1939 July 6

"I'm glad you read the Heywood Broun note...I wished that he had made some attempt to link the obscenity and blasphemy in Steinbeck with the flights of fancy writing and strained-for purple patches. I don't believe I have too much respect for the established critics...but I've been amazed by their top ratings for Grapes of Wrath. Not a murmur of disapproval....I could understand the reviewers' blindness to the superabundance of blasphemy and obscenity...but I was puzzled to read no criticism of the regularly spaced 'lyric' passages,--so lush, unreal, forced, and inferior to the average Freshman theme on a set subject."