Beyond Cannery Row: On V.S. Naipul's "Steinbeck in Monterey"

Few writers of supreme talent in this country and others have ever enjoyed the privilege of being true living legends in both print and public, and even fewer of those have been accorded a lasting posthumous celebrity where entire communities are devoted to keeping the memory of the author and the work alive. Perhaps as an addition to Barthes’ notion of the death of the author, V.S. Naipul’s travelogue essay “Steinbeck in Monterey” (1970; collected in The Writer and the World, 2002) exemplifies this rare public worship in America, documenting the efforts of the residents of Monterey, California to revive the tourist trade there around their acclaimed native son, particularly the squalid, near-deserted Cannery Row of John Steinbeck’s 1945 titular novel. “A writer is in the end not his books,” Naipul establishes first and foremost, “but his myth. And that myth is in the keeping of others.” Unfortunately for the residents of Monterey (and Steinbeck’s literary legacy?), the myth is hardly benign as he sees it. The economic concerns of their town almost pale in comparison to the cultural baggage of a communal memory which conflicts with the author’s former attitudes, specifically Steinbeck’s apathy and dismissal of the Row after leaving it for New York City to become a major figure in American letters. Even the unintended consequences of The Grapes of Wrath in longstanding public perception of Californians’ mistreatment of “Okies” like the Joads may create impediments to move communities forward, if we take Naipul’s concluding interactions with a local real estate developer at face value. This is the other side of creative writing seldom visited, and somewhat paradoxical: the idea that great literary works, great authors can in fact be harmful in their short-sightedness, at least if their readers don’t know the moment when to let go.

Despite Naipul’s inherent critique of American literary sentimentality retained by twentieth-century readers, tempered with his opinion that the author himself deserves “some responsibility” for the quagmire Monterey found itself in following Steinbeck’s death in 1968, I imagine most established writers do not pay attention to the temporal concerns of their work’s influence, even as they may or may not consider any ethical responsibilities to the text (accurate cultural representations, etc.), to say nothing of possibly revisiting the effects of their works in the world of living readers. Indeed, creative writers could read into Naipul’s notion that Steinbeck, were he alive, should be pressed into resolving the problem in Monterey in some way, as farfetched as that may seem. No writer sets about a work as potential popular lore—and nor should they, either, at the risk of self-aggrandizement (which there are always plenty of opportunities for later, of course). Yet “Steinbeck in Monterey” reminds us, in that characteristically bitter delivery of Naipul’s which critic Edward Said always found fault with, that addressing the potential negative public effect(s) of their work may soon become the new standard grievance for today’s authors to wrestle with.