Printing History |
First published in the United Stated of America by Viking Penguin Inc
1938
Reissued in Penguin Books 1986
Copyright John Steinbeck, 1938
Copyright renewed John Steinbeck, 1966
|
Main Characters |
1 | Henry Allen
| owner of foothill ranch east of Salinas |
| Elisa
| Henry's 35-year-old wife |
| Scotty
| Henry's ranch hand |
| a tinker
| unnamed visitor to the ranch |
|
2 | Mary Teller
| designer of the garden |
| Harry E. Teller
| husband of Mary |
|
3 | Mama Torres
| widow |
| Emilio
| her 12-year-old black boy |
| Rosy
| her 14-year-old black girl |
| Pepé
| her 19-year-old indian son |
|
4 | Dr. Phillips
| owner of a marine laboratory in Monterey |
| a woman
| unnamed visitor to the lab |
|
5 | woman
| nursing baby, cooking |
| young man
| cotton picker |
| older man
| cotton picker |
|
6 | Root
| novice organizer |
| Dick
| experienced organizer |
| a man
| warns of the raid |
|
7 | Peter Randall
| respected rancher, nearing fifty |
| Emma Randall
| Peter's eighty-seven lb wife |
| Mrs. Chappell
| their next farm neighbor |
| Dr. Marn
| their physician |
| Miss Jack
| a nurse |
| Ed Chappell
| Peter's friend |
| Clark DeWitt
| another respected rancher |
|
8 | Mike
| part of a lynch mob |
| Welch
| a bartender |
| Mike's wife
| unnamed, petulant |
|
9 | Mrs. Ratz
| rooming house owner |
| Fat Carl
| owner of the Buffalo Bar |
| Timothy Ratz
| landlady's husband |
| Mae Romero
| author's half-Mexican lady friend |
| Alex Hartnell
| owner of a small farm |
| Johnny Bear
| enormous half-wit |
| Blind Tom
| negro piano-player half-wit |
| Emalin Hawkins
| 50-ish community pillar |
| Amy Hawkins
| 40-ish sister of Emalin |
| Dr. Holmes
| the physician |
|
10 | Jim Moore
| owner of Cañon del Castillo land |
| Jelka Sepic
| Jim Moore's wife |
| George
| Jim's neighbor |
| Will
| deputy sheriff |
|
11 | Brother Clement
| monk at M |
| Roark
| a very bad man |
| Katy
| Roark's very bad pig |
| Brigid
| Katy's sister |
| Rory
| Katy's brother |
| Brother Coline
| monk from M |
| Brother Paul
| monk from M |
| Father Benedict
| abbot of M |
| barber
| decides on Katy's virginity |
| Why Saint Katy the Virgin? |
I debated whether to include this story here since it really has nothing to do
with California, the focus of this site. I decided to include it after reading
about Steinbeck's own insistence on its inclusion:
Also in May, Steinbeck forwarded to his agents the
manuscript of "St. Katy the Virgin," probably the most peculiar of all his
published short stories, a farcical history of the religious conversion
and eventual canonization of a fourteenth-century French pig. It was first
written at Stanford as a verse parody, based on literary conventions and
cultural practices of the Middle Ages that he had gleaned from a course in
European civilization. The story's subject matter and its manner are very
reminiscent of Twain, and it is filled with sly humor of the sort that
Steinbeck enjoyed enormously: "Daily at four o'clock, Katy emerged from
the gates and blessed the multitudes. If any were afflicted with scrofula
or trichina, she touched them and they were healed."
His attachment for the story can be measured by the fact that it was
one of the few things (in its preliminary form) that he kept out of the
manuscript fire of the previous spring, and by his persistence in trying
to get it published. After several years of submissions without a nibble,
he had finally arranged with his book publisher at the time,
Covici-Friede, for separate publication as a gift book. Then he insisted
on including it in his story collection The Long Valley, even
though it is so different in kind from the other items that the reader
hardly knows what to make of it.
| J.J. Benson's John Steinbeck, p 253
|
white: actual locations mentioned in The Long Valley
orange: suggestion for locations, based on description
|
Book Blurb Penguin 1986 |
"Steinbeck makes his country live and the people live as part of it." |
Tne New Republic |
This classic collection, first published in 1938, serves as a wonderful introduction to Steinbeck's work. Set in the beautiful Salinas Valley of California, where simple people farm the lands and struggle to find a place for themselves
in the world, these stories reflect Steinbeck's characteristic intereststhe tensions between town and country, laborers and owners, past and present.
"All [these stories] have one rare, creative thing: a directness of impression that makes them glow with life." |
The New York Times
|
Chapter Summary
Short stories, not given chapter numbers, are numbered
here as a convenience for referencing the list of main characters. "The
Red Pony" and "The Leader of the People" are given separately as The Red Pony |
1. The Chrysanthemums |
On Henry Allen's ranch east of Salinas Elisa plants yellow chrysanthemums as
Henry is selling thirty head of cattle to agents of the Western Meat Company.
After he and Scotty go to round up the cattle, a tinker shows up. He asks for
work which Elisa says she hasn't. He asks for seeds for a lady on his route.
Elisa gives him seedlings with instructions, and then she finds work for him
which he does professionally. To celebrate the sale Henry drives her to Salinas
for dinner at the Cominos Hotel and a movie; they drive past the tinker on
the road and she privately weeps.
|
2. The White Quail |
Mary has her garden designed before its lot is bought, before she's married. She
picks Harry because she thinks the garden will like him. After the house is built
and the garden established Harry finds her perfect though untouchable. She
doesn't care for his occupation (making loans for cars); it's unfair. She
routinely locks him from her tiny bedroom on the garden. He tries the lock and
leaves quietly. She refuses to let him have a setter pup since it might damage
her garden. After a white quail visits the cement pond she fears a cat will come
and asks Harry to put out poison fish. He refuses but will try to hit such a cat
with his new air rifle. Next morning he shoots the white quail then tells Mary it
was the cat he buried. |
3. Flight |
Mama Torres makes Emilo and Rosy fish when they can. Pepé, who is
beautiful but lazy, is sent to Monterey for medicine and salt. At Mrs.
Rodriguez's he kills a man with his father's black switchblade knife. He returns
before dawn, then rides into the high hills as his family bids him, now a man,
adios. After a day's riding he sleeps and is awakened by a horse down the trail.
He rides another day before his horse is shot out from under him. He exchanges
shots and receives a granite splinter wound in his right hand. He runs on for
several days and is finally shot dead. |
4. The Snake |
Young marine biologist Dr. Phillips brings a sack of starfish from the tide pool
to his laboratory on the cannery street in Monterey. The lab: rattlesnakes, rats,
cats; killing a cat. Arrival of a tall, lean woman just as he begins timed work
making a starfish embryo series. While she waits he begins embalming the cat. She
wants to buy the male rattlesnake which she wants to keep in the lab. Her snakish
behavior during the feeding annoys Phillips. The starfish series is ruined. She
never comes back. |
5. Breakfast |
A cold pre-dawn, by a country road, I see a tent with a lit campstove. A girl
nurses a baby while preparing coffee, bread and bacon. A younger and an older man
came from the tent. I'm asked to breakfast. They're cotton pickers, working
twelve days already. They go to work. I leave. |
6. The Raid |
Root and Dick head out of a packing plant town on a dark night, stopping finally
at an abandoned store where they put up posters. After an hour a man warns them
to leave, but they have orders to hold it. Dick reminds Root: It isn't them
hitting you, it's the System; it isn't you being busted but the Principle. And:
when it comes, it won't hurt. Root greets the raiders as comrades and is hit with
a club. He stands again and passes out. He wakes in a hospital cell. Dick says
they'll probably get six months. "Forgive them" vs. "opium of the people." |
7. The Harness |
Randall's ranch east of Salinas and across the river is an ideal blend of
bottomland and upland. After Peter's annual business trips Emma becomes sick for
several weeks and the neighbors bring cakes and pies. When she dies Peter becomes
hysterical. Alone with Ed, he removes his shoulder brace and girdle, gets whiskey
from the barn, tells of his one week a year at San Francisco fancy houses, of his
dream of filling the bottom land with sweet peas and the house with fat women.
DeWitt says he's crazy to plant sweet peas, but they are so beautiful
schoolbusses drive out to see them. At the Ramona Hotel in San Francisco, to meet
his wife's cousin from Ohio, Ed sees Peter come in drunk from a fancy house on
Van Ness Avenue. He says Emma kept him worried all year about those peas: she
didn't die dead. |
8. The Vigilante |
Mike watches the crowd depart after a lynching. The bartender opened up thinking
the boys would be thristy but only Mike comes in. Mike tells of the raid on the
jail, the beating, the lynching. The bartender buys a swatch of the dead man's
pants from Mike to hang up at the bar. They walk to their homes. Mike's wife
accuses him of being with a woman. In the bathroom Mike realizes that's exactly
how he feels. |
9. Johnny Bear |
I'm in Loma to drain the swamp north of town. I'm at the Buffalo Bar with Alex
when Johnny Bear comes in. For whiskey he imitates a dialogue between me and Mae.
Next he imitates the Hawkins sisters, neighbors of Alex. After Sunday chicken
dinner at Alex's Johnny imitates the doctor asking Emalin why Amy tried to hang
herself. After two weeks of trouble with the dredging, we learn that Amy has
killed herself. Johnny's imitation includes Amy's pregnancy. Alex punches Johnny
and explains later. |
10. The Murder |
Jim Moore visits the Three Star in Monterey on Saturdays. He marries Jelka Sepic
who is obedient but quiet. George tells Jim, on his way to the Three Stars (he's
"hunting") he's seen a calf of his dead. Jim investigates, then returns home to
find a horse in his barn. He finds Jelka in bed with her grown cousin. He shoots
him, then brings out the coroner and deputy sheriff, then takes a bull whip to
Jelka in the barn, then ate the breakfast she made him, then went to town for
lumber to build a new house down the hill. |
11. Saint Katy the Virgin |
In P in the year 13 Brother Clement drowned and Roark laughed. Katy
prevented Brigid and Rory from sucking; later she ate them. Then she ate chickens
and possibly children. Roark grew fonder of Katy. The boar which mated with her
became sterile, and she ate all her babies. As he's about to kill her, two monks
ask Roark for a tithe so he gives them the pig. Katy bites Colin; he and Paul
climb a tree. Paul waves a crucifix at her and screams APAGE
SATANAS! As he dangles the cross in front of Katy she falls to the ground
making the sign of the cross. Roark becomes a good man. Paul recites the Sermon
on the Mount in Latin to the sobbing Katy. Fr. Benedict is angry because Katy,
being a Christian, can't be slaughtered. Kety becomes a saint and, in the advice
of a barber, a "virgin by intent" (in spite of her litter). Her relics cure
female troubles and ringworm. |
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