The Chrysanthemums, John Steinbeck | Kenneth Payson Kempton (essay date 1953)
Kenneth Payson Kempton (essay date 1953)
SOURCE: “Objectivity As Approach and As Method,” in Short Stories for Study, Harvard University Press, 1953, pp. 115-52.
[In the following excerpt, Kempton asserts that Steinbeck's “The Chrysanthemums” lacks objectivity.]
No reader of “The Killers” will easily forget its opening sentence and paragraph: “The door of Henry's lunchroom opened and two men came in. They sat down at the counter.” Behind this starkly matter-of-fact fluidity, one feels something impending; the objective writer gains a cumulative tension by omitting many details while confining his record to a stripped brief of action and speech. From first word to last, somebody is saying or doing something. In contrast, the first three paragraphs of “The Chrysanthemums” are static, are crowded with impressionistic detail—a description of the valley, the weather, the season, and the ranch: a vacant stage. They...
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