Crossing the Oceans: The Future of Steinbeck Studies in America, Japan, and Beyond

I would lIke to begIn by thankIng Dr. Kiyoshi Nakayama and the John Steinbeck Society of Japan for welcoming the New Steinbeck Society of America as a participant in the Sixth International Steinbeck Congress. I believe the professionalism and courtesy of the John Steinbeck Society of Japan should be the model for all scholarly and social activities within the Steinbeck world. In 1988 John Ditsky gave a keynote address entitled “John Steinbeck—Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” which was subsequently reprinted in the Steinbeck Quarterly and later in John Steinbeck: A Centennial Tribute. In this address Ditsky examines the criticism of the past, with its tendency to focus on the writer’s “linear development”—Steinbeck’s early period, the Depression and working class Steinbeck, the war writer/ correspondent, the man obsessed with morality and the Arthurian myth (177). Although such categories may have been necessary in giving us an initial sense of the man and writer, Ditsky argues that present and future Steinbeck scholars are now coming to see a “continuity” and “oneness” in the writer’s body of work (179). Instead of taking the all too easy path of judging Steinbeck “on the basis of whether or not one agrees with him” or relying on the journals and letters so the author can “explain himself,” Ditsky predicts that future critics will instead apply “critical or philosophy theory” in an “effort to see him whole” (180, 182). Here I would like to continue John Ditsky’s train of thought by focusing on two ambitious themes: what is amiss within Steinbeck studies today both critically and professionally, and what we can do in the future to address these shortcomings. As