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: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), 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 (Birmingham 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

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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 is to throw out the only story there is in this particular…

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301 words

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

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