Dr. Brian Railsback is on a personal mission of literary retribution. The scholar from Western South Carolina University is determined to correct a major oversight in his field. He is doggedly attempting to realign the relatively newborn ecocritical universe, with the blazing star of John Steinbeck in his rightful place at the center.

Say what?

Ecocriticism is a chic new literary-critical theory that looks at how an author deals with the natural environment through his or her use of language, theme, structure, etc. Critical theories are like different tools at an academic’s disposal, which reveal different perspectives on an author.

Railsback, who will be espousing his theories at the Steinbeck Festival in Salinas this weekend, believes John Steinbeck is the unrecognized father of ecocriticism, introducing many of its principles before the theory was founded just a few short years after his death.

According to Railsback, ecocritics tend to focus on writers like Leslie Marmon Silko, Don Delillo, William Faulkner, and Wallace Stegner while paying very little, if any, attention to Steinbeck. In fact, Railsback says, Steinbeck barely garners a mention in a number of recently published collections of ecocriticism.

“It’s surprising he’s not a central figure,” Railsback says. “It’s the best way to read him. The medium of nature exists throughout his work.”

But it’s his earlier novels, especially Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row—the latter which Railsback believes is Steinbeck’s greatest single book—that really emphasize his importance from an ecocritical perspective.

“Steinbeck highlights the importance of keying into everything. From quantum theory to universal cosmology, he stresses the integration of all,” Railsback says. “In Cannery Row, he uses this overarching metaphor of life as a tidepool…it’s one of the earliest literary themes based on a holistic environmental perspective. Ecocriticism needs to catch up with Steinbeck.”

As early as the 1940’s, Steinbeck’s subject matter was drawing attention to the degradation of the environment at a time when conservation was almost totally unheard of. His themes of holistic ecology and conservation, ideas that drive ecologists and radical environmental groups, were way before his time. In fact, Railsback says, many critics slammed Steinbeck for equating people with animals in the holistic hierarchy of the natural world. Yet Steinbeck’s dramatization of the human as animal is precisely what makes his work so appealing from an ecocritical standpoint.

“Steinbeck’s heroes are always the ones connected to the natural environment; his troubled characters are frequently disassociated or ignorant of being part of a larger whole,” Railsback says. “Doc [from Cannery Row] and Tom Joad [from The Grapes of Wrath], for instance, have this understanding of their roles in the big picture. It’s what defines them as characters and makes them wise.”

Co-editor of A John Steinbeck Encyclopedia (Greenwood Press) and author of Charles Darwin and the Art of John Steinbeck (Idaho University Press) and numerous papers, Railsback has devoted his life to becoming one of the foremost experts on our local Nobel Prize-winner.

Between his Steinbeck criticism and his work as department chair in the English Department at WSCU, Railsback also finds time to write fiction, recently publishing a novel titled, The Darkest Clearing (High Sierra Books). This debut novel is an “eco-thriller” featuring an environmental terrorist trained as a CIA Special Ops, who’s determined to return one of America’s most famous National Parks to nature by killing every human that enters it.

“It’s not Steinbeck,” Railsback admits. “But its themes are very similar. It’s a story about various elements struggling on a landscape of limited resources. The thing is, you can’t control nature. You may think you’re superior, but you’re not.”

Although the idea for the novel was born at a Steinbeck conference in Nantucket a few years back, Railsback was inspired by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which he says is totally overrun with visitors and blanketed with noxious smog throughout the summer.

“It’s more a playground for masses of humanity than a wildlife preserve,” Railsback says. “It got me to thinking about solutions.”

Such as holing up in the woods and killing every human that enters.