I am well into the third year of my research based on the life and works of John Steinbeck (1902-1968), an American author and Nobel prize winner; and at this point, he has ensconced himself in my head like a resourceful tenant who doesn’t help with rent but comments on everything. Anything that irks me, or society at large, now automatically turns into an internal seminar titled: What would Steinbeck say about this mess?

Traffic. Inequality. Moral apathy. And now, the Epstein files.

Some people cope with disturbing news by doomscrolling. I cope by mentally handing the file to Steinbeck and watching him read it with the expression of a man who has seen humanity forget itself before, and will again. If Steinbeck were alive today and presented with the Epstein files, he wouldn’t clutch his chest or announce that civilization has collapsed. He would sigh. A weary, farm-weathered sigh, the way we’d sigh if the roof leaks again and you already know whose fault it is.

Because nothing in those files would surprise him.

Steinbeck never believed evil arrived with background music. In his world, it arrived very silently, on time, well-funded, and protected by paperwork. He had written, “It has always been my belief that the most frightening thing in the world is the lack of moral responsibility.” (Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters)

Abuse, as the Epstein files suggest, wasn’t accidental. It was efficient. Streamlined. It had schedules, NDAs, and a legal team that probably billed more per hour than most people earn in a month. What would fascinate Steinbeck is not Epstein the man, but Epstein the “arrangement”. The social ecosystem that made him possible. The donors who looked away. The institutions that suddenly developed cataracts. The polite society that mistook silence for sophistication, rather like relatives who pretend not to hear arguments because the TV volume is conveniently high.

Steinbeck, a humanitarian who never wanted to appear presumptuous,(according to Robert DeMott his biographer), would tell us that Epstein wasn’t the anomaly. He was the outcome. A natural byproduct of a system where money is treated like disinfectant, capable of sanitising even the most questionable behaviour. He wrote about banks as faceless monsters and greed as something that spreads like fungus on that piece of paneer you forgot to keep in the fridge on a hot summer’s night. He had written, “The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.” (The Grapes of Wrath)

To him, power didn’t corrupt suddenly; it creeped in, slyly rearranged the furniture and settled in cozily.

The redacted names would irritate him. Justice, in Steinbeck’s view, was never blind. It was selectively farsighted, excellent vision when the powerless were involved, but mysteriously squinty around wealth and influence. The law, like society, had a habit of clearing its throat when important people entered the room. And then Steinbeck would turn his attention to us, the spectators. This is where his disappointment would sharpen.

He disliked spectatorship masquerading as concern. He would see our outrage cycles for what they are: emotional fast food. Hot, satisfying, instantly forgettable. We scroll, we exclaim, we forward links with captions like “This is sick”, and then we go back to discussing air fryers, diets and the performance of Indian cricketers.

To Steinbeck, this would look like standing outside a burning house, passionately debating fire safety standards and refusing to pass the bucket. He would also notice how quickly the conversation abandons the victims. Names disappear. Stories evaporate. Suffering becomes a footnote because prolonged empathy is inconvenient, do we have the bandwidth for it? Survivors are expected to be brave, articulate, composed and preferably quiet once the headlines fade.

Steinbeck wrote about people destroyed not only by cruelty, but by indifference. He believed that the greatest moral failure wasn’t violence, it was the comfort with which others lived beside it. If he were writing today, he might say something like: A society does not fall when crimes occur. It falls when crimes become manageable. The Epstein files, to Steinbeck, would be proof of how efficiently we manage horror. We file it. Delay it. Rename it. Abuse becomes “misconduct.” Silence becomes “complexity.” Power becomes “nuance.” And nuance, in the wrong hands, becomes a very accommodating carpet under which all the dirt can be swept. 

What would anger him most is not that powerful men fell, but that they were cushioned on the way down. That consequences arrived diluted, delayed, or delegated. That justice was treated like a vestigial organ, not a basic requirement.

Steinbeck wouldn’t ask us to cancel anyone. He’d ask something far more uncomfortable: Who benefits from our forgetting?

Because forgetting, he knew, is society’s most reliable service to power.

And judging by how quickly we move on, we’re very good customers.

Just like with the dust under the sofa. 

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