John Steinbeck, Pipe Dream

Michael J. Meyer (DePaul University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1952

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

A Rodgers and Hammerstein musical comedy based on Sweet Thursday. Steinbeck had written his novel with its eventual adaptation to the stage in mind, but he had no official role in the production. As he attended rehearsals and out-of-town tryouts, however, he became deeply concerned about the entire tone of the show. Accustomed to creating wholesome, family entertainment, Oscar Hammerstein kept revising the libretto to make the material more and more innocuous, even to the point of clouding the fact that Suzy is engaged as a working prostitute at the Bear Flag; in his version, she may simply be rooming there (Morsberger, “Pipe Dream,” 89-90). Steinbeck protested to Hammerstein that “to avoid this fact that Suzy is a hooker …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

301 words

Citation: Meyer, Michael J.. "Pipe Dream". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 August 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12867, accessed 25 November 2024.]

Save this article