John Steinbeck - The Winter of Our Discontent

Elizabeth… Cromwell… Charles Stuart:Elizabeth I (1533-1603), daughter of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, ruled as queen of England and Ireland from 1558-1603. Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) helped defeat the Royalists in the English Civil War and ruled as Lord Protector from 1653 until his death. Charles Stuart, Charles II (1630-85), restored the monarchy after the English Interregnum.

Adam influence and Greek revival:Robert Adam (1728-92) was a renowned neoclassical Scottish architect and interior designer. Greek Revival is a late neoclassical movement in architecture, inspired by Greek design.

The stars incline, they do not command:In Latin, Astra inclinant, non necessitant. A common Elizabethan astrological notion.

I’m going to make our fortune:What Steinbeck wrote in Sea of Cortez provides a gloss to Ethan’s decision and to the ethical issues of this novel: “There is a strange duality in the human which makes for an ethical paradox. We have definitions of good qualities and of bad; not changing things, but generally considered good and bad throughout the ages and throughout the species. Of the good, we think always of wisdom, tolerance, kindliness, generosity, humility; and the qualities of cruelty, greed, self-interest, graspingness, and rapacity are universally considered undesirable. And yet in our structure of society, the so-called and considered good qualities are invariable concomitants of failure, while the bad ones are the cornerstones of success.... Perhaps no other animal is so torn between alternatives. Man might be described fairly adequately, if simply, as a two-legged paradox.”

If the laws of thinking are the laws of things:John Elof Boodin (1869-1950), A Realistic Universe: An Introduction to Metaphysics (1916): “Somehow the laws of thought must be the laws of things if we are going to attempt a science of reality.” In November 1939, Steinbeck asked Pascal Covici to send him five of Boodin’s philosophical works; he and Ricketts discussed Boodin’s ideas on the Sea of Cortez trip.

General Frémont:(1813-90) Military officer and explorer who took part in numerous expeditions to the West.

They’re curiouser and curiouser: Alice’s Adventures in Wonder-land (1865) by Lewis Carroll, chapter 2: “‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).”

Old Dobbin:Steinbeck also named his clothes: suits were “Burying Black,” “Old Blue,” “New Blue,” and “Dorian Gray.”

Knight Templar:Western Christian military order during the Middle Ages, founded after First Crusade of 1096. Knights Templars were protectors of pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem. The modern organization is international and focuses on education, human rights, and humanitarian aid.

Chatterboxes and the Rollo series… the Gustave Doré Hell… Hans Christian Andersen… the Grimm Brothers, the Morte d’Arthur: Chatterbox was a juvenile magazine published in Boston and in England from 1869 until the late 1920s. The Rollo books by Jacob Abbot (1803-1879), pastor and educator, were concerned with moral instruction, European travel, and philosophy. The Gustave Doré Hell, an illustration for an 1861 edition of Dante’s Inferno, became a standard vision of hell; Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm compiled fairy tales for children. The Aubrey Beardsley illustrations for Malory’s Morte d’Arthur appeared in an 1893-94 edition published by J. M. Dent in London.

Is life so dear… give me death:From a speech by Patrick Henry (1736-99) delivered before the Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775.

payola scandals:Although record companies had for decades paid radio stations to play their songs, payola became widespread in the 1950s with the burgeoning popularity of rock ’n’ roll and single 45-RPM records; in November 1959, Congress held hearings on payola, and in 1960 amended the Federal Communications Act to outlaw under-the-table payments.

Charles, my son, my son:As John Ditsky notes, Steinbeck converts “the biblical into the secular woe by means of a reference to the unfortunate Van Doren.”

the most feminine story:Steinbeck loved “corny little jokes,” recalled one of his agents, Shirley Fisher. “The joke about two women with a wig was one of those.”

l’empereur, l’ermite, le chariot, la justice, le mat, le diable… le pendu… la mort:Tarot cards, used for divination: “It’s how they fall in relation…”: The emperor (wisdom and authority to achieve goals), the hermit (mysteries of inner life), the chariot (focus energy), justice (balance scales to serve the greater good), the fool (trust your instincts), the devil (empower your passionate nature), the hanged man (one of the most complex cards in the deck, suggesting life’s paradoxes), death (shed old identities to express new ones).

The king of batons:Tarot card suggesting that one remain balanced and use power wisely to set a good example.

When we were kids together:Inserted in this paragraph, later deleted, was this passage: “I don’t know what sadness made a drunk of him and I don’t want to know. It would be a kind of invasion of his privacy. I’ve always felt that a man has a right to kill himself if he wants to. And that’s what Danny was doing but it takes a long time.”

Decalogue:The Ten Commandments.

Kyrie eleison: “Lord, have mercy.”

Christopher Wren:(1632-1723) Renowned English architect who designed St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, as well as many other churches and secular buildings.

I wore the lace and carried the cross… :True story from Steinbeck’s childhood in Salinas.

Spaniards had sunk the Maine:On February 15, 1898, the battleship USS Maine was destroyed by an explosion in Havana Harbor that killed 262 on board, precipitating the Spanish-American War and popularizing the phrase “Remember the Maine! ”

Speed, bonnie boat… :Chorus of “Skye Boat,” a ballad that commemorates the crossing of Bonnie Prince Charles (Jacobite pretender to the British throne) to the Isle of Skye after his defeat at the Battle of Culloden, April 16, 1764.

There’s the rub: Hamlet, III.i.65.

Bering… Alexander Baranov:Vitus Bering (1681-1741) was a Danish navigator and explorer in the service of the Russian navy, charting much of the Siberian and Alaskan coasts. Baranov (1747-1819) established trading centers in Alaska and served as the first Russian governor of Alaska from 1799 to 1818.