First published by Scarecrow Press and then by Blackwell, Steinbeck Review is currently under the editorship of Barbara A. Heavilin and is published biannually by The Pennsylvania State University Press in collaboration with the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San José State University. The journal’s access to the Cox Center’s vast store of Steinbeck photos, art, and newspaper and cinematic blurbs has greatly enhanced the journal’s visual appeal while providing depth and context for the accompanying articles. The alliance with Pennsylvania State University Press has been most fortunate in increasing the stature and influence of the journal both in the United States and abroad. The Steinbeck Review is now indexed by the highly influential international database SCOPUS (1902–1968). It is also allied with other Penn State University journals in partnering with Duke University Press as part of the Scholarly Publishing Collective, which is backed by the Silverchair platform and joined by sixty-two other journals. In addition, Steinbeck Review has been accepted into the European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences, also known as ERIH PLUS, the most important and prestigious reference index in the European Union.Steinbeck Review publishes scholarly articles, notes, book and performance reviews, original artwork, short intercalary pieces offering fresh perspectives—including notes on contemporary references to Steinbeck, discussions of the contexts of his work, and an occasional poem. It is published twice a year.Steinbeck Review has the threefold mission of broadening the scope of Steinbeck criticism, promoting the work of new and established scholars, and serving as a resource for Steinbeck teachers at all levels. Papers are welcome from new and established scholars, university professors, and secondary teachers on topics ranging from sophisticated theory-driven essays to outstanding classroom pedagogy. The Spring 2025 issue featured a special issue, “Steinbeck, Race, and Ethnicity.” Following the upcoming international conference at Arizona State University in March 2026, with the theme “Steinbeck in Times of Crisis,” the journal will publish another special issue in 2027 on this conference theme featuring selected papers from the conference.Steinbeck Review is truly an international journal. Scholars from places across the United States, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, and Slovenia serve on the editorial board. Contributors of late have hailed from across the United States and from such far-flung countries as China, Syria, Slovenia, Germany, Italy, Algeria, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, France, Uzbekistan, Poland, and Mexico. These voices combine to form a community of like-minded scholars that makes each issue one that delights as well as informs. Thanks to the support and promotion of The Pennsylvania State University Press and to the visual enhancement provided by the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University, Steinbeck Review has taken its place among the foremost journals in the United States and the world. My cofounder and coeditor Stephen K. George would be so proud—as should we all be.The Society’s governing board is happy to welcome back Nicholas Taylor as interim Executive Director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies. Taylor served as director from 2012 to 2021 and has stepped in to serve for one year as the Society bids farewell with gratitude to Daniel Rivers, who served from 2021 to 2025. Currently, the governing board is revising the society’s bylaws to incorporate new board positions, including a public outreach officer and an international scholars’ representative. Through the establishment of these positions, the Society seeks to expand both international and local membership, to ensure that Steinbeck scholarship is represented at regional and national conferences each year, and to encourage submissions to Steinbeck Review. The Society’s mission remains to produce international Steinbeck-themed conferences and to promote the Steinbeck discipline through publication, education, and association among scholars interested in the scholarly activities of the Society.The board’s conference committee, chaired by the current Society president Kathleen Hicks, is actively planning the tri-annual international conference to be held in March 2026 at Arizona State University. Through the conference theme, “Steinbeck in Times of Crisis,” the Society hopes to position Steinbeck in conversation with timely and pressing contemporary issues such as threats to democracy, free speech and press, war, and environmental degradation. Keynote speakers Barbara Heavilin and Susan Shillinglaw will discuss their new book, Steinbeck’s Uneasy America: Rereading Travels with Charley, which incorporates essays that engage with a number of those issues. With the conference will come the end of the current board members’ terms and elections for new board members. All interested Society members are encouraged to consider serving on the board.This issue of the Steinbeck Review begins with John Castiglione’s “The Snakes: Steinbeck, Himes, and the Development of American Noir.” Castiglione compares two short stories of the same name, John Steinbeck’s “The Snake” (1935) and Chester Himes’s “The Snake” (1959). He shows these two works share more in common than just their titles and maintains that both can be seen as examples of literary noir fiction with their dark themes, moral ambiguity, and disorientation of the reader. Castiglione carefully defines literary noir fiction by identifying the unique characteristics of the hard-boiled genre. By classifying Steinbeck’s work as literary noir fiction, Steinbeck can be seen as a key pioneer of this genre and at least twenty years ahead of his time. By comparing Steinbeck’s story to the work of Chester Himes, Castiglione demonstrates how literary noir fiction has also been used to highlight the experience of Black Americans in the twentieth century, which is not a primary feature of Steinbeck’s story.In “Traces of Steinbeck in Uzbek Literature: Odil Yoqubov’s ‘Goodness’: Toward an Uzbek-American Literary Dialogue,” coauthors Stephen Rachman, Feruz Sadullaev, and Orzigul Ganieva suggest that although they may seem worlds apart, John Steinbeck and Uzbek author Odil Yoqubov are deeply connected through the themes in their writing. By comparing two of Steinbeck’s short stories, “The Chrysanthemums” and “The White Quail,” with their recent translation of Yoqubov’s “Goodness,” Rachman, Sadullaev, and Ganieva show readers that both authors explore the gendered relationships and the inner worlds of the female characters, of which their male counterparts are not aware. Steinbeck and Yoqubov are also both adept at centering location in their stories as both a physical space and the metaphorical psychological state of their characters, as defined by “spatial poetics.” Rachman shows that Steinbeck’s invocation of deeply Californian imagery does not limit his scope. Rather, the global reach of his work and his ability to find connections to all cultures has allowed this unique dialogue to take place between America and Uzbekistan.In “Beyond Worship: Ecophobia as Domination in Steinbeck’s To a God Unknown,” Ayşegül Azaklı recognizes protagonist Joseph Wayne not as a fervent worshipper of nature, but as a coercive adversary futilely attempting to bend nature to his whim. The rituals in which Joseph partakes emerge from “ecophobia,” or a fear of nature’s autonomy and its crushing power over humanity. Azaklı methodically analyzes several supporting characters as well, demonstrating the pervasive nature of ecophobia in all aspects of society. According to Azaklı, Steinbeck, with his own personal experiences with natural disaster, writes To a God Unknown as a cautionary tale for all those who cannot accept that nature does not act out of malice or compassion. Instead, it exists in a state of incomprehensible indifference that does not center the human experience. The article concludes that appreciation for Steinbeck’s To a God Unknown can help us to better understand our own contemporary ecological uncertainty.In “Steinbeck’s Mexican Pearl: From Source Material to Anti-Fascist Parable,” Alan Burnett Valverde traces the thread from Dr. Atl’s 1936 story “El hombre y la perla” to Steinbeck’s expanded novella The Pearl. Steinbeck largely attributed the idea for The Pearl to common Mexican folklore that he heard during his Sea of Cortez expedition. However, Valverde notes striking similarities in plot to “El hombre y la perla” as well as links between author Dr. Atl and the creative team behind the film adaptation of The Pearl. Through a comparative reading of both works, Steinbeck’s revision can be understood not as plagiarism, but as a complete refashioning of the ideals put forth by Dr. Atl. Dr. Atl’s narrative is defined by fascination with World War II fascism and the rise of the Mexican right. In contrast, Steinbeck’s The Pearl condemns fascism through his careful additions to the story, such as centering indigeneity and referencing Catholic colonization. By exploring the lineage between “El hombre y la perla” and The Pearl, Burnett Valverde broadens Steinbeck scholarship through a Mexican lens.Osama Esber dedicates the poem “The Pen Holder of Steinbeck” to the writing tools that served as a symbol of Steinbeck’s craft and the inspiration that was channeled through them. Esber grapples with his own anger at the needless violence of war and reminds us of Steinbeck’s same anger that motivated him to write all those years ago.The intercalary section begins with Song Cho’s exploration of biblical themes in “The Protoevangelium in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.” Specifically, Cho references Tom Joad’s killing of a rattlesnake as an allusion to Genesis 3:15, widely considered the “first gospel.” Just as in the biblical story, this scene foreshadows the triumph of good over evil or the perseverance of immigrants over the repressive agricultural system. In “The Moon Is Down: Beyond Documentary and Propaganda,” Danica Čerče revisits criticisms of Steinbeck’s novel as mere sentimental propaganda following in the wake of The Grapes of Wrath. Čerče argues rather than dismissing The Moon Is Down, the novel should be celebrated for its role in European resistance against the Nazi regime. Although it may not contain that same literary prowess as other Steinbeck novels due to time constraints and interference from the government, The Moon is Down remains a powerful examination of the human psychology of war and a motivating force for all oppressed peoples.In “Steinbeck Today,” Jon Falsarella Dawson concludes the intercalary section with examples of Steinbeck’s enduring relevance today. In perhaps the biggest news of 2025, AMC has confirmed that a limited series adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath is in the works with notable television writer Rolin Jones and producer Mark Johnson. In the meantime, Octavio Solis’s play Mother Road, hosted at the Lyric Theater in Oklahoma City, continues to receive wide acclaim among critics. Mother Road reimagines the Joad family as a contemporary Mexican-American family making the trek from California to Oklahoma and does not shy away from an honest exploration of the injustices in their experience. Across the pond, a touring production of Of Mice and Men directed by Sarah Brigham took place in England and featured actors who shared the lived experiences of their characters. The Western Flyer retraced its original three-month expedition and provided thousands of visitors with information about conservation efforts for the Gulf of California over its multiple stops. The Santa Cruz Guitar Company and Ventana Surfboards made a one-of-a-kind surfboard and guitar in a collaboration to repurpose some of the reclaimed wood from the Western Flyer and Steinbeck’s Pacific Grove vacation home. Finally, The Steinbeck House in Sag Harbor has recently been nominated for the State and National Registers of Historic Places as it is the birthplace of The Winter of Our Discontent and Travels with Charley.This issue features two book reviews. First, Maria-Christine Lemardeley reviews the work of French-born novelist Julia Kerninon titled Le chaos ne produit pas de chefs-d’œuvre: Les écrivains, le travail et la légende (“Masterpieces are not made from chaos”: Writers, Work and Legend). Kerninon examines the relationship between writers and the myths about their writing processes by analyzing the interviews published in The Paris Review. Because of his avoidance of fame and aversion to journalists, Steinbeck carries an “unstable” or aloof public image about which Kerninon hypothesizes. In the second review, Benjamin Tudor reflects on Animals in the American Classics: How Natural History Inspired Great Fiction edited by John Cullen Gruesser. Primary focus is given to Barbara A. Heavilin’s chapter, “A ‘Background Never Stated’: Mice, Snakes, Dogs, and Rabbits in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men,” which studies Steinbeck’s invocation of animals as a way to represent humanity’s deep connection to nature and his contrast between innocence and devastation.The Fall 2026 issue of Steinbeck Review will be a memorial for Donald V. Coers, a notable Steinbeck scholar and long-standing member of the journal’s editorial board. Those who want to submit a memorial should send it via e-mail attachment to the editor in chief at bachcwh@icloud.com by June 15, 2026.Welcome to Miranda Stuart, Kathleen Hicks’s new intern, who provided the overview of contents for this issue. We also welcome Carter Davis Johnson to the Editorial Board as Assistant Editor. He is working with the Editor in Chief.
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Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: