Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's the… (2008)

I read the Advance Copy, so keeping that in mind...

The thought of Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" ever being burned is unfathomable in the Western world, so learning that it happened in 1939, in California, is worth reading about. A topic that isn't even brought up in school, certainly feels at home here in Rick Wartzman's "Obscene in the Extreme". The style of Wartzman's prose is best suited for history books, which is why I strained at reading this book; it plodded most of the time. Set during the week of the book burning, Wartzmen speeds us back into time at every turn of the page, zipping us through history lessons of California's tumultuous times during the Depression of the 1930s, the states' dealing with the influx of immigrants from Oklahoma, and unionization of the farm workers. We also get tales of the call to fight Communism, brought on mostly by corporate farms and politicians steered by them.

As a class in American history, this book is top-notch. As a literary piece of work, it is poor. And Wartzman's nagging use of the thesaurus, lured my thoughts away from the subject matter. ( )

I found this a very good read. Reading about the social aspects that surrounded the controversy made me understand better that it wasn't so much the book that was offensive, it was how people responded to the book. I felt as though the author was stretching the story along at times, but not enough to change my enjoyment of it. ( )

As a fan of The Grapes of Wrath (and also of The Worst Hard Time), I found it interesting to read about the effects of Steinbeck's novel and about the labor class divisions of the time. Wartzman's book was hard to follow at times. I would get caught up in one story (the initial librarian, for example) and want to know more, but Wartzman would move on to another thread. ( )

I can't say that I enjoyed this. I agree with another reviewer who said that this would have made a good magazine article, but I didn't find it to be particularly suitable as a book-length work. It was very simple -- an interesting topic with relatively uninteresting execution. The concentration on the minutia of county government was very boring. I could almost see this as a serial in a newspaper. Again, it's a great concept, but it was simply not executed in a compelling manner. ( )

This book opened my eyes to the controversy of a modern stand-by. Having read this Dustbowl slice-of-life in high school, I never knew the truth could be so hard to swallow for so many, especially to the heinous ends of banning and burning, which I am against in any form. ( )