The Forgotten Dust Bowl Novel That Rivaled &quotThe Grapes of Wrath&quot | Arts & Culture| Smithsonian Magazine

When The Grapes of Wrath came out 77 years ago, it was an instant hit. The story of a destitute family fleeing the Dust Bowl sold 430,000 copies in a year and catapulted John Steinbeck to literary greatness. But it also stopped the publication of another novel, silencing the voice of an author more intimately connected to the plight of Oklahoma migrants because she was one herself.

Sanora Babb wrote Whose Names Are Unknown at the same time that Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath, using much of the same research material. Although both novels are about displaced farmers arriving in California, they are very different books. Babb’s novel is a carefully observed portrait of several families based on her childhood in Oklahoma. Steinbeck’s oeuvre, considered by many to be his masterpiece, is a sweeping novel replete with metaphor and imagery. in many ways, the books are complementary takes on the same subject: one book is understated and detailed, the other is big and ambitious. one spends more time in oklahoma, the other spends more time in california. one focuses on individual characters, the other attempts to tell a larger story about america. liking one novel over another is a matter of taste; Sanora Babb naturally preferred his own work.

You are reading: Books on the dust bowl of 1930

“I think I’m a better writer,” Babb told the Chicago Tribune in 2004. “His book isn’t as realistic as mine.”

In 1938, Babb, a 31-year-old publisher and writer, volunteered with the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to help immigrant farmers flooding California. As assistant to Tom Collins, manager of Sanitary Camp Arvin (the base for Weedpatch in the Grapes of Wrath), Babb traveled through the Central Valley, working with migrants and establishing better living conditions. she was impressed by the resilience of the workers she met, and wrote to her sister: “how brave you all are. I have not heard a complaint! they are unbroken and docile but they do not complain.”

Part of her job was to write field notes on the workers’ conditions, detailing activities, diets, entertainment, speech, beliefs and other observations that were natural fodder for a novel. Soon, Babb began writing one. She based her story on what she’d seen in the camps as well as her own experience. The daughter of a restless gambler, she was born in Oklahoma territory in 1907. The family moved around to Kansas and Colorado before returning to Oklahoma when Babb was in high school. (Babb was valedictorian of her class, although “the gambler’s daughter” was barred from giving a speech at graduation.) She witnessed a major dust storm while visiting her mother in 1934 and heard what the crisis did to farmers she’d known as a child.

He also understood what it was like to be destitute. In 1929, she moved to Los Angeles to become a reporter, only to find that the job had dried up with the stock market crash. For a time, she was homeless and forced to sleep in a public park until she was hired as a secretary for the Warner Brothers. her later, she got a job as a scriptwriter for a radio station.

all this, plus the notes he took while visiting the camps, went into whose names are unknown. In 1939, Babb sent four chapters to Bennett Cerf, publisher of Random House, who recognized Babb’s talents and offered to publish the book. babb was ecstatic. What she didn’t know, however, was that Collins had given her notes to Steinbeck, who was busy researching the Grapes of Wrath.

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The two men met in 1936 when Steinbeck was hired by the San Francisco News to write a series of articles about immigrants titled “The Harvest Gypsies.” The articles were later reprinted by Simon J. Lubin Society in a booklet alongside Dorothea Lange’s iconic photographs to help the public understand the gravity of the crisis.

“Steinbeck knew at the time he wrote those articles in 1936 that he had a novel,” says Susan Shillinglaw, Steinbeck Scholar and Acting Director of the National Steinbeck Center. “He called it his big book. he knew he had a great story, the writers know that. so the fact that babb wanted to write about the same thing is not surprising. It was an important American story.”

In the years that followed, Steinbeck made several trips to the Central Valley to research the novel, spending time in camps and interviewing migrants. Collins, who played a major role in setting up government camps throughout the central valley, was eager to help. the two men reached an agreement. Collins would give Steinbeck government briefings, travel with him to camps, and introduce him to workers who might be of interest to him. In return, once the Grapes of Wrath were over, Steinbeck would help edit Collins’ nonfiction book about the crisis. (Although Steinbeck introduced Collins to publishing professionals, the book never materialized.) Collins’ help was so essential to the development of the Grapes of Wrath that Steinbeck dedicated the book to him.

Among the investigations Collins went through in his wake were meticulous FSA reports, covering everything from what immigrants ate to how they dressed and how they spoke. Babb contributed to some of these reports and also took field notes for Collins. some of this, it is not clear exactly what, he passed on to steinbeck.

“Babb was a writer before she volunteered for FSA, and it was in her nature to record and write stories about farmers,” says Joanne Dearcopp, Literary Executor of Sanora Babb’s estate. “She because she worked alongside the workers and helped organize the camps, she also wrote field notes and contributed to the fsa reports that she tom she had to file…”

while babb was working on whose names are unknown, steinbeck rushed to write the grapes of wrath in a staggering six months. The book was published on April 14, 1939. In the weeks and months that followed, it would become the best-selling book of the year, win the Pulitzer Prize, and be adapted into a successful film by director John Ford. cerf answered for bookshelves whose names were unknown. In a letter to Babb, he wrote, “Obviously another book at this time on exactly the same subject would be a sad anticlimax!” he sent the manuscript to other publishers, but they too rejected it. Aside from the fact that many of these publishers were personal friends of Steinbeck’s, publishing his novel after a success like The Grapes of Wrath would seem like a copycat.

babb, of course, was upset by this turn of events. although cerf offered to publish another book, his confidence seems to have waned. he put off writing books for 20 years until, in 1958, he published The Lost Traveler. In between, he wrote short stories and poems, worked as an editor for publications like Clipper, and cultivated friendships with writers like Ray Bradbury and William Saroyan. there was a brief fling with ralph ellison. He also fell in love with James Wong Howe, an Oscar-winning Chinese-American cinematographer who worked on The Thin Man, The Old Man and the Sea, The Funny Lady, and others. They had to postpone marriage until California’s ban on interracial marriage was lifted in 1948; they remained together until howe’s death in 1976.

babb went on to write several other books, including the memoir an owl in every publication, but whose names are unknown, the book that could have cemented her status as a depression-era writer like steinbeck or upton sinclair, remained in a drawer. Finally, in 2004, the University of Oklahoma Press published the novel; babb was 97 years old.

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All of this begs the question: Did Steinbeck know he was in possession of notes written by a fellow writer? most likely not.

“We have no evidence that Steinbeck used his notes,” Dearcopp says. “We know they gave her the notes from him, but we don’t know if it was in the form of an fsa report or not. If that was the case, he wouldn’t have known they came from her specifically. So we can.” I don’t know to what extent she used her notes, or not, but at the end of the day, she was in the fields working with the migrants. she was the one doing that.”

shillinglaw, who is firmly on the steinbeck team, disagrees. “The idea that Steinbeck used Babb’s notes undermines the fact that he did his own research going into the fields as far back as 1936, in addition to using Tom Collins’ research,” she says. “what could babb add to that? I don’t know.”

While the two books differ in story and tone, their common backgrounds lead to uncanny similarities. for example, both novels have dead babies. Babb’s baby is described as “curled up, wrinkled, and weird-looking,” while Steinbeck’s baby is a “wrinkled little blue mummy.” Both describe the corruption of corporate farms, high prices in company stores, women giving birth in tents, and the tiny critters that fight the landscape, Babb’s bug and Steinbeck’s tortoise. and both writers based characters on tom collins.

Steinbeck’s work journals for the Grapes of Wrath show a man consumed with producing a work of art, a task that drove and intimidated him. “If only he could get this book right, it would be one of the best books and a truly American book,” he wrote. “But I am assailed by my own ignorance and inability.”

with thoughts like this haunting him, babb probably wasn’t on his mind at all, even though he later said he met her twice while researching for the novel. her situation was the result of bad timing and the sexism of her time: the important work of the famous man crushed the attempts of the unknown writer.

babb died a year after whose names are unknown, knowing that his first novel would finally be read, 65 years after he wrote it, was published.

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