Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck
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Flower in a Crannied Wall: "Flower in the Crannied Wall" (1869), by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92), a popular English Victorian poet and the poet laureate of En gland from 1850 to 1892: "Flower in the crannied wall, / I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower--but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is."
Joe Elegant: Various candidates have been proposed as the model for Joe Elegant--notably mythologist Joseph Campbell and novelist Truman Capote--though, given the self-parodying nature of Sweet Thursday, Louis Owens, in John Steinbeck's ReVision of America (1985), plausibly offers the "...young John Steinbeck, author of such ponderously mythical novels as Cup of Gold and To a God Unknown with their naive and heavy-handed wielding of symbols" (p. 194).
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fusel oil: An oily, colorless liquid with a disagreeable odor and taste. It is a mixture of alcohols and fatty acids, formed during the alcoholic fermentation of organic materials. Fusel oil is used as a solvent in the manufacture of certain lacquers and enamels (it dissolves nitrocellulose). It is poisonous to humans.
Oakland Polytech: Oakland Technical High School, in Oakland, California, known locally as Oakland Tech, is a public high school located on 4351 Broadway in North Oakland. It is one of six comprehensive public high school campuses in Oakland. Founded in 1917, it is the alma mater of Clint Eastwood, Rickey Henderson, Huey P. Newton, and the Pointer Sisters.
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Coca-Cola calendar girls: Illustrators for the Atlanta-based soft drink giant pioneered a type of graphically appealing and colorful calendar art that featured Coca-Cola's Calendar Girls, who, though provocatively posed in bathing suits, were intended to portray wholesomeness as well as beauty. Steinbeck had used the ubiquitous advertising image in chapter one of The Wayward Bus (1947).
Romie Jacks: Romie Jack was one of the seven surviving children (out of nine) of wealthy and controversial Scottish-born Monterey County land baron David Jack and his wife, Maria Christina Soledad Romie. Romie served as manager of the family's David Jack Corporation-owned Abbot Hotel (later Cominos Hotel) in Salinas. The Cominos Hotel is featured in Steinbeck's short story "The Chrysanthemums."
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The Playing Fields of Harrow: Harrow School (founded in 1572), an exclusive, elite British men's boarding (public) school near London, was famous for its tradition of Harrow football (begun in the nineteenth century), a unique hybrid game exclusive to the school, which combines elements of both soccer and rugby (but which uses a spherical-shaped leather ball). Because Fauna tutors her girls in social/sexual gamesmanship as a route to victory in matrimony, Steinbeck might also be alluding to a statement, allegedly by the Duke of Wellington, that "The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton."
Parcheesi: Brand name of a once-popular board game based on Pachisi, an ancient royal game of India created around 500 BCE, which utilized slave girls and concubines as red, yellow, blue, and green pawns on palace grounds. The trademark name was registered in 1870 by a New York game manufacturer.
high Elk: The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the USA (B.P.O.E.), which began modestly in 1868 as a private drinking club to circumvent New York City laws governing the opening hours of public taverns, has evolved into a major American fraternal, charitable, and ser vice order. Headquartered in Chicago, it has local lodges throughout the nation. Both Monterey and Salinas had active Elk Lodges.
haute monde: French for "fashionable society."
A and P: The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, better known as A&P, is a North American supermarket chain. The company was founded in 1859 by George Huntington Hartford and George Gilman in Elmira, New York, as The Great American Tea Company. It was renamed "The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company" in 1870, and over the next eighty years went on to become one of the dominant grocery chains in the United States.
Arbor Day: American holiday, first observed in 1872, that encourages the planting and care of trees. National Arbor Day is observed on the last Friday of April, but each state has its own date. California's observation occurs March 7-14.
Watch and Ward: Steinbeck was both intrigued by and suspicious of civic, social, professional, or special-interest organizations, whether real (Woodmen of the World and I.O.O.F.) or imagined (Rattlesnake Club and Forward and Upward Club). In America and Americans (1966), he said, "Elks, Masons, Knight Templars, Woodmen of the World, Redmen, Eagles, Eastern Star, Foresters...the World Almanac lists hundreds of such societies and associations, military and religious, philosophic, scholarly, charitable, mystic, political, and some just plain nuts. All were and perhaps still are aristocratic and mostly secret and therefore exclusive. They seemed to fulfill a need for grandeur against a background of commonness, for aristocracy in the midst of democracy" (p. 360). His satire on civic hypocrisy is especially sharp here, for he refers to what was probably a local chapter of the New En gland Watch and Ward Society, founded in Boston in 1878 as the New En gland Society for the Suppression of Vice, and in 1890 renamed the Watch and Ward Society. It functioned as a watchdog agency against vice and led successful censorship campaigns against books it deemed obscene or pornographic.
Breeder's Journal: Perhaps The Guernsey Breeder's Journal, the oldest dairy breed magazine published by a U.S. breed organization.
Sterling North: Thomas Sterling North (1906-74), author of numerous books for adults and children, including the best seller So Dear to My Heart (1947).
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The Little Flowers of Saint Mack: The Little Flowers of Saint Francis of Assisi, the name given to a classic collection of popular legends about the life of St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1256) and his early companions as they appeared to the Italian people at the beginning of the fourteenth century.
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Suzy Binds the Cheese: An early step in the cheese-making process requires the addition of rennet (plant-or animal-derived substance that contains the enzyme rennin), which binds or coagulates milk.
"I love true things...": Cf. Steinbeck's appraisal of Ed Ricketts in "About Ed Ricketts" (1951): "He loved true things and believed in them" (p. xv1).
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"Home Sweet Home"..."Harvest Moon": "Home, Sweet Home" was composed in 1852 by Sir Henry Bishop (1786-1855) from an adaptation of Clari, or the Maid of Milan (1823) by American dramatist John Howard Payne (1791-1852); "Old Black Joe" was composed in 1860 by Stephen C. Foster (1826-64). The other two songs Steinbeck mentions here have resonance for the romantic plot of Sweet Thursday. Tell Taylor (1876-1937) wrote the words and melody of "Down by the Old Mill Stream" in 1910. Its chorus goes: "Down by the old mill stream where I first met you, With your eyes of blue, dressed in gingham too, It was there I knew that you loved me true, / You were sixteen, my village queen, by the old mill stream." "Shine On, Harvest Moon," a popular song written by entertainer Nora Bayes (1880-1928) and her husband, songwriter Jack Norworth (1879-1959), debuted in Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies of 1908: "Shine on, shine on harvest moon / Up in the sky, I ain't had no lovin' Since January, February, June or July Snow time ain't no time to stay Outdoors and spoon, So shine on, shine on harvest moon, For me and my gal."
Woodmen of the World: Widespread national fraternal organization founded in 1890 in Omaha, Nebraska, by Joseph Cullen Root. Lodges, whose members are eligible for a wide array of insurance coverage, conduct volunteer, patriotic, and charitable activities that benefit individuals and communities. The organization is one of the leading donors of U.S. flags to schools and nonprofit groups.
Jiggs and Maggie: Bringing Up Father, a comic strip created by George McManus (1884?-1954) that ran from 1913 to 2000, was often called "Jiggs and Maggie," after its two main characters.
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Sarajevo...Pearl Harbor: World War I was precipitated by the assassinations of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, on
Down Beat: American magazine devoted to jazz. The publication was established in 1935 in Chicago, Illinois. It is named after the "downbeat" in music, also called the "one beat."
"Tio mio": Spanish for "my uncle."
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Hediondo Cannery: Steinbeck's joke: "hediondo" means "stinky" in Spanish.
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Imp of the Row: Perhaps a comic and reductive echo of Edgar Allan Poe's theory of human perverseness ("overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong's sake") sketched out in "The Imp of the Perverse" (1845).
tom-wallager: Slang term that means humdinger, whopper, etc.
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Orient Express: The Orient Express, which connects Calais, France, on the English Channel, with Istanbul, Turkey, on the Black Sea, is one of the most legendary luxury trains in Europe, and a symbol of exotic adventure.
Webster F. Street Lay-Away Plan: An inside joke: The drink was named for Steinbeck's former Stanford classmate and Monterey friend, attorney Webster "Toby" Street (1899-1984).
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Seconal: Registered name of secobarbital, a barbiturate sedative that reduces anxiety by slowing down brain and nervous system activity. Supposedly available only by prescription.
Bohemia beer: Extensive research proves Doc's assessment to be correct. Alcoholic haze that pervades this novel aside, there is something fitting about bohemian Doc preferring this aptly named brand of beer. Brewed exclusively in Mexico since 1900 and named for the beer-brewing region of Czechoslovakia, Bohemia is a smooth, medium-bodied pilsner-style beer with some pronounced hops flavor.
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Buxtehude...Palestrina: Dietrich Buxtehude (ca. 1637-1707) was a German-Danish organist and a highly regarded composer of the Baroque period. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (ca. 1525-94) was an influential Italian composer of Renaissance music.
Mozart's Don Giovanni: Opera in two acts, based on the legend of Don Juan, with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91), and libretto in Italian by Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749-1838), first performed in Prague on October 29, 1787. At the opera's end, Don Giovanni, unrepentant seducer, is visited by the ghost of a man he has murdered, and is offered the opportunity to save his soul. When he refuses, he is dragged to hell while he is still alive. The concluding chorus delivers the opera's moral: "Thus do the wicked find their end, dying as they had lived."
Giordano Bruno: Italian philosopher, priest, astronomer/ astrologer, and occultist. Bruno (1548-1600) is perhaps best known for his system of mnemonics and as an early proponent of the idea of extrasolar planets and extraterrestrial life. Burned at the stake as a heretic for his theological ideas, Bruno is seen by some as a martyr to the cause of free thought.
Olympus: At 9,570 feet high, Mount Olympus is Greece's tallest mountain. In Greek mythology, it was considered the home of the pantheon of principal Greek deities, led by Zeus, king of the gods.
Armageddon: In the New Testament's Book of Revelation (16:12-16), Armageddon is the site where forces of good and forces of evil assembled for an apocalyptic, climactic battle.
Tehuanos: Inhabitants, predominantly Zapotec Indians, of Tehuantepec, in Oaxaca, southeastern Mexico.
"Sandunga": "La Sandunga," unofficial regional anthem of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, was written by governor and military commander Maximo Ramon Ortiz (d. 1855). It is a sensual, graceful dance song that expresses the grief of a Tehuana (Zapotecan woman) over the death of her mother. The song moves from overwhelming sadness to a sense of acceptance of her loss.
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Salinas Rodeo: The California Rodeo has taken place each summer at the Salinas Rodeo Grounds since 1911.
Life: In 1936, under new owner Henry Luce, Life (which began in 1883 as a humor magazine) became the first all-photography news-magazine in the United States. At its most popular, it sold more than thirteen million copies per week. It published a regular feature, "Life Goes to a Party."
the picture: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a 1937 Walt Disney Productions movie, was the first animated film made in Technicolor.
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O Frabjous Day!: From Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem "Jabberwocky," which appears in chapter one of Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871): "'And, hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!' / He chortled in his joy."
Dementia praecox: Any of several psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, characterized by distortions of reality, disturbances of thought and language, and withdrawal from social contact.
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Where Alfred the Sacred River Ran: Parody of "...Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man..." from "Kubla Khan or, a Vision in a Dream: A Fragment" (1816), a poem by British Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).
1914 Willys-Knight: Willys-Knight automobiles were produced between 1914 and 1933 by Willys-Overland Company of Elyria and Toledo, Ohio. In an internal combustion engine, ring gear and pinions connect the car's starter with the motor's flywheel.
"A veritable fairyland": According to Susan Shillinglaw in A Journey into Steinbeck's California (2006), Steinbeck's portrayal of the culminating costume party at the Palace Flop house may owe its inspiration to an outrageous benefit party, "Surrealistic Night in an Enchanted Forest," thrown by artist Salvador Dali at Monterey's Hotel Del Monte on September 2, 1941 (pp. 76-77). See also the short film clip, "Dizzy Dali Dinner," on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg6i4E0Woak.
"Whistle While You Work": Song featured in Walt Disney's animated movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), with music by Frank Churchill (1901-42) and lyrics by Larry Morey.
threshold of a great career: Old Jingleballicks echoes Ralph Waldo Emerson's salutation to Walt Whitman, after the philosopher had read the first edition of the younger man's Leaves of Grass (1855): "I greet you at the beginning of a great career," he wrote Whitman on July 21, 1855.
Knight Templar's hat: The Knights Templar is a Christian-oriented organization founded in the eleventh century. Originally, the Knights Templar were laymen who protected and defended Christians traveling to Jerusalem. These men took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and were renowned for their fierceness and courage in battle. All Knights Templar are members of the world's oldest fraternal organization, known as "The Ancient Free and Accepted Masons" or, more commonly, "Masons." The hat Steinbeck refers to is plumed.
"Wedding March"...Lohengrin: The Bridal Chorus from Richard Wagner's romantic opera Lohengrin (1850). Traditionally played at weddings, it is commonly known as "Here Comes the Bride."
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Oh, Woe, Woe, Woe!: From American Modernist expatriate poet Ezra Pound's parodic "Song in the Manner of House man," which appeared in his fifth collection, Canzoni (1911). The final stanza reads, "London is a woeful place, Shropshire is much pleasanter. Then let us smile a little space Upon fond nature's morbid grace. Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera..."
Mr. and Mrs. Sam Malloy: In chapter 8 of Cannery Row, the Malloys take up residence in this cast-off cannery boiler.
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if the British impressed our sailors: During the administrations of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison
"Fifty-four-Forty": In 1844 James K. Polk was elected president on a platform calling for setting the northern boundary of Oregon at 54deg40'N. The Anglo-American dispute over the boundary was settled in 1846 by a treaty setting the border at 49degN.
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"My dear Anthony West...": Steinbeck's satire of Joe Elegant as a novelist continues here in this dig at Anthony West. The British author (1914-87)--novelist, essayist, biographer--published "California Moonshine," an unflattering review of Steinbeck's East of Eden, in the September 20, 1952, issue of the New Yorker: "Mr. Steinbeck has written the precise equivalent of those nineteenth-century melodramas in which the villains could always be recognized because they waxed their mustaches and in which the conflict between good and evil operated like a well-run series of professional tennis matches" (p. 125). In a letter to Carlton Sheffield on October 15, 1952, in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters (1975), Steinbeck registered his dismay: "I am interested in Anthony West's review in the New Yorker [sic]. I wonder what made him so angry--and it was a very angry piece. I should like to meet him to find out why he hated and feared this book so much" (p. 458). Clearly, Steinbeck had the last word.
Fafnir: In German composer Richard Wagner's Norse-inspired epic of four linked operas, Der Ring das Nibelungen (its first complete production took place in 1876), Fafnir, a giant transformed into a dragon, guards the golden treasure.