I have also been troubled by In Dubious Battle. Kenneth Rexroth once took Steinbeck to a union rally where four men were killed and he recalls Steinbeck was so appalled that when he wrote about it, he could only write that one man had been killed. The reality was too much for him. But then Rexroth could be a braggert and the whole story may be apocryphal. Battle does have great value for telling a hard truth that we often don't want to hear: we sometimes become what we behold (and old William Blake line). If we hate something, we take on its characteristics to fight it. I don't like it when that is applied to the left, but the revelations about Stalin might not have been so crushing to the CP in America if more people had been prepared for it.