The Woman Who Would Be Steinbeck
It is likely, but by no means certain, that in May 1938, the writers John Steinbeck and Sanora Babb met in a café near Arvin, California. Both were in town to chronicle the plight of migrants who were flooding the state to escape the decimation of the Dust Bowl. Both were writing fiction about it—Steinbeck had abandoned two novels on the subject earlier that year, while Babb had received an enthusiastic response from Random House for the opening chapters of her novel in progress, Whose Names Are Unknown. And both were connected to Tom Collins, a staffer at the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a federal agency providing aid to the migrants. To Steinbeck, Collins was a friend and a passkey to the migrant experience. To Babb, he was a mentor and supervisor; she had volunteered to document living conditions in the camps.
What happened next is in some ways clear as day, in others frustratingly fuzzy. The clear part is a tale of profound literary unfairness: Steinbeck received FSA field notes, compiled largely (but not entirely) from Babb’s observations and interviews, after which he began a punishing 100-day writing sprint to produce , the foundational American novel about the Great
