UNPUBLISHED STEINBECK ILLUSTATED FICTION: 'THE GOOD LITTLE NEIGHBOR.'
STEINBECK, JOHN. 1902-1968. Autograph Manuscript Signed ('John Steinbeck'), titled 'The Good Little Neighbor,' 34 pp recto and verso, with 22 ink drawings throughout by Steinbeck, large 4to, [New York], 1943 (to March 1944?), housed in cloth album with title inked to upper cover, thumbsoiling to covers, a few pages with coffee-splatters internally.

'... HERE IS A SMALL FANTASTIC BOOK FOR YOU AND ME.'

The first leaf of this manuscript contains a letter to Gwyndolyn Steinbeck which explains Steinbeck's writing process during the war: 'Books are sometimes very hard to write and sometimes very easy to write. Sometimes the hard ones are good and sometimes the easy ones are good, but there is no rule about this. I would like now to write an easy one for a good many reasons. The war is on. Most of the work I am doing is not good work but it is hard ... I wonder whether laughter may not be a very valuable thing now above all times. I do have a conscience about doing such a book now. But you will remember what has been given me since I have put my self under this guidance and under the orders of the military—bad work, specifically since the subjects and restrictions could not produce good work ... So I will start this book. It will be a private book written only for us. If it should prove amusing enough to us, we may print it later but there will be none of that thought in its first writing. I wrote Tortilla Flat when my mother was paralyzed and our family was sad and tired and dispirited. Maybe the world is paralyzed now and this is my own personal relief from the sadness and the weariness that is getting so deep into all of us. Anyway, here is a small fantastic book for you and me.'

Though incomplete, the piece seems to be an absurdist comedy poking fun at American tourists in Mexico, told with a heavy dose of magical realism, and featuring 22 original illustrations by Steinbeck.

The second leaf contains Steinbeck's title page, listing the date as 1943, 'in the second year of the Second World War,' and providing a quote from a poet named Flannery, who may be entirely made up by Steinbeck: 'In Sorrow and Labor / Be thou Good Neighbor / As was Jesu, Savior.' The next page contains a longer quote credited to Bernal Diaz, historian for Hernando Cortes' expedition, but this is probably made up too, as it is about the natives of Tenochultan baking wafers of bread, coloring them red yellow and blue, and then every morning, walking into the streets and throwing the wafers into the air: 'This custom was very wasteful since the people seldom could find their bread again and, indeed, did not even concern themselves to look.'

The story concerns a young American named Carlos Francisco Whitney of Rhode Island, a Harvard graduate who, in his 27th year, decides to take a walking tour of Mexico which leads him to the village of St. Thomas Flowering Frog (the home of a real St. Thomas Flowering Frog) and the Nest of the Virgin.

Carlos the American's dialogue is rendered in nearly unintelligible dialect ('Whur can I slip?' Carlos asks), while the dialogue of the natives is rendered clearly. Interspersed on the verso opposite the writing are pen and ink illustrations by Steinbeck of 'A lovely and devoted mother' (a sow with 9 nursing piglets), 'canus universalis,' St Thomas himself, 'Marigold / Flower of Death,' 'Mexican Raccoon Trap. Considered remarkable in view of the fact that there are no raccoons in Mexico,' a 'well in the square near the Nest of the Virgin,' 'Mexican snail / Has a reputation for being slow,' 'Mexican corn or maize/ It is very like other corn or maize,' and 'Donkey (loaded) with illustrated method for tying.'

In his biography of Steinbeck, Jackson J. Benson mentions a short story called 'The Good Neighbors' that may actually refer to this piece. In the summer of 1945 Pat Covici wanted Steinbeck to 'go back and finish a previously attempted work called 'The Good Neighbors,' so that' the publisher could bring out a volume of three novelettes of Mexico ('The Pearl,' 'El Camion Vacilador,' and this title). 'But 'The Good Neighbors' (which, although set in Mexico, had been written the summer before in New York) had turned sour ... and was beyond hope of rescue' (Benson 569). When he had set 'The Good Little Neighbor' aside in 1944, he had turned his attention to Cannery Row, and again in 1945 disregarding Covici's request, he began working on what would become The Wayward Bus.