Every so often the discussion comes up about the best ending to a novel. I’ve long been a supporter of “Brave New World” and “The Sun Also Rises,” and usually if I’m in good company “The Grapes of Wrath” gets mentioned.

I’ve never quite agreed with that one, and this is probably why. The photographer Horace Bristol was inspired by Dorothea Lange photos to create a story for LIFE magazine about the migrant farmworkers of the Great Depression. He wanted John Steinbeck to write the text, and they set off together after Steinbeck initially agreed. Bristol photographed the people (if you have a copy of the book with a man’s photo on the cover, it’s a Bristol shot) and Steinbeck talked to them. Steinbeck was already working on a related novel and decided not to go ahead with the LIFE story, but when the book finally came out Bristol was eager to read it.

“He both admired the novel and recognized it as a masterpiece of American literature, but privately was troubled by several passages that he believed inappropriately sensationalized the lives of the men and women he and Steinbeck had interviewed and photographed. The novel’s final scene … especially troubled Bristol. He had photographed the woman Steinbeck had based the character on, but she was nursing an infant … The literary license taken by the novelist seemed to Bristol to be a deliberate attempt to shock and titillate readers.”

That’s from a book about Bristol I have for my thesis, and I’m not going to guarantee they’re presenting things with 100 percent accuracy, either, because I don’t know. But it’s enough to make me think and question, and maybe feeds into what always made me uncomfortable about the ending.

Still, it’s a good enough ending that I removed the spoilers as well as I could from the excerpt.