Dead white guy author John Steinbeck actually invented the woke apology
The novel ‘Tortilla Flat’ had some, um, issues
When you think of political correctness, consummate white-guy novelist and Nobel Laureate John Steinbeck probably doesn’t come to mind. But way back in 1937, he actually apologized for the representation of people of color in his novel Tortilla Flat.
The book tells the story of a community of Northern California Hispanics called paisanos. In Steinbeck’s telling, they are joyous drinkers and dancers, who loaf and down wine and live in happy community with another. The author was earnest in his admiration for the paisanos, but his portrayal would make many modern readers uncomfortable.
Steinbeck had grown up around the paisanos in his hometown of Salinas, gathering a special sympathy after working alongside them on sugar beet farms as a teenager. These experiences would help form his politics and worldview, including his allegiance to the worker and to the poor. It’s easy to take the author at his word: that he was not conscious of any feeling but affection for the paisanos, who he appreciated for their hard work and their ability to claim dignity and joy on the margins of society.
But the road to racial condescension can be paved with good intentions. At some point during the reception of his novel, Steinbeck considered he had made a mistake. In an introduction to the reprint of Tortilla Flat, he wrote:
When this book was written, it did not occur to me that paisanos were curious or quaint, dispossessed or underdoggish. They are people whom I know and like, who merge with their habitat. In men this is called philosophy, and it is a fine thing.
Had I known that these stories and these people would be considered quaint, I think I never should have have written them… If I have done them harm by telling a few of their stories I am sorry. It will never happen again.
Steinbeck’s plea here so closely mirrors the structure of the modern political correctness apology, he may well have invented the template. First, he asserts his sympathy and allegiance to his subject, then defends why he told the story in the first place, explaining his intentions and the book’s aesthetic merit. Then, he switches gears by saying he was irresponsible in his presentation, and leaves us with the assurance he’s changed his perspective. Now, Steinbeck might have said, I am woke.
And ever since, we have seen droves of public statements similar to Steinbeck’s. Beat for beat, it resembles Lena Dunham’s apology for her recent comments on Odell Beckham, Jr. And it’s likely to appear similar to many more to come.
Reviews of Tortilla Flat were mostly glowing. “I can’t reflect,” said one critic in the San Francisco Chronicle, “the charm, the humor, the pathos, the wit and wisdom and warm humanity which illuminate every one of Mr. Steinbeck’s pages.” Another reviewer at the New York Herald even commended Steinbeck for imbuing the paisanos with what he called a “special life and sharpness.”
Of course, the novel’s reception was mostly — if not entirely — formed by white male writers. There was no fury of blog posts blasting Steinbeck’s embarrassing depictions, no barrage of angry tweets for the author to address. In the end, no one who had the platform to speak about the book was really offended by it. The Monterey County chamber of commerce was worried about the book, but only in how far the author’s depiction of its Hispanic community might go in scaring away tourists (it did not). The outrage we see celebrities and public figures beholden to today was notably absent.
So why did John Steinbeck make this vulnerable and public apology? Ironically, what tipped the author off to his possible misdeeds was not how readers objected to the book, but in how they actually liked it. To its readers, who found themselves in the middle of the Great Depression, Tortilla Flat was a comedy about quaint people who could live happily without much money. And it was this sort of soft reading that compelled Steinbeck to wonder if he had catered to the wrong tastes.
“I wrote these stories because they were true stories and because I liked them,” Steinbeck argued. “But literary slummers have taken these people up with the vulgarity of duchesses who are amused and sorry for a peasantry.”
So, it was not by the appeals of the victims, but the grotesque enjoyment of the bullies that bothered the author.
Since its publication, Steinbeck scholars have grown “increasingly uneasy (and even embarrassed) about the portrayal of the paisanos in Tortilla Flat,” writes Thomas French in his study of the author. Arthur C. Pettit reflected that “Tortilla Flat stands as the clearest example in American literature of the Mexican as jolly savage…The novel contains characters varying little from the most negative Mexican stereotypes.” And in 1973, critic Philip D. Ortega concluded that Tortilla Flat was “a sad book in more ways than John Steinbeck may have ever imagined.”
John Steinbeck may have anticipated the dual expectation for the artist to be both skillful and politically conscious, but that has not been enough to protect him from the consequences of coming up short.
