In Dubious Battle

John Steinbeck

Burton sighed. “You see? We’re going to pile up on that old rock again. That’s why I don’t like to talk very often. Listen to me, Mac. My senses aren’t above reproach, but they’re all I have. I want to see the whole picture—as nearly as I can. I don’t want to put on the blinders of ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ and limit my vision. If I used the term ‘good’ on a thing I’d lose my license to inspect it, because there might be bad in it. Don’t you see? I want to be able to look at the whole thing.”

Steinbeck. I am starting to wonder if I am not blinded by my admiration of his writing; I have yet to read something written by him that I did not enjoy immensely. There is always a point in his books where I let the book slip down and stare at the wall or out the window for a while. He has captured, not perfectly but piercingly, what it is to be human.
In Dubious Battle is not the sort of book that would normally catch my interest--being the story of early communists at work in depression era America. But when Steinbeck tells the story, my preconceptions are broken in moments. Though In Dubious Battle sounds like propaganda at times, it is more realistic than anything else--not realistic in the documentary sense, but realistic in the mythological sense. Though the men and women in Steinbeck's books move about like great raging furies, orchestrating and living such drama as is fit for the gods, they have the meaning of reality. That men will take advantage of whatever system they live under, that men are often cowards and often enjoy evil, that men will sooner betray a friend than face a fear, that men are capable of God's good.
In Dubious Battle is not about Communism or Socialism or Labor Rights or Capitalism--it deals with nothing else. But these things are merely the stage upon which a much greater theater is performing--the performance of strangers having a conversation, of friends sitting in silence together.
If you do read it, pay especial attention to the character of Doctor Burton. Almost all of Steinbeck's novels have this sort of weary character; his voice often is the quietest, sometimes the strangest, almost certainly the wisest. He is a character who will scare you, but he will also make you wish you were strong enough to be him. He says, "We fight ourselves and we can only win by killing every man. I'm lonely, Jim. I have nothing to hate."