The Great Depression was a distant mirror of our own time, so if you feel that we are now living through a dark period of American history, you will probably see the 1930s the same way. Certainly the forces of darkness and repression were present, as they are now: in the Supreme Court, on Wall Street, in the media. But for perhaps the one and only time in American history, the working poor had their hands on, or close to, the levers of power. The depression was far deeper and more difficult than the current recession (a third of the work force was jobless when FDR took office) but there was, I think, more hope. My parents lost their farm during the Great Depression and migrated to Oregon, lost another farm during the 1950s, and yet somehow never lost hope. I was raised an optimist, despite all they had endured, to believe both in the possibility of a better world and that the role of government should be to help improve the lives of the common people, not simply to protect and enhance the wealth, power, and status of the rich. And although people in the 1930s had more reason to feel angry than at any other point in U.S. history, it does not seem that there was as much anger as there is today. Or, at the very least, it seems that the anger was focused in the right direction: look at the steady, simmering anger of The Grapes of Wrath, directed at law enforcement and the big fruit and vegetable growers in California who so ruthlessly exploited the migrant workers. The literature of that age, I believe, reflects both the darkness of the time and the steady current of hope which had not yet been extinguished. I have no difficulty detecting the darkness and cynicism in the literature of the early part of this century. Hope is harder to find.

You state that The Grapes of Wrath is the true great American novel. What sets it apart from the others that try to take that superlative?