The Wayward Bus: A review of Steinbeck's novel

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       John Steinbeck's post World War 2 novel The Wayward Bus is a consistent masterpiece. The plot, which concerns travelers trying to take a bus through rural rainy California, is overshadowed by the complex characters who populate the tale. It's no mean feat for an author to vividly describe more than a dozen characters and get inside their heads, reveal their desires, fears, wants, hates, generosities, prejudices and more, but it's done to perfection. The central character is Juan Chicoy, a handsome 50-something bus driver who also runs a small diner/gas station with a bus stop in a remote California outpost near the Mexican border. With him is his wife Alice, an insecure, homely woman who uses tantrums to mask her fear that Juan will leave her. The hired help is Kit, a teen whose bad complexion gives him the unfortunate nickname of Pimples, and Norma, a mousy, naive 20sh young woman with a crush on Clark Gable.

        One day the bus breaks down and several passengers spend the night at the diner. They include Mr. Pritchard, a rich businessman traveling with his wife Bernice and 25-year-old daughter Mildred. Also, there's Ernest Horton, a young salesman who fought in World War 2, and a bitter, spiteful old man named Van Brunt. They are soon joined by Camille, a beautiful blond who attracts the attention of all the men. With the exception of Alice, they all board the bus and take off for San Ysidro, which is the next stop. It may rain, and Juan tells them risk is involved. The friendless Norma soon bonds with Camille, and Pimples, Horton, Pritchard, and even Van Brunt try to find seats on the bus that provide them the best views of Camille's legs. The cynical Juan observes it all from his driver's seat. That's all the plot that needs to be mentioned. The strength of the novel are the characters and how through stress Steinbeck deftly tears through their exterior defenses and reveals what they are really like. The Pritchard's marriage is an illusion. The husband talks to his wife Bernice like a toddler, granting her favors, and she subtly controls him through infrequent offerings of sex and severe headaches designed to induce guilt and capitulation. When the bus breaks down, their sham marriage is open to all to see when stress causes them to fight. Eventually, after his clumsy attempt to sweet-talk Camille is rebuffed easily, a temporarily enraged Mr. Pritchard rapes his wife Bernice in a cave, where she's resting with a headache.

        It's a gritty, horrifying scene, but Bernice's reaction reveals even more their perverted lives. While sitting in the bus, ignoring her guilt-ridden husband, she's calculating what she can get out of his guilt from the rape. She thinks it may be worth an orchid house. Alice, Juan's wife, is also a compelling character. A once attractive woman who has lost her looks, she lives in fear that Juan will leave her. This fear, far from placating her, makes her a shrew. She terrorizes the help and browbeats Juan, who takes most of it with a smile. What's behind Alice's behavior is a desperate attempt to be noticed by her husband. She has a very real fear that he is tired of their life and wants to leave. "Alice braced herself for the rage she knew was coming, and then Juan looked slowly toward her. His dark eyes were amused and warm, the focus changed again, and he was looking at her, and she knew that he saw her."

        Juan's decision on whether or not he will leave Alice will directly influence the success of the passengers getting to San Ysidro once the bus bogs down in soft mud and can't move. Camille, a cynical beautiful blonde, is another interesting character. She's a stripper, but tells everyone she is a dental nurse. She'd like to ditch the mousy Norma who idolizes her and babbles of the apartment they will share in Los Angeles, but is too soft-hearted to extinguish her dream. Mr. Pritchard believes he knows Camille, and during his clumsy pick-up attempt an exasperated Camille tells him where they've met. It was at a businessman's strip show. "You remember the girl that sits in the wine glass? I've seen what you boys look like. I don't know what you get out of it and I don't want to know. But I know it isn't pretty, mister," she coldly tells him. John Steinbeck was a prolific writer, and those who have already read The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men will enjoy the lesser-known but just-as-good novel. There is a pretty good film adaption of The Wayward Bus made in 1957,

Doug Gibson

Victor Serge: The First Neo-Conservative? Reviewing The Case of Comrade Tulayev

 

ESSAY/Review BY DOUG GIBSON. 

NOTE: Recently, I discovered on the Internet archived reviews (at a Geocities site!!) that I had published more than a generation ago for The Event, a now-defunct Salt Lake City alternative weekly. If The Event had a website, I was unaware of it. It is my desire to re-publish these pieces on the above blog. Here is the first post.

        Is the late Victor Serge making a comeback? Seemingly forgotten for decades, his many novels not available at most libraries, let alone bookstores, the Russian revolutionist-turned dissident who survived Stalin’s gulag is the subject of a new biography by radical journalist Susan Weissman. It’s a pleasure to see Serge’s life revived for the 21st century, although Weissman, like many leftists, seems to ignore that Serge rejected all forms of Bolshevism and by the end of his life was an anti-communist. Those leftists who do know that deal with it in proper Marxist fashion by attacking Serge, an act which would make Stalin proud.

       The conservative Weekly Standard’s Stephen Schwartz recently reviewed Weissman’s biography of Serge and profiled the first neo-conservative. He was born in Belgium. Early in his life he was a violent anarchist and spent several years in a French jail. After being freed in 1916, Serge gravitated towards the Bolshevik revolution. He was a dedicated adherent of the revolution, and was disgusted by the anti-democratic betrayals committed by Lenin and Stalin. Serge chose to align himself with Trotsky, a move that led him to a prison cell. That he escaped with his life, writes Schwartz, was due to the protests of French writers Andre Gide, Andre Malraux and Romain Rolland. Serge was exiled to Mexico. He went to Spain, where the failed Spanish revolution disillusioned him to Trotskyism. He eventually settled in Mexico. He died mysteriously in 1947, likely murdered by communist agents, writes Schwartz.

       Serge was a prolific writer. His novels include Birth of Our Power, Conquered City, Midnight in the City, The Long Dusk, Men in Prison and The Case of Comrade Tulayev. His novels are allegories of totalitarianism. Men in Prison was an account of his time in a French jail. Midnight in the Century provides readers a glimpse of what he endured in Stalin’s gulag. Birth of Our Power details the successful Russian revolution.

       After learning of Victor Serge, your reviewer was determined to find one of his novels. It wasn’t easy, but eventually a battered 1963 paperback copy of The Case of Comrade Tulayev was purchased through the online auction house Ebay. The novel is set in 1930s Russia, at the height of Stalin’s purges of the veterans of the revolution. A powerful communist leader named Comrade Tulayev is murdered (modeled after the 1934 murder of Leningrad party boss Sergei Mironovich Kirov). Tulayev’s assassin is a low-level party functionary named Kostia, who in a moment of frustration impulsively shoots Tulayev.

       The murder sets off a chain of events in paranoiac Russia. It’s used as an excuse for a round of purges where powerful party leaders are arrested and charged with complicity in Tulayev’s death. Not one is guilty of the crime although most eventually “confess.” Meanwhile, no one ever suspects the anonymous Kostia, who by the end of the novel has prospered.

       The key strength of Comrade Tulayev is how Serge is able to get into the heads of his characters. Erchov, a high commissar in state security assigned the impossible task of finding Tulayev’s killer, is aware that he is soon to be purged, but is unable to escape his fate. His fear and sense of helplessness make him inert to resist as his world starts to crumble around him. When he is finally arrested, he can only applaud the smooth manner in which he was taken into custody.

       Others arrested include a thuggish province leader lured to his capture with a promise of adulterous sex. He’s the sole one unaware of his fate. The strongest “suspect” is a veteran dissident who scorns his captors and cheats torture by starving himself to death. His suicide seals the fate of his interrogator.

       A unique character is Popov, an emaciated old veteran of the Bolshevik revolution who has maintained power by betraying colleagues. In a unique twist, his daughter protests an arrest he has helped orchestrate. When she is arrested, Popov realizes that in the dysfunctional world of power he resides in, he will soon be arrested as well.

       Stalin, who is called The Chief, is a study of reserved fanaticism in Comrade Tulayev. His calm demeanor belies an unflinching loyalty contaminated by madness which thrives on fear. In fact, Stalin’s character as sketched by Serge (who knew him) is so much like the Inner Party torturer O’Brien in 1984 that George Orwell must have read Victor Serge before writing his classic tale.

       The Case of Comrade Tulayev is a powerful novel that deserved to be re-discovered. It reminds us that wickedness feeds on itself, and that the chief incentive to be cruel is fear that the torturer will soon be the tortured.

Remembering Bill Stevenson, Utah Republican

 

(I wrote this tribute to former Utah Republican Party chairman Bill Stevenson shortly after his death in May of 2010. It was published on the now defunct StandardBlogs on The Standard-Examiner newspaper website. I’ve been thinking of Bill lately. I rescued this post from Wayback Machine and am happy to publish it on this blog. - Doug Gibson)

The world’s a little bit smaller with the death of Bill Stevenson, former Utah Republican chairman. He was 80 when he died on May 19. It’s a shame that there’s not even a news article about this man’s death in the Salt Lake City papers because the dominance of the Utah Republican Party owes itself to men like Bill, principled, honest, and determined to build a base from the grassroots up, not the top down. Bill was part of the era of Ogden’s Richard Richards, former national Republican chairman.

Bill’s heyday was a long time ago. When I first met him, more than two decades ago, his tenure as state GOP leader was already over. But he stayed active in politics, working behind the scenes for such pols as Chris Cannon, Enid Greene and Greg Hughes. His last major push was for New Mexico’s Gary Johnson, who runs the Our America group, and may be a candidate for president in 2012.

Bill taught me that a lonely man with his principles is more important than a wealthy man with his principles  for sale. I loved him and I’m sure he’s up there with many of his colleagues, keeping an eye on Utah. Read his obituary here.

The original Wayback blog post is here. It includes a few comments.