Choice Review

The undemanding series format employed here makes possible a slim volume of readily assimilable essays that, while having not all that much new to say, should be of use to undergraduates looking for something convenient to plagiarize from. The editor's well-written introduction is followed by only four other essays--by Stephen Railton, Nellie Y. McKay, William Howarth, and Leslie Gossage. Two of these deal interestingly with the novel's journalistic basis and its conversion into film, but that leaves only two pieces committed to dealing with a masterpiece of fiction sheerly as fiction. Readers may be baffled at first by the handling of annotational referents, since one chapter appears to be proudly unsponsored in this regard. None of the writers involved in this project appears to be a Steinbeck specialist, which may be healthy; but such a specialist as Robert DeMott might be pleased at the attention William Howarth gives to filmmaker Pare Lorentz (though the late Virgil Thomson might not appreciate having his name misspelled in Howarth's essay). There are some photographs by Howard Bristol and Dorothea Lange but, regrettably, no index. And to refer to the "selected bibliography" as such is an example of extreme understatement. Still, there is a youthful spirit about this collection that its fuller predecessors did not always posses. J. M. Ditsky University of Windsor