JOHN STEINBECK

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JOHN STEINBECK

• An Introduction

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JOHN STEINBECK

• John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was born in Salinas,
  California, near Monterey on February 27, 1902 of
  German and Irish ancestry.
• His father was treasurer of Monterey County and
  his mother was a public school teacher.
• An avid reader, he was influenced by Malory,
  Hardy, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, George Eliot, Milton
  and the Bible.

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• After graduating from Salinas High School, he
  attended Stanford University but did not
  graduate.
• Instead, he left for New York in 1925 to
  establish a career as a writer, but he was
  unsuccessful and returned to California.
• He worked a series of odd jobs as a hired hand on
  nearby ranches, a road construction worker, a
  caretaker, a chemist, a freight handler, a sugar
  beet factory worker, and a fruit picker.

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• His first three novels earned little literary
  attention until, in 1935, he published Tortilla
  Flat. Tortilla Flat finally brought Steinbeck
  the critical and financial success he had been
  working so hard to achieve.
• In 1937, his dog chewed up half of an original
  manuscript entitled Something That Happened. He
  recreated it from memory, completed the work,
  changed the title to Of Mice and Men, and sent it
  to his publisher two months later.

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• Of Mice and Men is an experiment in literary
  form Steinbeck blends narrative with dramatic
  technique. For example, although the novel
  technically may be said to have an omniscient
  narrator, the narrators role is sharply limited.
  Steinbeck only reveals a characters thoughts or
  what is happening outside the immediate scene
  through dramatic meansan action, gesture, facial
  expression, or dialogue. In short, Steinbecks
  primary aim is showing rather than telling.
• Maybe this is why Of Mice and Men, when adapted
  into a play, was such a huge hit with critics and
  audiences on Broadway.

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• During the 1930s, Steinbeck was concerned about
  the plight of Americas downtrodden and
  dispossessed. From 1935 to 1940, exiles from the
  drought-plagued Southwest poured into California,
  drawn by the conviction that California was the
  promised land, a place to begin anew with
  employment in the orange groves and lettuce
  fields. More than 350,000 people from Oklahoma,
  Arkansas, and Texas came to California for
  employment. California could not employ all of
  these people. So from the mid 1930s until 1940,
  the migrants moved restlessly up and down the
  state, waiting for crops to ripen, longing for
  work.

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• In fact, he missed the opening night of Of Mice
  and Men
• on Broadway because he was traveling with a
  group of migrant workers from Oklahoma to
  California.
• In 1939 Steinbeck published the story of their
  lives in the
• best-selling novel and controversial exposé
  Grapes of Wrath.
• This masterpiece won a Pulitzer prize and the
  National Book Award.
• In 1962, Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize
  for Literature. He was praised for his impartial
  instinct for truth in a particularly American
  vein.

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• John Steinbeck died December 20, 1968.
• In 1974, his Salinas home was opened as a museum
  and restaurant.
• Learn more about the National Steinbeck Center at
  www.steinbeck.org.

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• Throughout his work, Steinbeck advocated a kind
  of moral ecology, emphasizing the need for
  humans and nature to be in partnership. He was
  ultimately more interested in what unites
  humanity than what causes isolation.
• Much of Steinbecks work focuses on the outcasts
  of societythe poor, the demented, the
  uneducated, and the rebellious. His obvious
  sympathy for the underdog reveals that the
  inhumanity that individuals inflict upon each
  other never failed to outrage him.

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• Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of
  human need for it and it has not changed except
  to become more needed. The skalds, the bards,
  the writers are not separate and exclusive. From
  the beginning, their functions, their duties,
  their responsibilities have been decreed by our
  speciesthe writer is delegated to declare and to
  celebrate mans proven capacity for greatness of
  heart and spiritfor gallantry in defeat, for
  courage, compassion and love. In the endless war
  against weakness and despair, these are the
  bright rally flags of hope and emulation. I hold
  that a writer who does not passionately believe
  in the perfectibility of man has no dedication
  nor any membership in literature.
• --John Steinbecks Nobel Prize
  Acceptance Speech

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WORKS BY STEINBECK

• Cup of Gold (1929)
• The Pastures of Heaven (1932)
• To a God Unknown (1933)
• Tortilla Flat (1935)
• In Dubious Battle (1936)
• Of Mice and Men (1937)
• The Long Valley (1938)
• The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
• The Forgotten Village (1941)
• The Sea of Cortez (1941)

• The Moon is Down (1942)
• Bombs Away The Story of a Bomber Team (1942)
• Cannery Row (1945)
• The Pearl (1947)
• The Wayward Bus (1947)
• East of Eden (1952)
• Sweet Thursday (1954)
• The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957)
• The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)
• Travels with Charley (1962)