Over the summer I read a novel I just learned about, called “Whose Names are Unknown,” by Sanora Babb. The novel is based on some of Babb’s early childhood experiences and extensive work she did helping people in California’s migrant labor camps during the Dust Bowl and Depression of the 1930s for the government’s Farm Security Administration (FSA).
In 1939 she completed “Whose Names are Unknown” but her publisher, who had initially been enthusiastic and given her an advance, declined to publish it. George Steinbeck, already a successful author, had just published “The Grapes of Wrath,” and it jumped immediately to the top of the bestseller list. The publisher felt another book on the same topic would be, in his words, “anticlimatic.” Babb’s novel wasn’t published until 2004, when she was 97 years old.
But Steinbeck’s novel owes a debt to Sanora Babb. Steinbeck began research in 1936 for articles that would eventually prompt him to write “The Grapes of Wrath,” visiting migrant labor camps that housed Midwestern Dust Bowl refugees. One of these camps was Weedpatch, near Bakersfield, California. Steinbeck befriended the camp’s administrator, Tom Collins. Collins helped Steinbeck’s research by giving him copies of detailed reports he and other FSA workers compiled about the people and conditions in the camp for the FSA.
One of the people who helped write these reports was Sanora Babb, who worked at Weedpatch, and was also friends with Tom Collins. Babb even briefly met Steinbeck twice.
The amount and type of Babb’s notes that Collins gave Steinbeck seems unclear. Did Babb give Collins personal, private notes she might have kept as part of her writing process? Or did Collins only have access to the notes she took for the official FSA reports? Regardless, Steinbeck had access to at least some of Babb’s observations to inform development of his novel.
Some have accused Steinbeck of stealing her work and publishing it as his own and of not doing his own research. This idea appears to be based largely on a blog post that makes some assertions without offering any evidence.
The executor of Babb’s literary estate said, “We have no proof that Steinbeck used her notes. We know her notes were given to him, but we don't know whether it was in the form of a FSA report of not. If that's the case, he wouldn't have known they came from her specifically. So we can't know to what degree he used her notes, or didn't, but at the end of the day, she was in the fields working with the migrants. She was the one doing that."
Writing in The Steinbeck Review, Michael J. Meyer noted numerous "obvious similarities" between the two novels "that even a cursory reading will reveal", such as Babb's account of two still-born babies, mirrored in Steinbeck's description of Rosasharn's baby. Among other scenes and themes repeated in both books: the villainy of banks, corporations, and company stores that charge exorbitant prices; the rejection of religion and the embrace of music as a means of preserving hope; descriptions of the fecundity of nature and agriculture, and the contrast with the impoverishment of the migrants; and the disparity between those willing to extend assistance to the migrants and others who view "Okies" as subhuman. Meyer, a Steinbeck bibliographer, stops short of labeling these parallels as plagiarism but concludes that "Steinbeck scholars would do well to read Babb — if only to see for themselves the echoes of Grapes that abound in her prose." (Source: Wikipedia)
I would say, however, that these similarities probably have more to do with the leftist, even socialist politics both writers espoused. Both were members of communist organizations at one point and both were strong supporters of labor activism and unions. Moreover, villainous banks, corporations, and company stores were, in fact, the cause of so many people’s poverty during the Depression and during the Dust Bowl. Clear-eyed, left-leaning writers like Babb and Steinbeck would certainly have elevated this fact in their fiction. Contrasting fecund nature/impoverished humanity, and disdain/kindness toward “Okies” seem to me like pretty obvious choices when writing about a human-made natural disaster (the Dust Bowl) and with a desire to humanize and generate sympathy toward both the victims of the disaster and toward the union movement. There is also a stillborn baby in both books, described in similar ways. That could, indeed have been something Steinbeck took from the FSA notes, as it is something he is unlikely to have witnessed himself. However, stillborn babies must have been pretty common in the FSA camps. Even this detail can’t be pinned directly to Babb’s notes, though it is suspicious.
In spite of these similarities, “Whose Names are Unknown” is very different from “The Grapes of Wrath.” Babb’s book explores the lives of her characters in ethnographic detail and portrays their lives and struggles with profound empathy and realism. It is clearly the work of someone intimately acquainted with the people and their moral universe, as well as the exacting minutiae of everyday life. Babb writes like an anthropologist, which is something I love about the book.
In “The Grapes of Wrath,” I think (and I am no Steinbeck scholar, heck haven’t even read the book since high school) Steinbeck was more concerned with creating a myth or grand narrative that encapsulated all of the good and bad aspects of America than he was with ethnographic truth. It has drama, good and evil, memorably flawed characters, and, importantly, an epic road trip that probably helped spawn the “road trip” genre of writing. It’s a book with many layers of meaning and emotional resonance. You don’t learn as much about the characters’ world and worldview as in Babb’s book, but you feel so much more and are moved to do something about it.
Babb felt she was a better writer than Steinbeck because her book was more realistic. If realism is the goal, I would agree with her. Her book is vastly superior to “Grapes” in that regard. But Steinbeck’s book is art. It’s a reflection of reality distorted and expanded into the level of myth or dream. Both books are really good, and really important.
I highly recommend reading “Whose Names are Unknown,” especially if you enjoyed “The Grapes of Wrath” or are particularly interested in Depression-era culture and politics. I don’t know if her book would have been successful if it had been published in 1939, though I suspect her publisher was wrong and it would have sold well enough. It’s also pretty clear that sexism played a big role here. I feel like the subtext of the publisher’s decision was another book about the Dust Bowl (BY A WOMAN) can’t compete with The Great White American Male Author.
