After the government shutdown ended last week the title of Steinbeck's novel, "The Winter of our Discontent" kept ringing in my head to such an extent that I drove all the way into Dallas to buy the book at an actual book store which is peculiarly located near that bastion of American History known as the Bush "Library" and its attendant hub of Conservatism, SMU. Because I don't live in NYC, can't drive to Archer City to peruse Larry McMurtry's stash of used books, can't afford to visit Powell's in Portland, I appreciate the biggest little bookstore in Texas, Half Price Books. 

I don't use a Kindle, a Cling to It, Clasp and Fondle it like a book, or any of the other electronic gadgets which today pose as a book. A book is a book is a book. In nowhere other than a real book store can you pick up a devastating critique of the Iraq war and have an armed guard put down a book in the Christian section and saunter over to where you are standing.

I have to admit that when I first read Winter about 30 years ago, I read it as a novel, and didn't have any curiosity about the title, taken from Shakespeare's Richard iii . Even today, I see "discontent" in the novel as societal---not just as the ending of protagonist Hawley's dissatisfaction with his lot and a decision to dissemble the town in the effort to prove himself. And I am curiouser and curiouser about Gloucester's pun, "sun" for "son", a kind of sarcasm which introduces the possibility of not only the Winter past but the one that's coming---which is the meaning most conveniently akin to what I am feeling.

If Steinbeck were here today to pen an article about our current societal state he might use a title drawn from his own work, maybe something like "The Winter of our Malcontents", again, helpfully along the lines of my blog. By Malcontents we mean that professional class of wealthy agitators who want to take this country back to the societal realities which created the Great Depression. 

Steinbeck wouldn't have liked Romney or Cruz or what they stand for. He may have based his entire 1961 novel on Charlie Van Doran, but he disliked Nixon, and said so, and if you get your hands on an actual book you will discover something as quaint as an inscription to Adlai Stevenson---whom Steinbeck greatly admired. A book website has listed such a book for $9K. Actually, we may be getting to the root of the problem---who would sell such a book to a dealer?

As everyone knows, the Malcontents were a group of settlers in our state of Georgia circa 1740 who advocated and petitioned for a change to the Georgia Charter---which originally outlawed slavery.  In 1749 the Malcontents succeeded in having the Trustees change the Charter to admit slavery as well as provide for the unlimited accumulation of land. The argument of the Malcontents was, "our (my) full potential can't be reached without slavery".

According to my sources, (I actually found a book on this subject) Georgia was set up as an intermediate area to protect South Carolina from Spanish controlled Florida---South Carolina then flourishing under slavery. In other words, the original concept was to ship poor and criminal whites to Georgia to use as a buffer. Interesting concept. Oddly enough (can you believe this?), the slaves in S. Carolina had become very proficient in a lot of endeavors, and had some small freedoms---to the extent that the whites complained about the growing independence and privileges of the slaves. In any case, with the introduction of slavery, Georgia was saved.

Today the New Malcontents are also the entitled wealthy---the Koch's, the Sheldon Adelsons, and the more cloaked like the Carl Lindners, and they want to change the country's charter---specifically anything which has institutionalized a progressive change since about just before the Civil War. Do you think a little thing like a fizzled shutdown is going to stop them? I don't. And I feel unease. The creeping discontent in this country continues like a silent invasive virus. The Malcontents are bent on exploiting the discontent, redirecting it towards minorities and the less powerful. They are committed to destroying the idea of a progressive role for government.

Re-reading Winter I am still taken in by the inventive language and technique and the movement of the plot---after all, it is a novel. Much of the original criticism of Hawley as an "implausible" character and the novel itself as a superficial rewrite about morals has changed into an appreciation of how prescient the book was in relation to how far our society has swung toward the transactional and the immoral as the new commonplace.

And while I am fascinated by the technology, I am not much concerned about the revelations in this year of our Lord, 2013, that based upon the excavation and DNA testing of King Richard's bones he was not a hunchback. Nor that upon second thought he was not the villain the later Tudors made him out to be.

What I am concerned about is the discontent in our society, its progression, its seeming insolubility, its pervasive character. I dread the Winter that is upon us. I loathe the new dissemblers who would use wealth to intervene in every aspect of our government, local, state, national, courts, as well as in our academic institutions. I wish Steinbeck were here to write a novel which would breathtakingly dissect the New Malcontents.