Kirk's Reviews > Looking for Steinbeck's Ghost

This is a worthy read for anyone wanting to know the effort that goes into writing a good biography---and by that, I mean one that does the hard archival work, conducts the interviews, and burns off decades pursuing the subject. Benson is quite explicit about his own naivete, which accounts for much of the pathos here. He talks openly, for example, about how, submitting the manuscript nearly fifteen years after Steinbeck's widow, Elaine, "authorized" him, his publisher let the book sit for nearly a year before even acknowledging receipt (!). Never mind them asking him to take a royalty cut because at 800+ pages the book would be "too long." There are also interesting if painful chapters to read about Benson's run-ins with Steinbeck's surviving sons (John IV has since died) and the tempestuous Gwyn (the second wife). On a happier note, he also describes how he discovered Tom Collins, the co-dedicatee of GRAPES OF WRATH who ran Weedpatch and fed Steinbeck camp reports that lend the later scenes a great deal of authenticity. This book isn't as well known as Janet Malcolm's stuff, but it's equally interesting. It's been recently reprinted in pb, so it's not too terribly hard to find.