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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
With all respect you have gotten misinformation on Easttom,
By Charles (Victorville, Calif.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Witnesses To The Struggle: Imaging The 1930S California Labor Movement (Hardcover)
Sherman E. Easttom, the camp committee chairman at the Weedpatch Camp in the era around the first half of 1936, was introduced to John Steinbeck at The Arvin Sanitary Camp by Tom Collins.Numerous biographers have said Steinbeck used the family of Sherman E. Easttom as the model for the Joad Family as portrayed in the Steinbeck Novel THE GRAPES OF WRATH, 1939. What Ms.Loftis misrepresented in her book was that Sherman E. Easttom wrote a letter to Paul Taylor, in regards to the democratic camper goverment which was set up by either the Farm Security Administration or its predecessor agency which planned and built the first two Sanitary Units in 1935 the first in Marysville, CA and the second in Arvin, CA. Ms. Loftis, erroneously claims to have referenced a source she found somewhere in the National Archives, to the effect that Sherman E. Easttom wrote a letter to Paul Taylor, a higher up at the Farm Security Administration headquarters in San Fancisco,CA. Being the grandson of Sherman E. Easttom, it is common knowledge in the Easttom Family that Sherman E. Easttom could not read or write and was color blind.I do not slight Anne Loftis for using my grandfather's name, however I do mind the misinformation that is being disseminated by writers who have the occasion to run across Sherman E. Easttom's role in the writing by Steinbeck of THE GRAPES OF WRATH,1939. Ms. Loftis corroborated with the well known Steinbeck biographer, Jackson J. Benson in 1980 on a piece JOHN STEINBECK AND FARM LABOR UNIONIZATION; THE BACKGROUND OF IN DUIOUS BATTLE, by Benson and Anne Loftis, American Literature, 52 (May 1980): 194-223. Mr Benson also published his well reviewed book, THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF JOHN STEINBECK, WRITER (New York: Viking, 1984; London: Heinemann, 1984).In this book which which has been heralded as the definitive "authorized biography" of John Steinbeck as it was indeed cleared by the Steinbeck Family and thus offered Benson an entree into the secretive life of Steinbeck and his friends. Benson disseminated misinformation about Sherman E. Easttom and went further to name Easttom's son, namely, Sammie F. Eastton, (note there was variation in the family as to the exact spelling of the surname) as a "...fugitve from the law and hiding out in Lamont." Benson and Anne Loftis engaged in the same type of name dropping in the writing of ,THE BACKGROUND OF "IN DUBIOUS BATTLE". I would remind one that the use of the word "fugitive" connotes a fleeing from or flight from justice. My Uncle whom Benson claimed was the model for Tom Joad was only 17 years old in the summer of 1936 when the talks between Sherman E. Easttom and John Steinbeck took place. My Uncle could not have been a "fugitive" in any common understanding of the use of the word , because he was a juvenile at the time Benson claims he was a "...fugitive from the law". Again I bear no ill will to any of the Steinbeck researchers, but only wish to bring forward the factual account according to the Easttom Family.
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