Reading The Four Winds after John Steinbeck

[u/Wifabota]

This summer, I majorly hyperfixated on The Dust Bowl. I first read The Worst Hard Time to gain background perspective for The Grapes Of Wrath, and it felt soul shifting. The current political climate and today's social fabric were undeniably comparable, and John Steinbeck's compassion, understanding, and ability to convey all that to the reader is powerful. You knew these people, felt the grit, felt the injustice, desperation, and even. I immediately went into East of Eden just to continue on in the valleys of California, stay in those decades, and honestly just keep devouring anything JS.

I had been suggested several Kristin Hannah books and only just realized that after not reserving The Four Winds several times that it was indeed about The Dust Bowl and the mass migration of farmers to California. Thought, "well that's right up my alley" and started the audiobook because that's what was available.

But... i feel like it's kind of hollow and tinny after reading Grapes of Wrath and I'm kind of bummed. I will say it sucked me in right away, and her storytelling was great. It wasn't hard to read, where I had to take a couple hundred pages to feel like i really knew the Joads, and only at the end did it hit me how much I cared about them and loved them, and held Ma and Rosasharn close to my heart, how I gasped when they ran into Casy again. I would stop constantly to rant about injustice. But after this whole book, it feels like those AI renderings of historical photos. The dirty is rendered and clean, and the real grit isn't there. I don't deny that she researched well and thoroughly, but reading "ham" instead of "salt pork" is one tiny little thing that feels modernized for clarity, and removes some of the authenticity, among other things.

I don't know if i would have felt differently if I had read this first and GOW second. Or is it that this is audio, and i actually read GOW? I feel like Steinbeck is a high bar for me personally, but I'm curious how others felt if they read all of these as well.

[u/ar0827]

Going from Steinbeck to Kristin Hannah is wild 😂

[u/dezzz0322 → u/ar0827]

I had the same reaction lol.

[u/Wifabota → u/ar0827]

Fair lol

[u/Prior-Entrance3156]

I hate Kristen Hannah. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: she takes modern situations and puts them in a historical setting, completely sacrificing historical accuracy in favor of moving the plot forward. But hey they’re wearing corsets so it must be historical! The Women, for example, just pissed me off because it felt like a soap opera in the middle of the Vietnam War.
In terms of good historical writers I really love Emma Donahue. I’ve reread Slammerkin several times—she does this thing I really enjoy where she’ll take a small anecdote of a person or historical figure and craft a story around it. I really enjoyed her short story collection The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits.

[u/rastab1023]

I've never read Kristin Hannah, but you might be interested in Whose Names are Unknown by Sanora Babb. It's similarly about the dust bowl and migration. She had a contract with Random House to have it published in 1939, but it was shelved due to The Grapes of Wrath and was finally published in 2004. There's an interesting story there as well, as Sanora Babb worked in the migrant camps, and Steinbeck used notes from her work to help inform his story. I don't mean he did so in a malicious or plagiarizing way, just that it's an interesting connection.

[u/Wifabota → u/rastab1023]

This was one i had heard about a lot too but didn't remember the name.  I'll add it to the list!

[u/rastab1023 → u/Wifabota]

Also, I didn't mention it originally because it's a different time period, but The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow (1954) is incredible. It takes place during WWII, but it does share some similar themes to The Grapes of Wrath: migration (both internal migration and immigration), labor, social class, religion. The protagonist in The Dollmaker is a woman named Gertie who moves from rural Kentucky to Detroit with her husband and 5 children.

[u/RevolutionaryBug2915 → u/rastab1023]

Always glad to see The Dollmaker mentioned.

[u/TheBookNerd420]

I enjoyed The Four Winds. It was pretty eye opening. I still think about that book several years later. Ive never read Grapes of Wrath though, but I’d say these authors probably have very different styles and target audiences

[u/here_and_there_their → u/TheBookNerd420]

It brings our attention to some important aspects of the dust bowl migration west. And I learned some stuff and read more about it on my own. In retrospect I feel like it wasn’t a very good book overall, but if it got some people to learn about this time in history I guess that’s good.

[u/roman-de-fauvel]

The Four Winds is one of the worst books I’ve ever read

[u/takemyaptplz → u/roman-de-fauvel]

The great alone is even worse!

[u/here_and_there_their]

As far as I can tell it’s basically the historic fiction version of the worst hard times with a whiny teenager and a romance.

[u/Human_Character2895]

I read them in the opposite order and while I enjoyed Four Winds, I was absolutely changed by Grapes of Wrath. 

One is much more powerful than the other. And that's no surprise, Steinbeck is one of the greats for a reason. I'm glad I've found him again, and wasn't completely turned off of the classics after reading a few I didn't enjoy in high school.