Steinbeck undertook this journal to make himself accountable (“If a day is skipped it will show glaringly on this record”), and as editor Robert DeMott notes, it is a “hermetic-even claustrophobic” diary of the making of a book as well as its attendant terrors and distractions. No wonder he wrote, “I am ready to go to work and I am glad to get into other lives and escape from mine for a while.” … From Working Days, the journals Steinbeck kept while writing The Grapes of Wrath, comes the astonishing fact that he wrote this dense and complex novel in 100 days, by hand, under a fair amount of duress: His publisher was going bankrupt, a noisy housing project was being built next door, he and his wife Carol were ill at times, and he was plagued to the point of depression by doubts about his talent. “Steinbeck's Timeless Tale of Migrant Suffering.”
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