This article explores the dialogue that unfolded between the noted American novelist John Steinbeck (1902–1968) and President Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973) during the 1960s. In an era in which ...many American writers and intellectuals loudly protested Johnson for escalating the Vietnam War, Steinbeck stood out as a writer who supported the president’s domestic policies on civil rights as well as his foreign policy in Southeast Asia. Drawing on archival documents held in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and the Library of Congress, the article explores how Steinbeck’s years-long dialogue with Johnson linked liberal ideals for literature and government that are more often held apart in studies of Cold War America. Ultimately, this approach reveals that the unusual bond that formed between novelist and president articulated a measure of the complexity of Cold War American liberalism itself, which in the 1960s promoted the noble cause of civil rights at home while at the same time justifying disastrous military interventions against communism in the name of “freedom” abroad.
This article discusses Steinbeck’s linguistic creation of Chinese personae in his fiction, which develops from the early practice of using silence in ‘Johnny Bear’ (1938) to chronologically ...progressive engagement with Chinese Pidgin English (CPE) in Cannery Row (1945) and East of Eden (1952). This change is evident from the increase of CPE dialogues in his later works and best exemplified in the turn to taking non-standard English as a key concern by investing style-shifting with stylistic and thematic meaning in East of Eden. Silence and implicatures are strategically employed in ‘Johnny Bear’ to keep the narrative suspense and broach the antinarratable subject of interracial romance and illegitimate pregnancy so as not to offend the reader. Steinbeck’s later experimentation with CPE demonstrates conformity and discrepancy with sociolinguistic observations, whilst in his representation of CPE the author uses metalanguage to guide readers towards a better understanding of this language variety and a sympathetic interpretation of the Chinese characters. Existing alongside real sociolinguistic systems, the ficto-linguistic system in Steinbeck’s fiction subtly critiques the supposedly ‘correct’ language expected of ethnic groups and skilfully denounces discriminatory racial distinctions. The author’s incorporation of Chinese presence and CPE into his writings serves the grander scheme of scrutinizing American identity and society.
Off-brand for a studio known for its glossy Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals, the epigraph, set against a backdrop of a knight holding aloft a cat pierced by his sword, references respectively ...a fictitious quotation, book, and author (see figure 1). In the Introduction to a collection titled The Simple Art of Murder, Raymond Chandler outlined the overall code and structure of his detective fiction featuring private investigator Philip Marlowe (such as The Big Sleep, 1939; Farewell, My Lovely, 1940; and The Lady in the Lake, 1943): according to Chandler, detective fiction tells of "a world gone wrong, a world in which, long before the atom bomb, civilization had created the machinery for its own destruction" (vii). "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid," Chandler concludes, providing a "quality of redemption"-or, more properly, a detective functioning as an heroic redeemer-unavailable to the naturalistic sufferers of a modern "world gone wrong" ("The Simple Art of Murder" 193). Identified as a discrete genre by French critics after its heyday in the 1940s, film noir comprises not only a cinematic style but also themes, plots, and characters located in postwar disillusionment and a loss of confidence in the ability of institutions to restore order in the naturalistic "mean streets" of the urban jungle.2 Beginning with the movie version of Double Indemnity (1944), with its moody atmospherics of smoky, shadowed daytime interiors punctuated with strips of lights through Venetian blinds, films noir placed the viewer in the position of the point-of-view character forced to interpret situations in which nothing is as it seems.
Let the children persuade Heller, Rafael
Phi Delta Kappan,
02/2021, Letnik:
102, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Two decades ago, during a brief stint working in a teacher preparation program, Heller got to know a young man who struck him as an exceptionally promising educator. Tom was a top student in the ...university's English department, a gifted writer, and, according to his supervising instructor at the local high school, far and away the best student teacher she had seen in her 40 years in the classroom. With our glowing recommendations in hand, he soon found a job teaching in a district not far from where he had grown up. Tom's first day of teaching went well enough, but that night he got a call from his principal, who berated him for assigning his students to read John Steinbeck's classic novel Of Mice and Men.
The concept of Slightly Out of Focus, attributed to the photographer Robert Capa, is a line of research that invites us to delve into icons, such as the photographs “The Falling Soldier” and ...“Crawling through the Water”. Regarding the version presented by proponents of Robert Capa’s work and the results of recent investigations, there are some discrepancies regarding the classification of The Mexican Suitcase II and his photographic style. The conflicts concerning cameras lost negatives, and the effect of blurriness in both icons are coincidences that may form a pattern in the discourse about Robert Capa. This research also analyzes two theses on the biases of press photography and documentary photography. The first thesis considers that in press photography, staging is fraudulent information, but not in documentary photography. The second thesis posits that staging is an unacceptable fraud in both photographic biases. The methodology applied in both theses compares two icons of Robert Capa, considered typical of press photography, with two other icons by photographer Arthur Rothstein, namely, “Cattle Skull” and “Dust Storm”. Rothstein is a reference figure in documentary photography and the 1936 Resettlement Administration program, later known as Farm Security Administration. The press’s reaction to the staging of the photograph Cattle Skull left no doubt about the incompatibility of staging in the context of documentary photography.
This article is an effort to bring into light the theme of American Dream for the betterment of individual characters in John Steinbeck's novels. It is the natural inclination of all humans to dream. ...Here the American dream is sought after by many different characters. The main theme is, how these dreams are unattainable and how because of great depression all American dreams were dead. However, the meaning of living American dream is something that differs for everyone. For some people, the American dream might be acceptance and equality. The American dream was no more, and the land of opportunity had become the land of misfortune. It is the idea of an individual overcoming all obstacles and beating all odds to become successful one day. This subject is the predominant theme in John Steinbeck's novels. Keywords: Steinbeck, despair, self-hatred, egotism, appetites, mundanity, wilderness, steadfastness, obstacles.
READING TO MY MOTHER Theroux, Phyllis
Phi Kappa Phi forum,
04/2022, Letnik:
102, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Flying home to California, she packed up her few belongings and drove to my brothers house on the Monterey Peninsula, where she spent the next few weeks meditating, trying to come to terms with ...reality. At night after supper, it became a new habit for us to sit in the living room while I read aloud from whatever looked interesting - a gossipy Vanity Fair article about a celebrity or a chapter from Look Homeward, Angel. When Dolo came on Friday, my mother placed Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist on. the coffee table - along with a bottle of Scotch. (Refreshments were a big part of this reading program.) " The Alchemist is definitely the right book for Dolo," my mother declared after she had departed.
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