John Steinbeck Biography and List of Works

American novelist, storywriter, playwright, and essayist. Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. He is best remembered for THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1939), a novel widely considered to be a 20th-century classic. The impact of the book has been compared to that of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. The epic tale of the migration of the Joad family, driven from its land in Oklahoma to California, engendered a wide debate concerning the lot of migrant labourers, and helped to instigate agricultural reforms.

"Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up in the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments."
(from The Grapes of Wrath)

John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California. His native region of Monterey Bay later became the setting for most of his fiction. Steinbeck's father was a county treasurer and his mother a teacher. He attended the local high school and studied marine biology at Stanford University between 1920 and 1926, but did not take a degree. During these early years several of his poems and short stories appeared in university publications. After working for a short time as a labourer and reporter in New York City for the American, Steinbeck returned to California.

While writing, Steinbeck worked as a manual labourer. He was apprentice hod-carrier, apprentice painter, caretaker of an estate, surveyor, and fruit-picker. While working as a watchman of a house in the High Sierra Steinbeck wrote his first book, CUP OF GOLD (1929). In Pacific Grove in the early 1930s Steinbeck met Edward Ricketts, a marine biologist, whose views on the interdependence of all life deeply influenced Steinbeck's thinking. In the novel TO A GOD UNKNOWN (1933) he mingles Rickett's ideas with Jungian concepts and themes, which had been made familiar by the mythologist Joseph Campbell. The novel depicts a farmer, Joseph Wayne, who receives a blessing from his pioneer father, John Wayne, and goes to build a new farm in a distant valley. Joseph develops his own beliefs of death and life, and to bring an end to a drought he sacrifices himself on a stone, becoming "earth and rain". Steinbeck did not want to explain his story too much and he knew beforehand that the book would not find a ready audience.

Steinbeck's first three novels went unnoticed, but in 1935 his humorous tale of pleasure-loving Mexican-Americans, TORTILLA FLAT was published, which brought him wider recognition, but the theme of the book - the story of King Arthur and the forming of the Round Table - remained hidden from the critics. IN DUBIOUS BATTLE (1936) is a strike novel set in the California apple country. The strike of nine hundred migratory workers is led by Jim Nolan, devoted to his cause, who confesses before his death: "I never had time to look at things, Mac, never. I never looked how leaves come out. I never looked at the way things happen." Steinbeck partly derived the character Doc Burton, a detached observer, from his friend Ed Ricketts. Steinbeck later develops the character in such works as CANNERY ROW (1945), which returns to the world of Tortilla Flat. The novel is an account of the adventures and misadventures of workers in a California cannery. Its sequel, SWEET THURSDAY, appeared in 1954.

"At nine o'clock the wind sprang up and howled around the barn. And in spite of his worry, Jody grew sleepy. He got into his blankets and went to sleep, but the breathy groans of the pony sounded in his dreams. And in his sleep he heard a crashing noise which went on and on until it awakened him. The wind was rushing through the barn. He sprang up and looked down the lane of the stall. The barn door had blown open, and the pony was gone."
(from The Red Pony)

OF MICE AND MEN (1937), a story of shattered dreams became Steinbeck's first big success. In the same year THE RED PONY was also published, and is considered among Steinbeck's finest works. The events take place on the Tiflin ranch in the Salinas Valley, California. The first two sections of the story, "The Gift" and "The Great Mountains", were published in the North American Review in 1933, and the third section, "The Promise," did not appear until 1937 in Harpers. With "The Leader of the People," common characters, settings, and themes connect the four sections. The Red Pony follows Jody's initiation into adult life, and the pony of the title functions as a symbol of his innocence and maturation. A movie version, for which Steinbeck wrote the screenplay, was made in 1949. Among Steinbeck's other film scripts are The Pearl, the story for Alfred Hitchcock's film Lifeboat (1944), and script for Viva Zapata! (1952, dir. by Elia Kazan).

Fleeing publicity following the success of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck went to Mexico in 1940 to film the documentary Forgotten Village. During WW II Steinbeck served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune in Great Britain and the Mediterranean area. He wrote such government propaganda as the novel THE MOON IS DOWN (1942), which depicts the resistance movement in a small town occupied by the Nazis. The film version, starring Henry Travers, Cedric Hardwicke, and Lee J. Cobb, was shot on the set of How Green Was My Valley (1941), which depicts a Welsh mining village. "Free men cannot start a war," Steinbeck wrote in the book, "but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars."

In 1943 Steinbeck moved to New York City, his home for the rest of his life. His twelve-year marriage to Carol Henning ended in 1942. The following year he married the singer Gwyndolyn Conger; they had two sons, Thom and John. However, the marriage was unhappy and they were divorced in 1949. Steinbeck spent summers at Sag Harbor and travelled in Europe. Steinbeck's postwar works include THE PEARL (1947), a symbolic tale of a Mexican fisherman, and A RUSSIAN JOURNAL (1948), an account of the author's journey to the Soviet Union, with photographs by Robert Capa.

In 1950 Steinbeck married Elaine Scott. His son John was hospitalised for codeine addiction at age seven, and had recurring problems in later years with drugs and alcohol. He died in 1991. In The Other Side of Eden John Steinbeck IV wrote about his famous father: "Artists by nature are not particularly gifted as parents. They can be very self-centred, very abusive, and dysfunctional when it comes to raising children. So the kid has to raise himself. Dad never had to be a parent except on his time and on his terms, and then he was very good at that, very good. Very Huck Finny. Had he had to do it day in, day out, he would have failed miserably."

EAST OF EDEN (1952), Steinbeck's long family novel is based partly on the story of Cain and Abel. The story is set in rural California around the turn of the century. In the centre of the saga are two families of settlers, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, whose history reflect the formation of the United States at a time in which "the Church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously..." The second half of the book focuses on the lives of the twins, Aron and Caleb, and their conflict. Between them is Cathy, tiny, pretty, but an adulteress and murderess. "It doesn't matter that Cathy was what I have called a monster. Perhaps we can't understand Cathy, but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins. And who in his mind has not probed the black water?" (from East of Eden)

In 1959 Stenbeck spent nearly a year at Discove Cottage in England working on the Morte d'Arthur. After returning to the United States he travelled around the country with his poodle, Charley, and published in 1962 TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY IN SEARCH OF AMERICA (1962). His son John wrote in his memoir that Steinbeck was too shy to talk to any of the people in the book. "He couldn't handle that amount of interaction. So, the book is actually a great novel."

THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT (1961), set in contemporary America, is Steinbeck's last major novel, and continues his exploration of the moral dilemmas involved in being fully human. In later years Steinbeck did much special reporting abroad, dividing his time between New York and California. Steinbeck died of heart attack in New York on December 20, 1968. The Posthumously published THE ACTS OF KING ARTHUR AND HIS NOBLE KNIGHTS (1976) brought to life the Arthurian world.

The Pearl - short story, published in 1947. Mexican Indian pearl diver Kino finds a valuable pearl which changes his life, but not in the way he expects. Kino sees the pearl as his opportunity for a better life. When the townsfolk of La Paz learn of Kino's find, a greedy priest, doctor, and businessmen soon surround him. Kino's family suffers a series of disasters and finally he throws the pearl back into the ocean. Thereafter his tragedy is legendary in the town.

'George still stared at Curley's wife. "Lennie never done it in meanness," he said. "All the time he done bad things, but he never done one of 'em mean."'
(from Of Mice and Men)

Of Mice and Men - novel published in 1937. A story about two migrant labourers, adapted by Steinbeck into a three-act play, which was produced in 1937. George Milton and Lennia Small, two itinerant ranch hands, dream of owning a small farm. George acts as a father figure to Lennie, who is large and simpleminded. Lennie loves all that is soft, but his immense physical strength is a source of troubles and George is needed to calm him. The two friends find work on a farm and start saving money for their future. Annoyed by the bullying foreman of the ranch, Lenny breaks the foreman's arm, but also wakes the interest of the ranch owner's flirtatious daughter-in-law. Lenny accidentally kills her and escapes into the hiding place that he and George have agreed to use, if they get into difficulties. George hurries after Lenny and shoots him before he is captured by a vengeful mob but at the same time he loses his own hopes and dreams of a better future. Before he dies, Lennie says: "Let's do it now. Le's get that place now."

For further reading: The Wide World of John Steinbeck by P. Lisca (1958); John Steinbeck by W. French (1961); John Steinbeck by F.W. Watt (1962); Steinbeck: The Man and His Work, ed. by R. Astro and T. Hayashi (1971); John Steinbeck by J. Gray (1971); Steinbeck and Covici: The Story of a Friendship by T. Fensch (1979); John Steinbeck by P. McCarthy (1980); John Steinbeck's Fiction by John H. Timmerman (1986); John Steinbeck by Jay Parini (1994); The Other Side of Eden: Life with John Steinbeck by John Steinbeck IV and Nancy Steinbeck (2000)

CUP OF GOLD, (1929)