No ignoramus — no writer who has kept himself innocent of
education — has ever produced great art. One trouble with having read
nothing worth reading is that one never fully understands the other
side of one's argument, never understands that the argument is an old
one (all great arguments are), never understands the dignity and
worth of the people one has cast as one's enemies. Witness John
Steinbeck's failure in The
Grapes Of Wrath. It should have been one of America's great
books. But while Steinbeck knew all there was to know about Okies and
of the countless sorrows of their move to California to find work, he
knew nothing of the California ranchers who employed and exploited
them; he had no clue to, nor interest in, their reasons for behaving
as they did; and the result is that Steinbeck wrote not a great and
firm novel but a disappointing melodrama in which complex good is
pitted against unmitigated, unbelievable evil.
