Kieran Guckian/Flickr (Creative Commons)
One year before The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck wrote a letter to his editor about L’Affaire Lettuceberg, a book he had just completed: "This is going to be a hard letter to write … this book is finished and it is a bad book and I must get rid of it. It can’t be printed. It is bad because it isn’t honest." A satire based on a 1936 lettuce workers' strike, the book "was full of tricks to make people ridiculous," Steinbeck wrote. "I’m not ready to be a hack yet."
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