Famous Authors — The Life and Works of John Steinback

John Steinbeck, one of America's most notable 20th century novelists, was born not far from the rugged and beautiful coastline of northern California in 1902. He was born in Salinas, which lies in a valley a few miles in from the coast. San Francisco lies about 100 miles to the north. Monterey is the nearest coastal town with Pacific Grove, a small residential town, nearby. The Steinbeck home lies on Central Avenue in downtown Salinas. It's a roomy wood frame building bought when Steinbeck's father became manager of a flour mill in the town. When Steinbeck was young it stood near the edge of the town so he could hear the frogs croak. In the as yet unfilled marshes nearby the house represented prosperity and a good position in town and the family that lived there were closely integrated into all the social and business affairs of Salinas. The broad streets common to most American towns have an air of confidence about them. The buildings, a neighboring house has just the same sort of decoration as the Steinbeck's house, are charming and full of character. In the streets nearby are long established municipal buildings and the homes of Steinbeck's many friends. It was a good place to grow up in. Steinbeck's father was a large gentle man. His family had moved west in the 1870s and by 1900 he was manager of a flour mill in Salinas. Olive Steinbeck was sociable and capable. Well educated, she was a teacher before her marriage. Her strong character was an important influence on our three children, two daughters besides John. There were always animals at the This pony, their father's horse and chickens, so there was a country feel to their lives. The father was very enthusiastic about the garden and he taught his children to love gardening. Otherwise he made life in the house on Central Avenue a rather stern affair. At the turn of the Salinas had a population of around 2,500. As manager of the flour mill, Steinbeck's father enjoyed a good social position. His mother was to become equally well known for her many social activities, so many that the children were to feel she gave more time to others than she gave to them. The flour mill closed. Steinbeck's father opened a grain store, which failed, using up their meagre financial resources. Fortunately his good name in Salinas got him the position of treasurer of Monterey County. They didn't pay well, but they could stay on in Central Avenue and maintain their social position in the town. It meant a lot. At home there were always books and magazines to read and his mother encouraged her son's literary efforts. He was apparently given this beautifully illustrated edition of Mallory's Mort Data, with its stories of the Knights of the Round Table, which became his favourite reading. At school he did not seem to shine at anything except essay writing. If he appears in the school sports photograph, it's only because they were short of athletes. At least schoolwork gave him no trouble. His sisters, this is his younger sister Mary, said they were all expected to do well at school. Close to him in her teens she married a wealthy businessman. Here, joking with him on the lawn in front of the house, Stanbeck loved and admired his stern father. In later years, when he was hard up, his father was always ready to help him. But in spite of a secure and loving home and the encouragement of his talents, he did not make life easy for himself. He was a constant rebel, a loner, always doing what he knew his parents would not like. A few miles away on the south coast was Monterey, a fishing port, and Pacific Grove on a promontory. Pacific Grove is a small residential town where many of the houses are holiday homes, and here the Steinbeck family came to spend the summer. It's still a quiet, respectable place with neat little streets running down to the nearby rocky shore, and the houses overhung with the great pine trees, which are a feature of this coast. Pacific Grove was the favorite haunt of John Steinbeck, both in his early years and later during his writing career. It's not difficult to understand. The beauty of the coastline, the ever-changing light, the restless sea, the wonderful trees. Altogether they have a significance which is quite distinct from the human beings who live here. At the same time, the happy, relaxed holiday life he enjoyed here when family and friends came to visit made a great impression on him. In this photograph, Steinbeck is a little boy with the hat. Etched on most people's minds is the idea of California as the land of plenty. Oil, of course, and cattle. It was the dream of so many poor Americans and immigrants from other lands to go west to the land of sunshine and opportunity. There's no doubt California can do it. This vast canal enables cultivation along the length of the state, as well as catering for the multitudes who live in Los Angeles. You don't go far without coming across vast fields of fruit, like these vines, for producing raisins, or even further north, grapes, to make the excellent Californian wines. What most impinged on the early life of John Steinbeck, however, were these fields. Even while he was at school during the First World War, the school army cadet corps was mobilized to go out to the fields to help bring in the crops. There was a huge need for labor, since mechanization was not yet so advanced, and many men had joined the army. This is the great alluvial plain, which is the Salinas Valley, where some of the enormous quantities of vegetables for which California is renowned are, then as now, produced for the world's markets. It was the back-breaking work in those fields, from his early into his university years, which was to provide the close knowledge of the earth and those who worked it, that would be so valuable to him as a writer in later years. In the depression of the thirties, he was to see thousands of poor people arrive across the land to work in those fields, which he knew so well. Today there are many more machines to help bring in the beet crop, but there is still a seasonal need for cheap labor, provided now by the thousands of Mexicans who flood in from the south. If there's no work back home, then people migrate and will take whatever is offered elsewhere. It is easy to look at this scene and think that it's a political situation, poor people being exploited, but a chance to work is better than no work at all. This is Spreckles, where the beet is processed. Steinbeck knew all about the domination of a community by powerful companies and factory owners. His father worked in Spreckles for a few months after his business collapsed. All Steinbeck's early life, he saw these fields being ploughed, developed, improved, cropped. He knew intimately how Salinas and all the people living in the valley depended on the crops produced there for their livelihood. When he was a student, he worked for a time in the factory. His view of the human situation was based on this valley, the farming and the people who lived and worked there. As a boy, he explored every inch of the surrounding country, and it came to be part of the books he was to produce. The hills are gentle, with small clumps of trees and wide stretches of grass, which give them an organized and cultivated feel, as if some heavenly gardener had laid it all out. None of the awesome terrors of the rocky mountains here, it all smoothed out and calm. The Salinas River happens to run just behind the old Spreckles factory. For Steinbeck, a love of nature took the place of religion, which he largely ignored. It's probable that such feelings began here, where he played as a boy, and here he was to set the delightful scenes between the two friends in one of his most successful books, Of Mice and Men. Only a few minutes' walk up the coast from the holiday town of Pacific Grove is Monterey. It is set around the head of a deep bay. It's not surprising to find that Monterey thrives as a fishing port. Dominating the road along the shore are the canning factories, and in Steinbeck's day, before modern refrigeration, the factories were incredibly busy places, employing hundreds of people. Cannery Row was to give its name to one of Steinbeck's best short novels, and today the town thrives on the writer's fame. It is ironic that at the time he was here, he wasn't liked. As a boy who spent his summers loafing around the Monterey canning factories, he was reckoned an ungainly misfit. He had few friends and kept pretty much to himself. As an adult, when he wrote about the town, he was despised. An aquarium may be sited where a canning factory once functioned, but in the harbour there are still boats. People who sail in boats are practical people. They have to be. The life of a fisherman is hard and dangerous. Before the tourists and the pleasure boats added a touch of glamour to it, the harbour of Monterey was a tough and, for the imaginative Steinbeck, no doubt, an exciting place where values were rough and straightforward. Some of Steinbeck's best work was to grow from his intuitive love and knowledge of this place. The poor sailors and Mexican fishermen who peopled it had been on his horizon from early childhood. Steinbeck was to spend about six years at Stanford University, beginning in 1919, when he was 17. He didn't in the end take a degree, but he took all the classes in literature and writing very seriously. He had only one aim, to be a writer, and he never considered any other future. Having ignored the Episcopalian Christianity of his own upbringing, he looked for his own answers and read much philosophy, particularly the Greeks. He enjoyed books, researching, talking with intelligent people, so, in his own way, he enjoyed Stanford. The restrictions of an institution he could not bear. He may have valued some of his professors and their estimations of him, but he could not produce essays on time. He learned to drink and play poker, and he often seemed to put more effort into driving people away than making friends. He did, however, have one or two who stuck with him after college. They even went to work with him in the Salinas fields during vacations. He spent about half of each year away from Stanford, working to earn the money for the other half. He despised academics and people with intellectual pretensions, though he was himself decidedly intellectual. In the end, he got from Stanford what he needed. Not far away from Stanford was San Francisco. He went there for weekends, when his folks thought he was staying with friends. There he experienced what he later called sweet-scented sin. Who needs Paris when there are the pleasure domes of Van Ness Avenue, he said. For a large part of his life, John Steinbeck deliberately tried to shock or to go against the views of those who loved him and cared for him, like his family and friends. So, sin in the sunny streets of San Francisco was in keeping with his behavior at this time. It's an adolescent norm for kids to rebel a bit. It's more unusual when it goes on into adulthood. Steinbeck affronted friends and teachers alike, and made his path through college a rocky one. During his college period, he moved through a string of laboring jobs, punctuated by fresh starts at Stanford. But he had few constant friends, and those he had, he would readily rebuff or stretch the relationship to breaking point. On a rocky promontory between Pacific Grove and Monterey is sited the Hopkins Marine Station. In 1923, with his younger sister Mary, now also a Stanford student, he enrolled for the summer quarter. Hopkins was an extension of Stanford, and it offered humanities as well as life sciences. It was the philosophical ideas he met in marine biology, however, that were to most powerfully influence his future writing. The idea that nature and its path were a whole, were completely interdependent, including, of course, mankind. An alternation between the airy realms of philosophy and the rough practicalities of work among the fruit crops around the valley, characterized his life at this time. But it all tied together. Rows of apple trees are man organizing nature, after all. After Stanford, he sailed to New York. A laboring job very nearly killed him. As a cub reporter on a newspaper, he couldn't keep to the rules, and was fired. Suddenly, a publishing firm asked for more short stories for a book. He starved to complete them, then found his man had moved on, and the company no longer wanted them. He nearly wrecked the office in his fury, and there was nothing for it but a sudden departure from New York and a retreat to Salinas. No one could doubt his determination. However, he couldn't stay at home, and took a job as a caretaker at a holiday home at a lake east of San Francisco, Lake Tahoe. It was lonely and cold in winter, but he could write there. At Lake Tahoe, he finished his first novel, The Cup of Gold. At Pacific Grove, where he was to settle off and on for years to come, his family's holiday home was a haven, which enabled him to weather the hardship and rejection which dogged his every effort. The Cup of Gold was published in 1929. It made no impression. He was not put off. After all, he was back on home ground. Real ground. In this laboratory on Cannery Row, a man called Ed Ricketts ran a business supplying animals for dissection and experiments in high schools and colleges. He bred animals in cages, rats, turtles, snakes, lizards, and so on, and he also prepared and preserved partially dissected animals. He was good at his job, but he never made enough money to employ the staff he needed, so he often got behind with his work. In 1930, Steinbeck and Ricketts met and became firm friends. Steinbeck would call by at the rather gloomy lab after he'd written his quota for the day, and while Ricketts would labor on at whatever he had in hand, the two would talk. Ricketts was quiet and patient. He spent a lot of his time on the shoreline collecting specimens, and Steinbeck's early experience at the Hopkins Marine Station helped to bring them together. Ed had been brought up in urban Chicago, so the beauty of the Monterey Beach and its marine treasures were a constant pleasure to him, but Ed was also a philosopher. He was avid about poetry and music, as well as being a remarkable scientist, so it's not surprising that Steinbeck and he became such friends. Ed was married when they first met, but later divorced, and had a certain reputation with the ladies, a trait which no doubt endeared him to Steinbeck. This was the hardest period of Steinbeck's career, when after so many years he still had no success. Bottering about the speech, talking to the intelligent and encouraging Ricketts, someone he liked and respected unreservedly, meant that his overwhelming desire to write never flared. He made efforts to get work on film scripts. You could hardly be a Californian writer and not try for the good life. This was no more successful than his efforts to get published, where at least two companies had gone bankrupt while handling his books. He had to return to Grove. Steinbeck met Carol Henning while he was at Lake Tahoe, and their relationship had developed intermittently. In Steinbeck's words, she had a sharp and penetrating mind. She was outspoken and aggressive, and she had a flat in San Francisco where she worked. For about six months Steinbeck worked as a labourer, loading and unloading ships. The physical exhaustion meant he couldn't write, but he did get closer to Carol. They were finally married in 1931. She made a good wife for him, independent, sceptical, and quite able to stand up to him. But in the voyage he took her through life, he was not an easy mate. In 1931 he found a valuable agent in the firm of Macintosh and Otis, who were to help him for the rest of his career. He disliked having the publicity photographs taken that they asked for. When his mother took ill, he went with Carol to the Salinas house, where she showed her worth by taking on much of the housework and nursing. The father gave them a small allowance, and Carol still typed what he wrote. So Steinbeck had every possible support from his family. As the mother worsened, Steinbeck took the chance to research for some stories among the fields in the valley. It was around this time that Steinbeck began to close in on the subject matter that was to be at the core of his greatest successes, the simple people who worked the fields he knew so well. For many of his later critics, it seemed that Steinbeck was a left-wing sympathizer of the oppressed working classes, and that he was party to the unrest and strikes which flared up everywhere in the depression of the 1930s. He would never accept this criticism. What he wrote about was the human condition as he saw it. He was no prophet or teacher. Success came suddenly. Tortilla Flat was published five days after his father died. Its tale of poor Mexican paisanos was perfect for the cinema, and Paramount offered four thousand dollars for the film rights. Just before Christmas 1935, the contract was signed. Success brought fame and money. Seventy-five thousand dollars for the rights of the grapes of Roth. But it also brought problems with Carol and Gwyn Conjure. She was 18 years younger than Steinbeck, gentle, open, and an aspiring singer. She fell in love with him. The breakup with Carol was difficult, and life with Gwyn, who bore him two sons, was never easy. She was restless and wanted to pursue her singing career. His war effort was a play about the resistance in Europe, called The Moon is Down. Critics said he was supporting the Nazis, but he dedicated it to Pat Kovici, his longtime supporter and publisher, who knew of Steinbeck's honest patriotism. The Herald Tribune sent him to London to report on the war from there, and a new phase of his life began, though journalism was never his forty. Steinbeck's two sons were much loved, but often unable to get through to their father, who was usually preoccupied with his work. Steinbeck moved right into the top league in Hollywood with the success of the films of his books. Charlie Chaplin became a close friend. He also did all he could to become familiar with the techniques of filmmaking. He hated the fame and publicity, however, and it put great strains on his marriages. Marriage with Gwyn lasted until he met Elaine Scott in 1949. She was the wife of the film star, Zachary Scott. Elaine was intelligent and outgoing, as well as being pretty and well-tailored. She was also, unlike the other wives, very sure of herself, wanted to love and be loved. They met in Hollywood when Steinbeck was working on the script for the film, which became Viva Zapata. Steinbeck already considered himself a lousy husband and father, but their marriage was to be a great success, giving him the strength to write, amongst other things, East of Eden, about the Salinas Valley. In the relative calm of his marriage to Elaine, they started to look for a more peaceful place to live. Right on the far northeast end of Long Island, Sag Harbor met many of their requirements. Not on the road to anywhere people have to be determined to get there. It's a quiet, distinguished town with good shops and a variety of fine old wooden houses. They chose a site rather than a house, a point of wooded land almost surrounded by water. The house itself was of little distinction, and they added what they required. But on the point they constructed a little hut. He called it Joyous Guard, where he could retire to write undisturbed by the world. It was enough. In 1962 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was a great honor, marred, however, by attacks made on all his work by critics of the major papers, including the New York Times. They said he was not worthy. The Swedes made up for it by showing their high regard for him. He was fortunate to have the peace of Sag Harbor and the support of Elaine at such a time. Particularly with his last novel, The Winter of Our Discontent, he was accused of being sentimental, betraying the working men he wrote about in The Grapes of Wrath. He had run away, they said, from the realism and honesty of his early work. In fact, he had never been political. His work had a life of its own. He was not a prophet or a teacher. If people misunderstood his work, then it was up to them to sort it out. It was fortunate that once again at Sag Harbor he could feel close to nature. In his later years, he was always near the pulse of events in his native land. Here he flies in the jet of President Johnson, some of whose speeches he wrote. He made a six-week trip to Vietnam for Newsweek, and the picture he painted of America's involvement was a grim one. He wrote of gallant men doing a difficult job. He dealt as always with the people involved, caught up in the issues whether they liked it or not. At home, the anti-war faction hated him. He was a traitor all over again. He died in 1968, not having written a novel since his Nobel Prize. In spite of all the harsh criticism he received, his popularity continues unabated. The most striking features of the work of John Steinbeck are that he ranged over a wide variety of forms, and that, unlike so many other 20th century writers, his work is not confessional or autobiographical. Of course, he used his experience of life in his writing, but he was essentially a modest man and deeply concerned with literature and the fruitful place it has in our lives. His work falls roughly into four groups, non-fiction pieces, plays and film scripts, short stories, and novels. Non-fiction. He wrote numerous articles for journals and travel books with a reflective element on any topic that came to mind. Amongst these are The Blood is Strong, a series of newspaper articles on the plight of migrant workers in California. Sea of Cortex, the journal of a scientific trip with his friend Ed Ricketts. Bombs Away, wartime reflections. A Russian journal, Once There Was a War, an account of the exploits of a commander group he travelled with during the war. Travels with Charlie in Search of America was full of reflections on everything American and was hugely successful. Charlie was his dog. America and Americans were further ruminations on his nation, about which he was intensely patriotic. Plays and film scripts. The Forgotten Village is a modest film script about a village torn between scientific views of its healthcare and superstition, but it reflects his evolving views on man and his labours. The Moon is Done was written first as a novel, then as a play. In Steinbeck's eyes, not as art, but to help the war effort. Those who wanted more of the grapes of wrath were disappointed. The play Burning Bright was an important experiment for Steinbeck, though its poetical and allegorical form were not understood and generally scorned by the critics. Viva Zapata is a film script on the Mexican Revolution, commissioned by the Hollywood producer Darrell F. Zanuck. Steinbeck worked on this for years, but it was only with the help of the producer Jules Buck that a script was forged out of Steinbeck's vast amount of material. The film was successfully made by Elia Katzan, who filmed masterful versions of various Steinbeck novels. Short Stories. His first collection of short stories was The Pastures of Heaven. They are about rural life in California, where man is carving out his existence against the background of nature, a theme which recurs endlessly in Steinbeck's work. With The Red Pony he got $90 from a magazine when he needed the money. It's about a boy who is given a pony and what it comes to mean for him, and the story has gone on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies. The Long Valley was a further collection of stories mostly based on rural life. The Pearl is a moving tale about a pearl fisherman. Novels. In Steinbeck's novels, the critical world began by seeing him as the ultimate realist, where everything was written down as it is. In fact, Steinbeck was a poet, and from the very start he used the natural background only as the space where his heroes grappled to find their spiritual selves. His books were so successful that the majority of them were made into films almost as soon as they came out. Cup of Gold was in fact a historical novel, quite unlike what was to come. He then began a long series of works based on his experiences in his homeland, the Salinas Valley in California. To a God Unknown. Tortilla Flat. In Dubious Battle, which is about a strike in the Salinas Valley farm community. And Of Mice and Men, the title of which comes from the Scottish poet Robert Burns. It's a funny and touching work about people living on the edge of society, again made most successfully into a film. The Grapes of Wrath is certainly his most famous novel, and it deals wonderfully with the difficult lives of poor emigrants to the farms of California. The Moon is Down was written as propaganda about the work of the resistance movements in wartime Europe. Cannery Row, again based in his home territory. From The Wayward Bus onwards, the critics felt Steinbeck had lost his way because he had left realism behind. However, with East of Eden once more set in his home ground of the Salinas Valley, he had another big success. The last three novels were Sweet Thursday, the short reign of Pippin IV, in probably about an attempt to restore the monarchy in modern France. And finally, The Winter of Our Discontent. Each has a distinct character, but none achieved the success of earlier works. The Essence of Steinbeck. Short, witty, and touching. Of Mice and Men is a perfect introduction to Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath is a key work of 20th century literature, and not to be missed for its grand sweep, and at the same time, its warmth and sensitivity.