Articoli correlati a The Winter of Our Discontent

The Winter of Our Discontent - Brossura

 
9780143039488: The Winter of Our Discontent
Vedi tutte le copie di questo ISBN:
 
 
The final novel of one of America’s most beloved writers—a tale of degeneration, corruption, and spiritual crisis

A Penguin Classic

In awarding John Steinbeck the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Nobel committee stated that with The Winter of Our Discontent, he had “resumed his position as an independent expounder of the truth, with an unbiased instinct for what is genuinely American.” Ethan Allen Hawley, the protagonist of Steinbeck’s last novel, works as a clerk in a grocery store that his family once owned. With Ethan no longer a member of Long Island’s aristocratic class, his wife is restless, and his teenage children are hungry for the tantalizing material comforts he cannot provide. Then one day, in a moment of moral crisis, Ethan decides to take a holiday from his own scrupulous standards. Set in Steinbeck’s contemporary 1960 America, the novel explores the tenuous line between private and public honesty, and today ranks alongside his most acclaimed works of penetrating insight into the American condition. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction and notes by leading Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Le informazioni nella sezione "Riassunto" possono far riferimento a edizioni diverse di questo titolo.

L'autore:

John Steinbeck, born in Salinas, California, in 1902, grew up in a fertile agricultural valley, about twenty-five miles from the Pacific Coast. Both the valley and the coast would serve as settings for some of his best fiction. In 1919 he went to Stanford University, where he intermittently enrolled in literature and writing courses until he left in 1925 without taking a degree. During the next five years he supported himself as a laborer and journalist in New York City, all the time working on his first novel, Cup of Gold (1929).
 
After marriage and a move to Pacific Grove, he published two California books, The Pastures of Heaven (1932) and To a God Unknown (1933), and worked on short stories later collected in The Long Valley (1938). Popular success and financial security came only with Tortilla Flat (1935), stories about Monterey’s paisanos. A ceaseless experimenter throughout his career, Steinbeck changed courses regularly. Three powerful novels of the late 1930s focused on the California laboring class: In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and the book considered by many his finest, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). The Grapes of Wrath won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1939.
 
Early in the 1940s, Steinbeck became a filmmaker with The Forgotten Village (1941) and a serious student of marine biology with Sea of Cortez (1941). He devoted his services to the war, writing Bombs Away (1942) and the controversial play-novelette The Moon is Down (1942).Cannery Row (1945), The Wayward Bus (1948), another experimental drama, Burning Bright(1950), and The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951) preceded publication of the monumental East of Eden (1952), an ambitious saga of the Salinas Valley and his own family’s history.
 
The last decades of his life were spent in New York City and Sag Harbor with his third wife, with whom he traveled widely. Later books include Sweet Thursday (1954), The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication (1957), Once There Was a War (1958), The Winter of Our Discontent (1961),Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962), America and Americans (1966), and the posthumously published Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters (1969), Viva Zapata!(1975), The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976), and Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath (1989).
 
Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962, and, in 1964, he was presented with the United States Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Steinbeck died in New York in 1968. Today, more than thirty years after his death, he remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures. 

Susan Shillinglaw is a professor of English San Jose State University. She is the author of On Reading the Grapes of Wrathand Carol and John Steinbeck: Portrait of a Marriage.

Estratto. © Riproduzione autorizzata. Diritti riservati.:

Table of Contents

 

Title Page

Copyright Page

Introduction

Dedication

 

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

 

PART TWO

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

 

Explanatory Notes

THE STORY OF PENGUIN CLASSICS

PENGUIN

CLASSICS

THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT

JOHN STEINBECK (1902-68) was born in Salinas, California, in 1902 and grew up in a fertile agricultural valley about twenty-five miles from the Pacific Coast—and both valley and coast would serve as settings for some of his best fiction. In 1919 he went to Stanford University, where he intermittently enrolled in literature and writing courses until he left in 1925 without a degree. During the next five years, he supported himself as a laborer and journalist in New York City and then as a caretaker for a Lake Tahoe estate, all the time working on his first novel, Cup of Gold (1929). After marriage and a move to Pacific Grove, he published two California fictions, The Pastures of Heaven (1932) and To a God Unknown (1933), and worked on short stories later collected in The Long Valley (1938). Popular success and financial security came only with Tortilla Flat (1935), stories about Monterey’s paisanos. A ceaseless experimenter throughout his career, Steinbeck changed courses regularly. The powerful novels of the late 1930s focused on the California laboring class: In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and the book considered by many his finest, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Early in the 1940s, Steinbeck became a filmmaker with The Forgotten Village (1941) and a serious student of marine biology with Sea of Cortez (1941). He devoted his services to the war, writing Bombs Away (1942) and the controversial play-novelette The Moon Is Down (1942). Cannery Row (1945); The Wayward Bus (1947); The Pearl (1947); A Russian Journal (1948); another experimental drama, Burning Bright (1950); and The Log from the “Sea of Cortez” (1951) preceded publication of the monumental East of Eden (1952), an ambitious saga of the Salinas Valley and his own family’s history. The last decades of his life were spent in New York City and Sag Harbor with his third wife, with whom he traveled widely. Later books include Sweet Thursday (1954), The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication (1957), Once There Was a War (1958), The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962), America and Americans (1966), and the posthumously published Journal of a Novel: The “East of Eden” Letters (1969), Viva Zapata! (1975), The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976), and Working Days: The Journals of “The Grapes of Wrath” (1989). He died in 1968, having won a Nobel Prize in 1962.

 

SUSAN SHILLINGLAW is a professor of English at San Jose State University and scholar-in-residence at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas. She has published several articles on Steinbeck and coedited Steinbeck and the Environment, John Steinbeck: The Contemporary Reviews, and “America and Americans” and Selected Nonfiction. Her most recent book is A Journey into Steinbeck’s California. She is completing a biography of Steinbeck’s first wife, Carol Henning Steinbeck.

PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,
Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,
Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,
Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre,
Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,
New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

First published in the United States of America by The Viking Press 1961
Published in Penguin Books 1982
This edition with an introduction and notes by Susan Shillinglaw published 2008

 

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

 

Copyright © John Steinbeck, 1961

Copyright renewed Elaine Steinbeck, Thom Steinbeck, and John Steinbeck IV, 1989
Introduction and notes copyright © Susan Shillinglaw, 2008
All rights reserved

 

A serial version of this work appeared in McCall’s.

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968.
The winter of our discontent / John Steinbeck; introduction and notes by Susan Shillinglaw.
p. cm.—(Penguin classics.)
Includes bibliographical references.

eISBN : 978-0-143-03948-8

1. Grocery trade—Employees—Fiction. 2. Conduct of life—Fiction. 3. Domestic fiction. I. Shillinglaw,
Susan. II. Title.
PS3537.T3234W5 2008
813’.52—dc22 2008018574

 

Printed in the United States of America

 

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

 

The scanning, uploading, and distributing of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

Introduction

The Winter of Our Discontent is John Steinbeck’s last novel, the book that occasioned his 1962 Nobel Prize for Literature. On the eve of the ceremony, the New York Times published an editorial by Arthur Mizener questioning the wisdom of the Swedish Academy’s decision: “Does a Moral Vision of the Thirties Deserve a Nobel Prize?” The article seared Steinbeck’s soul, no doubt, and placed once again before his American readers the enigma of his reputation. How to define this most American of writers, the engaged artist of 1930s California? And how to describe this last novel, certainly not a howl of social protest in the vein of his 1939 classic, The Grapes of Wrath, but neither the twilight reflections of an aging writer. For many readers The Winter of Our Discontent is a dark morality tale about the fall of a blue-blooded American hero, Ethan Allen Hawley, who succumbs to the temptations of wealth, power, and prestige. But this final novel defies categories. If it’s a parable of corruption and redemption, as Steinbeck suggests in his epigraph, it’s also a lesson in Darwinian survival. The novel insists on a symbolic and highly ironic framework—the first half takes place on Easter weekend in April 1960 and the second on the Fourth of July weekend that same year. Yet the book is also realistic, set in Steinbeck’s own Sag Harbor, New York—New Baytown in the novel—and influenced by the moral quagmires of contemporary America. And while the work tips its hat to Steinbeck’s love of the Arthurian saga, with Ethan a latter-day Lancelot, it’s also true that Ethan’s voice seems almost postmodern, speaking a language that is highly wrought, artificial, self-reflective. The Winterof Our Discontent is, seemingly, a patchwork of intentions, all meant to shake a reader’s complacency.

Since its publication in April 1961, this “curious” novel has baffled many readers. Carlos Baker’s review for the New York Times sounds a characteristic note of dissatisfaction:

 

This is a problem novel whose central problem is never fully solved, an internal conflict novel in which the central issue between nobility and expediency, while it is joined, is never satisfactorily resolved. For this reason, despite its obvious powers, The Winter of Our Discontent cannot rightly stand in the forefront of Steinbeck’s fiction.

 

Far from being the source of the novel’s creative failure, its irresolution and allusiveness are, in fact, central to its meaning. “If this is a time of confusion,” Steinbeck had written a few years earlier, “might it be best to set that down?” That was his challenge in The Winter of Our Discontent. Ambiguous threads and ethical knots are woven into each page of the narrative—and apparent in the first pages, starting with the perplexities of Ethan’s ancestral heritage, part pirate, part Puritan, and his own name, Ethan Allen, both a Revolutionary War patriot and a man charged with treason. After two chapters in each section of the novel’s two sections, point of view switches from third to first person.

Indeed, the text’s evasive strategies and perplexing characters suggest Steinbeck’s profound unease with Cold War America, where his real fear for his country centered not on Sputnik and Russian armament but on “a creeping, all-pervading, nerve-gas of immorality which starts in the nursery and does not stop before it reaches the highest offices, both corporate and governmental.” Steinbeck sent that observation to his close friend, politician Adlai Stevenson, in November 1959, and the letter was subsequently published in Newsday, sparking a national discussion: The question “Are We Morally Flabby?” was debated by four educators and writers in a February 1960 issue of the New Republic, and the next month Newsday published “Steinbeck Replies.” Steinbeck’s answer was a resounding yes, and more than anything else The Winter of Our Discontent explores the contours of that affirmative response. From 1960, when he composed this novel, to the end of his life eight years later, Steinbeck stood as America’s moral compass, pointing to Americans’ virtues and lapses in three unflinching books: The Winter of Our Discontent, Travels with Charley (1962), and America and Americans (1966).

The freedom to critique one’s country, he felt with increasing urgency, was the role of the artist in a free nation. Trips to the Soviet Union in 1937, 1947, and 1963 as well as charges made by Communist writers that he had moved politically to the right crystallized his independent stance—Steinbeck’s Cold War was a “Duel Without Pistols” (a 1952 article he wrote in Italy after being attacked in a Communist newspaper for not objecting to the “degeneracy and brutality of American soldiers” in Korea). While American citizens and artists could voice opinions freely, he wrote, Communist artists were constrained by orthodoxy. Speak as an American critic he would, to the end of his days. That defiant patriotism informs The Winter of Our Discontent. In effect, Ethan Allen Hawley, his central character, asserts his own freedom to speak out and, in the process, replaces a hollow self with a more authentic self, however morally imperiled. What makes it such a quirky and important book is that it suggests, through Ethan’s voice, the simmering discontent of its time, the cacophony and dislocation of Cold War America, overtly a superpower, internally super powerless.

I. UNDERSTANDING JOHN STEINBECK’S DISCONTENT

“A novel may be said to be the man who writes it.”
( John Steinbeck to Elizabeth Otis and Chase Horton, April 1957)

 

With a particular man in mind, Thomas Malory, John Steinbeck wrote this in 1957, one year into his three-year investigation of this fifteenth-century author of Le Morte d’Arthur, his era, Arthur’s Camelot, and Middle English manuscripts. Such layered understanding was essential, he thought, before attempting his own translation of Malory’s Arthur into modern English. But the same sentence might be written about Steinbeck himself: The Winter of Our Discontent is the restless man who wrote it. A decade-long winter of discontent is, in several senses, his own. And the project he put aside in the fall of 1959, his modern translation of Malory, informs the background of his final novel.

Steinbeck’s discontent, however, was artistic and cultural, not personal. The year 1950 was a watershed; he moved permanently from California, his birthplace, to New York City in December 1949, and a year later he married his third wife, Elaine Scott. This marriage gave him far more stability than the first two—certainty of love shared with a self-confident woman. Once an assistant stage manager on Broadway (for Oklahoma! when it opened), Elaine stepped into her new marriage with style, energy, wit, and steady love. For their eighteen years of marriage, she kept much of the world at bay. Some qualities of Steinbeck’s happy marriage to Elaine make their way into The Winter of Our Discontent—certainly the solidity of the union (this is, in fact, the only Steinbeck book that opens with a bedroom scene). Ethan’s rather cloying nicknames for Mary are close to Steinbeck’s own for his beloved Elaine, who was “moglie” when they traveled and “Lily Maid” at home. Most important, the steady light that Mary casts for Ethan is Elaine’s for John: “No one in the world can rise to a party or a plateau of celebration like my Mary,” Ethan muses. “With Mary in the doorway of a party everyone feels more attractive and clever than he was, and so he actually becomes.” The marriage of Ethan and Mary is Steinbeck’s most fully drawn portrait of marriage and home life—at least in part an index of his own contentment.

With an equal sense of renewal, this displaced Californian embraced his and Elaine’s new home, New York City, and made it his own: “As far as homes go,” he wrote in a 1953 essay, “Autobiography: Making of a New Yorker,” “there is only a small California town and New York. . . . All of everything is concentrated here, population, theater, art, writing, publishing, importing, business, murder, mugging, luxury, poverty. It is all of everything. It goes all night. It is tireless and its air is charged with energy. I can work longer and harder without wearine...

Le informazioni nella sezione "Su questo libro" possono far riferimento a edizioni diverse di questo titolo.

  • EditorePenguin Classics
  • Data di pubblicazione2008
  • ISBN 10 0143039482
  • ISBN 13 9780143039488
  • RilegaturaCopertina flessibile
  • Numero di pagine336
  • RedattoreShillinglaw Susan
  • Valutazione libreria

Spese di spedizione: EUR 7,40
Da: U.S.A. a: Italia

Destinazione, tempi e costi

Aggiungere al carrello

Altre edizioni note dello stesso titolo

9780141186313: The Winter of Our Discontent: John Steinbeck

Edizione in evidenza

ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780141186313
Casa editrice: Penguin Classics, 2001
Brossura

  • 9780140187533: The Winter of Our Discontent

    Pengui..., 1996
    Brossura

  • 9780434740130: Winter of Our Discontent

    Willia..., 1961
    Rilegato

  • 9781299478145: THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT

    Viking..., 1961
    Rilegato

  • 9780140062212: The Winter of Our Discontent

    Penguin, 1982
    Brossura

I migliori risultati di ricerca su AbeBooks

Immagini fornite dal venditore

Steinbeck, John
Editore: Penguin Classics (2008)
ISBN 10: 0143039482 ISBN 13: 9780143039488
Nuovo Soft Cover Quantità: 10
Da:
booksXpress
(Bayonne, NJ, U.S.A.)
Valutazione libreria

Descrizione libro Soft Cover. Condizione: new. Codice articolo 9780143039488

Informazioni sul venditore | Contatta il venditore

Compra nuovo
EUR 13,41
Convertire valuta

Aggiungere al carrello

Spese di spedizione: EUR 7,40
Da: U.S.A. a: Italia
Destinazione, tempi e costi
Foto dell'editore

John Steinbeck
ISBN 10: 0143039482 ISBN 13: 9780143039488
Nuovo PAP Quantità: 10
Da:
PBShop.store US
(Wood Dale, IL, U.S.A.)
Valutazione libreria

Descrizione libro PAP. Condizione: New. New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000. Codice articolo IB-9780143039488

Informazioni sul venditore | Contatta il venditore

Compra nuovo
EUR 19,64
Convertire valuta

Aggiungere al carrello

Spese di spedizione: EUR 1,96
Da: U.S.A. a: Italia
Destinazione, tempi e costi
Foto dell'editore

John Steinbeck
Editore: Penguin Classics (2008)
ISBN 10: 0143039482 ISBN 13: 9780143039488
Nuovo Brossura Quantità: 15
Valutazione libreria

Descrizione libro Condizione: New. 2008. Reissue. Paperback. . . . . . Codice articolo V9780143039488

Informazioni sul venditore | Contatta il venditore

Compra nuovo
EUR 20,85
Convertire valuta

Aggiungere al carrello

Spese di spedizione: EUR 2,00
Da: Irlanda a: Italia
Destinazione, tempi e costi
Foto dell'editore

John Steinbeck
Editore: Penguin Books (2008)
ISBN 10: 0143039482 ISBN 13: 9780143039488
Nuovo Brossura Quantità: 3
Da:
Books Puddle
(New York, NY, U.S.A.)
Valutazione libreria

Descrizione libro Condizione: New. pp. 304. Codice articolo 26662305

Informazioni sul venditore | Contatta il venditore

Compra nuovo
EUR 16,26
Convertire valuta

Aggiungere al carrello

Spese di spedizione: EUR 8,32
Da: U.S.A. a: Italia
Destinazione, tempi e costi
Immagini fornite dal venditore

Steinbeck, John
Editore: Penguin Books 9/1/2008 (2008)
ISBN 10: 0143039482 ISBN 13: 9780143039488
Nuovo Paperback or Softback Quantità: 5
Da:
BargainBookStores
(Grand Rapids, MI, U.S.A.)
Valutazione libreria

Descrizione libro Paperback or Softback. Condizione: New. The Winter of Our Discontent 0.53. Book. Codice articolo BBS-9780143039488

Informazioni sul venditore | Contatta il venditore

Compra nuovo
EUR 13,91
Convertire valuta

Aggiungere al carrello

Spese di spedizione: EUR 12,49
Da: U.S.A. a: Italia
Destinazione, tempi e costi
Foto dell'editore

John Steinbeck, Susan Shillinglaw (Editor), Susan Shillinglaw (Introduction)
Editore: Penguin Classics (2008)
ISBN 10: 0143039482 ISBN 13: 9780143039488
Nuovo Paperback Quantità: 1
Da:
Ergodebooks
(Houston, TX, U.S.A.)
Valutazione libreria

Descrizione libro Paperback. Condizione: New. Revised. Codice articolo DADAX0143039482

Informazioni sul venditore | Contatta il venditore

Compra nuovo
EUR 13,61
Convertire valuta

Aggiungere al carrello

Spese di spedizione: EUR 12,95
Da: U.S.A. a: Italia
Destinazione, tempi e costi
Immagini fornite dal venditore

Steinbeck, John; Shillinglaw, Susan (INT)
Editore: Penguin Classics (2008)
ISBN 10: 0143039482 ISBN 13: 9780143039488
Nuovo Brossura Quantità: 5
Da:
GreatBookPrices
(Columbia, MD, U.S.A.)
Valutazione libreria

Descrizione libro Condizione: New. Codice articolo 4198007-n

Informazioni sul venditore | Contatta il venditore

Compra nuovo
EUR 12,59
Convertire valuta

Aggiungere al carrello

Spese di spedizione: EUR 14,79
Da: U.S.A. a: Italia
Destinazione, tempi e costi
Foto dell'editore

John Steinbeck, Susan Shillinglaw
ISBN 10: 0143039482 ISBN 13: 9780143039488
Nuovo paperback Quantità: 5
Da:
Blackwell's
(Oxford, OX, Regno Unito)
Valutazione libreria

Descrizione libro paperback. Condizione: New. Language: ENG. Codice articolo 9780143039488

Informazioni sul venditore | Contatta il venditore

Compra nuovo
EUR 20,43
Convertire valuta

Aggiungere al carrello

Spese di spedizione: EUR 6,99
Da: Regno Unito a: Italia
Destinazione, tempi e costi
Foto dell'editore

Steinbeck, John
Editore: Penguin Classics (2008)
ISBN 10: 0143039482 ISBN 13: 9780143039488
Nuovo Brossura Quantità: 1
Da:
Ebooksweb
(Bensalem, PA, U.S.A.)
Valutazione libreria

Descrizione libro Condizione: New. . Codice articolo 52GZZZ00NUNX_ns

Informazioni sul venditore | Contatta il venditore

Compra nuovo
EUR 20,32
Convertire valuta

Aggiungere al carrello

Spese di spedizione: EUR 7,39
Da: U.S.A. a: Italia
Destinazione, tempi e costi
Foto dell'editore

John Steinbeck
Editore: Penguin Classics (2008)
ISBN 10: 0143039482 ISBN 13: 9780143039488
Nuovo Brossura Quantità: 15
Da:
Kennys Bookstore
(Olney, MD, U.S.A.)
Valutazione libreria

Descrizione libro Condizione: New. 2008. Reissue. Paperback. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland. Codice articolo V9780143039488

Informazioni sul venditore | Contatta il venditore

Compra nuovo
EUR 25,93
Convertire valuta

Aggiungere al carrello

Spese di spedizione: EUR 2,03
Da: U.S.A. a: Italia
Destinazione, tempi e costi

Vedi altre copie di questo libro

Vedi tutti i risultati per questo libro