ricketts too. Got to know Joel Hedgpeth in Oregon and learned a bit more about Ricketts.

MANY years later, Carol and I were having dinner with Joseph Campbell at George and Gerry Armstrong's home in Wilmette, Illinois. I didn't know a thing about Campbell except that, from the conversation going on, I realized that he had been one of the crowd hanging out at Rickett's lab in Monterey, California---with Steinbeck and Toby Street and the whole crowd. I was freaked out!!! I steered the conversation that night away from mythology and comparative religious polemics and toward all those heady times at the Pacific Biological. Campbell didn't want to talk about ANY of that stuff. The era and those people didn't seem to interest him at all--to say the least.

Another few years later, reading a Steinbeck biography, I learned that Carol Steinbeck, John's wife then, had had an affair of sorts with Joseph Campbell---and that had led to the dissolution of the marriage. -------

No wonder that Joe Campbell was uneasy when I kept pushing him.

I'm sitting here smiling, and thinking to myself: Amazing stuff do go down when you're having a life !!!!!

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Steinbeck out of the closet...
From: Greg B
Date: 04 May 07 - 03:16 PM

Wow. Sweet Thursday is my favorite novel of all time.

Read it the first time as a freshman in high school; had a
tattered paperback copy issued to me. Liked it so much I asked
the teacher if I could keep it. I still have it.

I've been down to Cannery Row, before and after its revival,
taken in and photographed all the old haunts of Doc, Mack,
and the boys. Actually sang sea music at the grand opening
of the aquarium.

I admire the real life Ed Ricketts as much as his fictional
archetype.

I don't suppose I can afford that manuscript though.

Subject: RE: BS: Steinbeck out of the closet...
From: open mike
Date: 04 May 07 - 02:59 PM

help preserve history?
to the highest bidder?
if preservation was the
key here, the manuscript
would be donated to a
foundation or similar
institution whose aim
is not for profit. such as:
Steinbeck Center

Subject: RE: BS: Steinbeck out of the closet...
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 04 May 07 - 02:58 PM

"The auction could generate more than $500,000."

Begs the question as to who will be the recipient of the money ; Steinbeck's estate, or the Widow Martin. Surely it won't be Eisenberg, since he's doing this out of a sense of "responsibility".

Great news for us Steinbeck fans either way!

Subject: BS: Steinbeck out of the closet...
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 May 07 - 02:44 PM

LA writer finds Steinbeck manuscripts

1 hour, 29 minutes ago



LOS ANGELES - A handwritten draft of John Steinbeck's novel "Sweet Thursday," along with an unpublished story and other works, will be auctioned by a writer who says they were sitting in a closet for 50 years.

"This stuff was unbelievable — just laying in a box," said Joel Eisenberg. "I had this `Aha!' moment when I realized not only what I had here, but what I had the responsibility to do."

He said the material belonged to a friend, the late theater producer Ernest H. Martin. Martin's widow asked Eisenberg in 2004 to sort through a box that had been sitting in her Hollywood Hills closet.

Eisenberg found a 188-page manuscript of "Sweet Thursday," the sequel to Steinbeck's famous "Cannery Row"; a manuscript from another book, "The Log from the Sea of Cortez"; an unpublished story, "If This Be Treason," set during the McCarthy era; the unfinished draft of a musical comedy called "The Bear Flag Cafe" and carbon copies of 13 Steinbeck letters from 1953.

The collection will be auctioned May 24 in San Francisco in two lots. The auction could generate more than $500,000.

"How many times in your life can you touch history, help preserve history? I truly feel ... I made a difference in saving important literature," Eisenberg told the Daily News of Los Angeles.