Literary Slummers

[Don’t ask how I came to the place I am right now. I cannot recall, and the remembrance and reverse reconstruction of that breadcrumb trail will push me off my intended destination.]

In the foreword of “Tortilla Flat”, John Steinbeck (1902-1968) wrote these words:

“I wrote these stories because they were true stories and because I liked them. But literary slummers have taken these people up with the vulgarity of duchesses who are amused and sorry for a peasantry. These stories are out, and I cannot recall them. But I shall never again subject to the vulgar touch of the decent these good people of laughter and kindness, of honest lusts and direct eyes, of courtesy beyond politeness. If I have done them harm by telling a few of their stories, I am sorry. It will not happen again.”

OK, vocabulary check, aisle one:

“Vulgarity of duchesses” & “vulgar touch of the decent”

Where vulgar¹ in both cases is likely intended to mean “the lack of refinement or cultivation or taste of the newly rich”. Likewise, where it says “decent”², I am like to imagine that it means “socially or conventionally correct; refined or virtuous”.

You know, like when a rich person decides - without prodding - that something is wrong if they don’t like it. And after convincing themselves of their rectitude, they borrow rhetoric that attempts to convince others to also condemn the thing that “offends their tender sensibilities”.

Well, Steinbeck thought these folks were good people of laughter and kindness, of honest lusts and direct eyes, of courtesy beyond politeness. In other words, regardless of the fear and unsettled feelings of the Nouveau Riche, these folks are fully human. And also perhaps better human beings than the stuck up slags who happen to have more money.

Despite the success of the book, and the positive critical attention, these sycophants displayed an inability to process his descriptions as anything other than caricatures of undesirable things. Well, buddy, he won’t cause them future trouble and discord caused by misunderstanding, by not trying to describe them again. (And because I am a cynical person, I’d liked to believe that he muttered the word “morons” to himself at the end of his foreword)

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