Autograph Manuscript, preliminary and working drafts for Sweet Thursday including notes on Cannery Row for the "Bear Flag Café" project, approximately 460 pp, mostly on yellow lined legal paper, rectos only, in pencil, chiefly Sag Harbor, New York, from May-September, 1953.
WITH: Typed Manuscript of Sweet Thursday, nearly complete; plus a variety of typed treatments, outlines, character sketches, etc. for "Bear Flag Café." Original and carbon typescripts totaling approximately 490 pp.
AND: Set of dictaphone tapes used in the composition of the above and inscribed on the lid by Steinbeck for Cy Feuer; and 13 Steinbeck letters, retained carbon copies.
Minor edge-chipping and toning to manuscript leaves, overall in very good to excellent condition and housed in protective sleeves and folders.
Provenance: Cy Feuer, 1911-2006; and Ernest Martin, 1919-1995, Broadway producers; by descent to the current owners.

ONE OF THE LENGTHIEST WORKING MANUSCRIPTS BY A LITERARY GREAT EVER TO BE OFFERED AT AUCTION. IT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEINBECK MANUSCRIPT KNOWN IN PRIVATE HANDS AND IT HAS NEVER BEEN THOROUGHLY STUDIED.

Steinbeck wrote Cannery Row in 1944, living in Pacific Grove, CA with his pregnant second wife, Gwyndolyn Conger. Many have suggested that his portrayal of the seedy side of Monterey in Cannery Row was an attempt to "lighten up" after experiencing considerable trauma during the war. It is indeed striking that his first post-war work ignores the war entirely. Doc, Mack, Lee Chong, et al, inhabit a simpler time and place, full of friendship and essential pacifism.

Nine years elapsed between the publication of Cannery Row and its sequel, Sweet Thursday. Steinbeck was prompted to revisit the characters in the early 1950s by the Broadway producers, Cy Feuer and Ernie Martin. Feuer and Martin were hot off of the success of Guys and Dolls (1951) and pitched to Steinbeck a musical comedy version of Cannery Row. However, it was quite a significant period that had elapsed. Steinbeck moved from Pacific Grove around the time that Cannery Row was published, in part due to his awareness of the cold reception of the book by the majority of his neighbors. He divorced Gwendolyn in 1948 and married Elaine Scott in 1950. The present manuscript was chiefly written at their rental house in Sag Harbor, Long Island. (This was the first summer that Steinbeck spent in Long Island, he would purchase a cottage in Sag Harbor in 1955.) Most significantly, Steinbeck's closest friend and collaborator, Ed Ricketts, had been killed in a train collision in 1948. Ricketts was the inspiration for "Doc" the hero of Cannery Row, a real-life Monterey marine biologist. Ricketts and Steinbeck co-authored The Sea of Cortez based on their 1940 expedition. They planned another book and expedition in 1948, this time based on the marine biology off the coast of British Columbia. Ricketts died only a week before their scheduled departure. Their friendship was probably the most important relationship of Steinbeck's life, or at least the one which had the most influence on his writing.

What results when Steinbeck is asked to revisit "Doc" and the other characters of Cannery Row from the other side of the country, in a new house with a new wife, and troubled by the specter of Ed Ricketts? Something over half of the present manuscript consists of treatments, outlines and draft dialogues for "Bear Flag Café," as the musical of Cannery Row was tentatively titled. "Bear Flag Café" of course being the somewhat snappier name for Dora Flood's whorehouse, the "Bear Flag Restaurant" of Cannery Row. However, somewhere between the 250th and the 300th page of manuscript notes the musical was transcended, Steinbeck realizes he has a novel on his hands, and Sweet Thursday is born. "For those who respond to its whimsical charm, Sweet Thursday is one of the most purely pleasurable works in John Steinbeck's canon" (Schultz & Li, Critical Companion to John Steinbeck, p 204). Present here are nearly 200 pages of further autograph manuscript which relate directly to the novel, being divided into the chapters roughly corresponding to the published book. At the beginning of the manuscript elements of different chapters are combined and a number of early chapters are not present. Later, the autograph manuscript more closely parallels the printed version though still with frequent differences to wording. Roughly 29 of the published novel's 40 chapters are represented in the autograph manuscript in nearly complete form or in substantial fragments. The typescript is virtually complete, being chapters 1-28 and 33-40 plus a carbon typescript of an UNPUBLISHED INTRODUCTION TO THE NOVEL.

Sweet Thursday is more plot-driven than Cannery Row and less introspective: it is the "day that comes after Lousy Wednesday" and is pleasure-bent. Many of the characters of Cannery Row are carried over. The hero is still Doc and the plot revolves around his love interest, Suzy. Some critics have argued that Doc's character in Sweet Thursday is closer to Steinbeck's own than to that of Ed Ricketts. Sweet Thursday features an episode in which Doc struggles with writer's block, for example. Other characters carried over from Cannery Row are Mack and the co-denizens of the Palace Flophouse: Eddie, Gay, and Hazel; plus Lee Chong and Henri the painter. The whorehouse is run by Fauna in Sweet Thursday, Dora Flood's sister.

Although Steinbeck was unsuccessful in adapting Cannery Row to Broadway, Sweet Thursday itself was adapted as the musical Pipe Dream, which debuted about 18 months after Sweet Thursday was published. This archive was retained by Feuer and Martin partially as the working source material for a project in which they were intimately involved, and partially as a memento of their friendship with one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. It was divided between the two families and largely forgotten about. In 2004, Martin's portion of the archive has posthumously discovered. A few years later, Martin's portion was re-united with that belonging to the children of Cy Feuer.
A listing of manuscript and typescript chapter headers, first lines of fragments, and summaries of the unpublished passages and letters is available upon request.