This is not the first time I’ve given up on a book by one of America’s greatest authors, John Steinbeck, and through no fault of his own! For the second time in a year, I made the terrible mistake of reading the book’s introduction by an Ivy League “Steinbeck scholar” with way too much time on his hands, before delving into the work itself. The over-studied, meticulous, spoiler-filled dossiers that these experts glue to their master’s work destroy every hope I once had about possibly enjoying either of the books. I went against my instincts (which normally says “read nothing but the text”) by reading the introductions both to this and to The Winter of Our Discontent. I’ll never make that mistake again.

Approaching this book, I was excited to read yet another mid-century travelogue by Steinbeck of another part of America I’ve never seen. Like Travels with Charley and even America and Americans before it, this book promised to be a thought-provoking, sometimes humorous, totally down-to-earth (or sea) tale of an old man coming to love the land (or sea) he calls home. My brother had recommended it for our 2018 Siblings Book Club, and I think we were all excited to enjoy it.

But then—at least for me—came that horrible introduction. The historian detailed how Steinbeck and his friend and boating partner, marine biologist Ed Ricketts, would squabble and philosophize, chat and dream, wonder and ramble their way through a trip that was more scientifically important than it was entertaining. I won’t even mention the writer’s name, but he totally destroyed any interest I had in the travelogue, simply by doing all the thinking for me—before I even read the book! He detailed how Ed and John’s strong relationship would ebb and flow, how Ed would manipulate John’s thinking toward his own viewpoints, and how John would wriggle his way back to the familiar. The historian made the whole travelogue a battle of words in a war I suddenly didn’t care about.

Had I been alive in the ’50s, or had I been a native Californian, or had I been interested at all in marine biology along the Pacific coast, or had I had any concern about the viewpoints of two secular thinkers in their grandfatherly years three decades before my time, then maybe this book would have intrigued me more. But I’m not and I don’t, and the terrible set-up made me realize that.

Perhaps I should follow the “Don’t judge a book by its introduction” mantra, but then again, maybe not. It’s possible that this is the best lesson I learned in 2018, and it’s the best advice I can give an audience. “Read the introduction last.” Especially in this one.

©2019 E.T.

Read More from John Steinbeck:

• The Long Valley (1938)
• The Moon is Down (1942)
• The Pearl (1947)
• Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951)
• America and Americans (1966)
• The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976)