PENGUIN The Moon is Down

One of my most vivid memories of middle school was carrying a paperback copy of The Red Pony by John Steinbeck. It was required reading in eighth grade, along with Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and several others. Our reading teacher also assigned our class to read The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, but parents objected. We did what all good 13-year-old boys would do in such a situation: we read it on our own.Steinbeck’s novella was popular. The four connected stories were easy to read, and they were about a boy growing up on a ranch. The teacher encouraged us to read more of Steinbeck on our own, and a few of us did, tackling Tortilla Flat and The Grapes of Wrath (which was not as easy to read as The Red Pony).John Steinbeck (1902-1968) published a series of fictional works considered American classics, including “Cannery Row,” “Of Mice and Men,” and “East of Eden.” He’s best remembered for “The Grapes of Wrath,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the National Book Award in 1940.It was in 1940 that Steinbeck became concerned with the Nazi German threat. Europe was at war, and Nazi propaganda was flourishing in the United States and Latin America. Steinbeck was particularly disturbed with how good the propaganda was; he met with President Franklin Roosevelt to express his concerns but thought nothing had come of it. Until the next year, when he was contacted by the agency that became the Central Intelligence Agency to write propaganda from the opposite perspective. He set to work, and produced a short novel called “The Moon is Down,” published in 1942.Without ever mentioning the country in which it is set, or the name of the invading and occupying country, Steinbeck told a story of a small town having to confront the reality of occupation. Most readers sensed he was writing about Norway, but everyone knew the occupying power was Nazi Germany. It is a story of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events, moving from shock to resentment and ultimately resistance.The book was well received by the American reading public, but it was savaged by two of the leading literary critics of the day, Clifton Fadiman and James Thurber. It’s admittedly not among Steinbeck’s best work. It seems wooden and stilted in places, although it also contains some absolute gems of writing. “Uneven” is how many might describe it today.But that’s only part of the story of “The Moon is Down.” The other part is what happened outside the United States.Copies of the book were smuggled into occupied Europe. People made their own translations and copies, passing them around to friends. Plays were written based on the book and performed clandestinely. Translations included Norwegian, Dutch, French, Russian, Danish, and even Chinese, among many others. The book became the best known American literary work in Russia during the war. A Dutchman translated it into his own language and gave readings to groups of people in the countryside, warning them they could be arrested for listening. Everyone understood, and no one left. A member of the resistance in Italy translated and mimeographed 500 copies and gave them to fellow fighters; to be caught with it was a death sentence.In America, one of the criticisms was that Steinbeck had made the occupying soldiers seem like ordinary people instead of “Nazi monsters.” Readers in occupied countries saw that as entirely realistic, resonating with their own experience of what German soldiers were like. Yes, there was brutality and violence, but the soldiers seemed like ordinary, recognizable people. That was part of the horror of the experience.And that was the key to the novel’s profound reception. After the war, people would say over and over again how well Steinbeck had captured the experience of occupation, as if he had been there. The book offered understanding of a terrible experience; it also offered hope and a reason for people to risk their lives to fight the occupation.“The Moon is Down” also explains why democracy is the best form of government, what freedom is, and what the cost can be.

... in my edition part of the afterword is missing :/ book ends at p.120 in the middle of a sentence.

I was reading the same book at FURB, but this book is kinda different

When The Moon Is Down appeared in 1942, it ignited some of the most incendiary discourse among prominent literary critics that year. They attacked and defended Steinbeck’s short propaganda novel for months following its publication. On the offensive was Clifton Fadiman, writing for The New Yorker. In “Two Ways to Win the War,” which appeared on 7 March 1942, Fadiman attacks the novel for both its form and content. He recognizes the dramatic quality of the story: “Mr. Steinbeck’s book is not a narrative at all but a play equipped with a few casual disguises.” Fadiman’s observation is correct, though he probably knew that the play was already in production. Steinbeck first wrote the story as a play, and then adapted it into a short novel. Like Of Mice and Men, Moon is a play-novelette, a hybrid form which Steinbeck invented. The novel’s major fault, for Fadiman, is its message. He posits that Moon is “based on the notion that in the end good will triumph because it is good and evil will fail because it is evil.” While Steinbeck does write about good and evil in his fiction, The Moon Is Down is more about democracy trumping totalitarianism, and Steinbeck, of course, believes democracy is good and totalitarianism bad. Wrapping up his review, Fadiman makes his opinion most explicit when he writes that “spiritual patriotism is not only not enough but may even impede the war effort, because it fills us with a specious satisfaction, it makes our victory seem ‘inevitable,’ it seduces us to rest on the oars of our own moral principle.” For Fadiman, war literature needed to stir up feelings of collective rage against the Axis powers. That Steinbeck’s story treated the invaders as complex individuals and as eventual victims of their own ideology was dangerous, according to Fadiman, because its message told Americans they were in the moral right, and, therefore, would eventually win the war, which had the potential to weaken their will to fight.

I found this title by happy chance when browsing for a completely different one altogether. Occasionally impulse buys pay off, but this one is pure gold. It’s a plain talking yet highly effective tale that counts the cost of surrendering freedom against fighting for it by whatever means are possible - and I loved every word.Every effort to ensure the people of an unnamed country submit or suffer the consequences of rebellion is politely suggested and actioned when they do not comply. But small acts of defiance unnerve the previously unchallenged invaders; by not accepting defeat the outcome of the victor has not been decided.There are similarities to the roots found in many communities. It really is a rallying of ordinary people, keeping hope alive by igniting it with little bursts of resistance. The townsfolk remain stoic, and as one line in the book states: “…our people are invaded, but I don’t think they’re conquered.”The ‘afterword’ as to how this book came to be written, its overwhelming popularity at the time of publication, together with how it was distributed throughout Europe made very interesting reading too.