Working Days: The Journals of the Grapes of Wrath

If you enjoyed reading Grapes of Wrath, or any other books by Steinbeck...get this book. If you want to follow a writer through the process of creating an important novel, get this book. The daily journal entries written by Steinbeck show the ebb and flow of his moods, his confidence that he was indeed writing a great book, and those days when he felt that he lacked the talent to pull it off. It is rare to get the opportunity to watch an artist create....this is pretty darn close. And a good read!

Working Days is for Steinbeck readers or any student of creative processes and habits of successful people. John Steinbeck wrote the beefy The Grapes of Wrath like a freight train, averaging 2,000 words a day in longhand, from June through October, 1938. He did not do this in isolation. He got up an average of five days a week, had breakfast, wrote in his journal, then went to work until early evening, while hammers from neighborhood construction pounded relentlessly, amid human intrusions of all kinds, a souring stomach and self doubt. He was a purposeful journal-keeper, using it to set the goals for the day, to talk himself into character development and plot movement. No doubt the journal also served to subconsiously swat away the distractions so he could focus on the work. Working Days is edited by Robert Demott who has seemingly devoted his career to the meticulous scrutiny of Steinbeck's life, works and habits. If there can be a criticism of this volume, it's that Demott hovers too much; his is, for instance, one of the longest critical introductions I've come across. But this does not detract from the enjoyment of crawling around in Steinbeck's mind, which the journal freely permits.

This journal of Steinbeck's progress through Grapes of Wrath gives an inside view of what was on his mind when writing the novel. Interesting to see what Grapes of Wrath looked like from the inside out.