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Then My Arm Glassed Up is a one-page, nearly Unsatisfied with the first draft, he abandoned itstream-of-consciousness essay on sports that first and started over with a new story, changing its titleappeared in Sports Illustrated on December 20, to To an Unknown God.Every publishing house1965.Steinbeck veers between lists of sports that that Steinbeck contacted rejected this second drafthe likes and dislikes, and a more philosophical look of the novel.Frustrated and nearly broke, he setat the history of sport and its contemporary mean- the manuscript aside to write what would becomeings.Steinbeck begins by declaring that he is an his second published novel, THE PASTURES OFobserver, rather than a participant.The title of the HEAVEN.Upon completing The Pastures of Heaven,essay refers to the end of his javelin-throwing days, Steinbeck rewrote To a God Unknown for a thirdwhen his arm glassed up.He looks briefly at the and final time.In 1933, ROBERT O.BALLOU pub-derivation of sport: both the word and the activity.lished the novel.Team sports represent battles and individual sports This book shows the clear influence of a youngprovide an outlet for single combat.He does not scholar whom Steinbeck had met in MONTEREY,admire sport hunters, although he thinks fox hunt- CALIFORNIA, during the time the book was ining serves the purpose of keeping the population of progress.JOSEPH CAMPBELL, who later becamethe English aristocracy in check and provides fine famous for his comparative studies of humanhorses.(The fox population isn t affected, he mythology, met the author through EDWARD RICK-observes dryly.) He loves fishing, but not big-game ETTS, and the three spent many long hours dis-fishing.He wonders if senior citizens should have cussing literature, psychology, and religion.To atheir own sports, like vine racing, in which two God Unknown displays Steinbeck s early explo-combatants plant a vine, and wait to see which ration of man s role in nature, of nonteleologicalgrows faster.(The same can be done with oak thinking, and of the ultimate flaws in the Americantrees.) Then he goes on to deplore bullfighting, dream.which he has researched and seen in person.He Unfortunately the novel fails on many levels,sneaks in a poke at ERNEST HEMINGWAY here, imply- perhaps reflecting its origin, and the massive revi- To a God Unknown 215sions required by Steinbeck to fit his evolving view Ocean.The protagonist, Joseph Wayne, leavesof its themes and characters.Toby Street originally Vermont for California after receiving his dyingconceived a three-act play, dealing with a father, father s blessing, even though he is the third son ofAndy Wane, his adoring relationship with his col- four.He travels westward in search of land,lege daughter, Susie, and an intermingled, obsessive because he recognizes there is not enough familylove for his ranch land.Upset by his daughter s land available in Vermont to be divided among allgrowing indifference to his own mystical connec- of the brothers.Spending his first night alone ontion to his property, and blaming it on her new- his newly claimed homestead in the valley offound interest in books, Andy forbids Susie to Nuestra Señora, Joseph is overcome by his ecstasy,return for her senior year.He sets a further barrier and copulates with the earth, spilling his seed inby refusing to sell forest acreage to a lumber com- the ground in the first of many fertility rituals.pany to pay for the tuition.By the time Street Shortly thereafter, Joseph feels the spirit of hisasked Steinbeck for help with the play, it had dead father enter a magnificent tree on the prop-already taken a direction that disturbed him: hints erty, and begins to hold conversations with, andof incest, and sexual attachments to an earth god- even to make sacrifices to the tree in an informaldess.The title, The Green Lady, referred to this rite of ancestor worship.spiritually perverse connection, a Mother Earth Eventually his brothers and their wives joinwho should be worshipped and subdued at the Joseph in California, without explaining the aban-same time, whether literally in the normal process donment of the family farm in Vermont.But eachof agriculture, or figuratively, in the symbolic per- represents a different aspect of spiritualism.Theson of Susie.oldest brother, Thomas, almost animistic, with aThe subject matter intrigued Steinbeck.Never mystical connection to animals but not colored byone to be put off by middle-class moral sensibilities, sentimentality, arrives with his wife, Rama, whoand already deeply involved in the study of myth, becomes a physical embodiment of the Earthpantheism, animism, and the origins of religion, he Mother.Burton, the second brother, a pious andthrew himself into the project off and on for almost Puritan fundamentalist, who disapproves of any-six years, often to the neglect of his other writing.thing deviating from The Word, brings his wife,Throughout his career, Steinbeck labored over his Harriet, and lives an almost monastic life, havingwriting, trying to find the perfect diction and kept the Lord s admonition to be fruitful and multi-rhythm for all of his works, and to make the lan- ply four times.The youngest of the brothers, Benjy,guage flow easily and apparently effortlessly [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]

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