Yes, that's right, it was Steinbeck's first and only political satire set in modern France. The forgotten not-quite-jewel in the great author's crown. The rough in the diamond, if you will. I have to love this book simply for the fact that such an oddity exists. This is sufficient to my mind to forgive the book its faults.
Of which there are many. An unprepossessing man, in fulfillment of his creator's slightly Hadrian VII-esque fantasy, is suddenly elevated into the position of King, under the newly-restored French monarchy. Not-quite-hilarity ensures. The satire of this piece, if not altogether toothless, is certainly gummy.
The main problem with the book is simply that Steinbeck is far too healthy-minded to write good satire. Or comedy. The best satire requires a misanthropic bite. The greatest comedians have all been notorious depressives. Here is no Swift, no Rochester. Steinbeck deep down seems not to have been angry with anyone enough to know who his target was. Perhaps because he was a successful well-heeled author by this point, and was beloved in France.
Worst of all, Steinbeck was plainly enjoying himself. The Penguin Classics edition tells us that he chortled all the way through writing it. A biography of Peter Sellers I'm reading at the moment -- the one by Ed Sikov -- reminds us in one passage (or maybe quote) that watching people have fun is never funny. And reading this book feels very much like watching a senior Steinbeck slideshow of an excellent French vacation.
Finally, Steinbeck had the temerity to call his book "a fabrication." This is getting satire wrong from the start. Satire is not a fabrication. It is not even an exaggeration of anything. As Quentin Crisp once reminded us, it is simply a straightforward description of things as they are.
The satirist isn't someone cracking jokes. I suspect they rarely laugh in the act of composition. They are straightforwardly narrating their truth.
That said, there's a lot to love here. Steinbeck's broad take on the Cold War -- namely, that both sides are terrible and will overthrow democracy in a pinch to suit their strategic interests -- is pretty much the only one that still bears up after a study of recent history. If this would have been seen as sickly "both-sides-ism" at the time, it now reads as spot-on.
On those rare occasions he does find a target and gives it both barrels, moreover, Steinbeck in his short-lived French phase is a delight. The French Communist party in the novel plumps for the monarchy, on the accelerationist theory that kings tend to attract revolutions better than democracies. The Americans are much more inclined to extend loans to a "stable" king than to countries beset by the problems of representative government. Etc.
Oh, and he's great on the subject of the American myth of the self-made man. One such specimen, the "Egg King of Petaluma," is thoroughly plucked by Steinbeck, great democrat and Democrat that he was. The Egg King, we are told, forgave President Hoover for the loss of the grocery business that forced him to go on federal relief during the Depression. "[B]ut he could never forgive President Roosevelt for having fed him."
So...
WHEREAS this book was neither great nor a waste of precious life, and
WHEREAS, in times like the present, when I have been feeling somewhat blocked in my writing, I take comfort in the thought that if all else fails, I can at least say I did my part to purge the world's future printed editions of needless typographical errors,
I note the following errata for correction:
p. xxi, "Roualt" should be Rouault
p. 4 "As a result of her literacy and cinemagraphic success" -- surely in context this should be "literary." Also, my spell-check here does not like "cinemagraphic." It wants a "to" in there. But I feel that may be overly picky.
p. 7 "Chalres [sic] Martel." My eyes almost slid right over that one, the first time.
p. 21 "advocation." Should probably be "avocation"
p. 42 "psychoanalysists" One too many syllables. Should be "psychoanalysts"
p. 57 "Roualt" should be Rouault again. A different passage gets the name right. I can't find a painter named "Pasquins." Was it supposed to be Pascin?
p. 119 "Pippin reach his speech" -- should be "read."
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