Early Years
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr., was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California, to a father, John Ernst Steinbeck, who had settled in California shortly after the Civil War, and a mother, Olive Hamilton Steinbeck, who was a public schoolteacher. Steinbeck grew up in the beautiful, fertile Salinas Valley, and most of his memorable novels and short stories would be set in California. Situated between the Santa Lucia range and the Gabilan Mountains, this valley in west central California is bordered on the north by Monterey Bay and on the south by San Luis Obispo. During his early years, Steinbeck's mother read to him from books such as Treasure Island and Robin Hood. Young John grew up hearing the rhythms of the Bible and listening to the magical stories of the Round Table from Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. He would return again and again to those early influences for symbols and themes.
During these early years, John's home was comfortable, and his father often drove the boy and his two sisters around the valley where they saw the workers and field hands in their poor shacks. This early impression of the workers' lifestyles was added to later memories when Steinbeck spent time with these workers as an adult. As a youngster, he also explored the caves and swimming holes around Salinas and watched the changes of seasons. His abiding love of nature and his thoughts about man's relationship to his environment are present in most of his works.
In high school, Steinbeck did well in English and edited the school yearbook. He worked at various jobs and one in particular — as a ranch hand on some of the local ranches — later led him to images used in Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck graduated from high school and went on to Stanford University. Even though he remained at Stanford until 1925, he never graduated. While in college, he continued to write creatively, and he worked for a time on neighboring farms, especially Spreckels Sugar Ranch. The agricultural industry at this time relied on cheap, transient labor. It was during this time that Steinbeck met many of the types of people described with compassion in his later writing.
Early Career and Writing
Leaving Stanford, Steinbeck moved to New York and worked for five years at various jobs, writing and drifting. Eventually he returned to California, and his first book, Cup of Gold, appeared in 1929, two months before the stock market crash. This novel sold 1,500 copies, and its publication began a decade of recognition and material prosperity for Steinbeck.
In 1930, Steinbeck married Carol Henning whom he had met while working and writing at Lake Tahoe. He and Carol moved to Los Angeles, where Steinbeck continued his writing while Carol did a great deal of editing. Steinbeck also met marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who was a fascinating and talkative companion. Ricketts inspired the character for Doc in Cannery Row (1945) and many of Ricketts' views about biology influenced Steinbeck's literary themes. Ricketts later collaborated on the writing of The Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research, published in 1941.
During the decade of the 1930s — a time of national depression, bread lines, and bloody labor-management conflicts — Steinbeck knew a definitive cross-section of society and shared the problems and stresses of the times. In 1932, he received $400 dollars for the first of his California novels, The Pastures of Heaven. He followed this novel with To a God Unknown in 1933, but neither novel did well. During this difficult time, his mother suffered a stroke, adding to his discouragement. But also during this period, Steinbeck conceived the idea for The Red Pony and won the O. Henry Prize in 1934 for his story, "Murder." Two of Steinbeck's Pony stories were published in the North American Review, and he was beginning to enjoy some prominence. This was tempered in 1934, however, by the death of his mother.
Ironically, Steinbeck's breakthrough novel, Tortilla Flat, had garnered him five rejection slips by the time it was accepted in 1935 by New York publisher Pascal Covici. This book, about a group of California free spirits, called paisanos, has often been compared to the Arthurian stories because of the loyalty of its group of characters. The novel was an immediate popular success and won the Gold Medal of the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco as the year's best novel by a Californian. Just before its publication, however, Steinbeck's father died, missing the positive critical success of his son's writing. Steinbeck received $3,000 or $4,000 for the Hollywood film rights.
Encouraged, Steinbeck began his next project, a novel about a strike of agricultural workers organized by two communists. As predicted, this latest novel caused great fury because the labor movement at that time was causing distress to the large growers, who worried about strikes. Steinbeck titled the novel In Dubious Battle (1936), and it sold moderately well.
Of Mice and Men (1937), a popular and critical success, was selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club. Following its publication, Steinbeck toured England, Ireland, Russia, and Sweden. He returned to the United States and produced a play version of the book with famous playwright George Kaufman. The play won the New York Drama Critic Circle's Award on the first ballot and also became a popular film. When the play opened on Broadway, Steinbeck was already working on what most critics consider to be his masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath.
The Grapes of Wrath came out of the time Steinbeck was working on Of Mice and Men, when he also accepted work writing for the San Francisco News. Steinbeck was assigned a story to cover migrant workers who swelled the California population at seasonal harvest times. Steinbeck decided to travel incognito and observe the living conditions and the violence of the migrant workers' lives. He published a series of articles in 1936 titled "The Harvest Gypsies." This experience moved his sense of compassion and stirred up his concern for social justice.
In preparation for writing a novel, Steinbeck went to Oklahoma, joined some migrants, and traveled with them to California. Once in California, he stayed with these migrants in "Hoovervilles," joining them in their search for work and observing firsthand their living conditions. A major publishing event of 1939, The Grapes of Wrath became a best seller and was the eighth ranking book of 1940 according to Publishers' Weekly. It was estimated that over half a million copies of the original printing were sold. The novel was translated into foreign editions and won an American Bookseller's award as well as the Pulitzer Prize for the best novel of the year. Steinbeck was also elected to membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In a year of great motion pictures, the film version of The Grapes of Wrath competed with Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. The strong movie censorship of the times, however, took a lot of the bite out of Steinbeck's criticism of social injustices.
The Grapes of Wrath was not without its critics, however. The tough language and graphic scenes were too realistic to some readers, and others felt that Steinbeck showed too much sympathy for communist views. The California agricultural community, particularly the California growers and large landowners, were unhappy with Steinbeck's criticism of a system that bankrupted many of the small farmers who lost their land and became unhappy paid help for large growers.
Thrown increasingly into the public spotlight, Steinbeck experienced difficulties in his marriage. In an attempt to patch things up, he and Carol set off on a marine biology expedition with Ed Ricketts during the public controversy over The Grapes of Wrath. They traveled through the Gulf of California, later documented in The Sea of Cortez. But his marriage ended in divorce in 1943.
The War Years and Beyond
During the 1940s, Steinbeck did a great deal of traveling and writing. His interests turned to the rise of fascism, and he wrote a promotional book for the Army Air Force called Bombs Away. Steinbeck also wrote a World War II novella, The Moon Is Down, in which he described a small Norwegian village invaded and occupied by a thinly disguised Nazi force. The King of Norway decorated Steinbeck in recognition of his book's contribution to the liberation effort. Steinbeck also scripted a war movie called Lifeboat in an attempt to raise American morale. During this period, he married again to Gwen Conger with whom he had two sons. In 1943, while a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, Steinbeck wrote a collection of human interest articles later published in 1958 under the title Once There Was a War.
After the war ended, Steinbeck devoted himself to a number of writing projects that left the war behind. In 1945, he wrote Cannery Row, another well-received California book that followed the humorous adventures of the down and out, living in Monterey. Cannery Row was the first of two books in this period to be influenced by his friendship with the marine biologist, Ed Ricketts.
In 1947, Steinbeck wrote The Pearl, an allegory about a poor fisherman who finds a pearl that changes his life; Steinbeck's experiences from the trip to the Gulf of California back in 1940 provided the kernel of the story's plot. The Pearl was also filmed, as was another book published the same year and titled The Wayward Bus. Even though The Wayward Bus received poor reviews, it sold well and was a humorous story about a bus full of interesting Steinbeck characters. In 1948, Steinbeck received a blow with the death of Ed Ricketts in a car accident. His marriage to Gwen ended as well, and the divorce settlement brought grave financial difficulties. He returned once again to Pacific Grove to heal and to write.
His Last Two Decades
The 1950s brought a series of projects, including some novels, and a third and happier marriage. In 1950, Steinbeck married for the last time to Elaine Scott, the ex-wife of actor Randolph Scott. In the same year, he finished a screenplay for the film Viva Zapata! and published the novel/play Burning Bright, which was produced on Broadway. The following year, Steinbeck began work on a 600-page novel, East of Eden. East of Eden is similar to Of Mice and Men in that it revisits the biblical story of Cain and Abel. East of Eden is the tale of two families through several generations and is set in Salinas Valley. A story of good and evil, it was produced as a film in 1952 and later as a miniseries for television.
During this period, Steinbeck also revised Cannery Row and republished it under the title Sweet Thursday (1954). Rogers and Hammerstein later used his story for their musical Pipe Dream. Besides returning to his biblical themes, Steinbeck also returned to another childhood influence: the King Arthur stories. He began a book (that would be published posthumously) based on Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, renaming it The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights. This book was rapidly followed in 1957 with The Short Reign of Pippin IV, a fantasy about medieval France but, like many of Steinbeck's later works, it received poor reviews.
By this time, several of Steinbeck's works had received poor critical appraisals, and he became discouraged and suffered what may have been a slight stroke. Still, during this time, he wrote The Winter of Our Discontent, which is set on the east coast and whose main character is the descendent of a Puritan heritage. Ethan Allen Hawley, the main character, sees the moral corruption that has become America. Deciding to join in the immorality, he finds — too late — that his son has been influenced by his example. Regarded as a criticism of middle class American values in modern society, the book was scorned by critics and readers alike who were not in the mood for Steinbeck's criticism. Characteristically, as it was being published, Steinbeck set off in a small truck with his black poodle, Charley, "in search of America."
That same year, 1961, Steinbeck was invited as a guest to attend the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. The following year, the Swedish Academy awarded Steinbeck the Nobel Prize for Literature, the highest honor a writer can receive. The prize was presented for the body of his work, but it met with outcries from critics who felt Steinbeck had limited talent and was a writer of propaganda. Steinbeck took the opportunity in his acceptance speech to strike out at those critics, saying "Literature is not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood, singing their litanies in empty churches. Nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, these tinhorn mendicants of low-caloric despair." Having received the Nobel Prize, however, was a mixed blessing: Although it gave Steinbeck a place of great honor in the literary world, it also put terrible pressure on his future writing.
Following Kennedy's assassination, Steinbeck became a friend of Lyndon Johnson. During the Viet Nam War, Steinbeck reported for Newsday, a Long Island newspaper, from the jungles of southeast Asia. His war dispatches were very militant, and he was deeply moved by the deaths of young American soldiers. (Both of his sons were in the army, and one was serving in Viet Nam.) Often a guest at the White House, Steinbeck supported American involvement in Viet Nam, and he lost friends who supported the anti-war movement. These years led to his last publications — testimonies to his thoughts and feelings about America.
Steinbeck's last two books were nonfiction. Travels with Charley in Search of America was an account of his trip from Maine to California. This journey was a pilgrimage of sorts in search of America, and he named his truck Rocinante, after the horse that carried the idealistic Don Quixote. Steinbeck's love for America is evident throughout this book, and he felt he had found the modern American character. His last book, America and the Americans, was about his faith that the country would come together despite the pains it suffered in the 1960s.
Steinbeck died on December 20, 1968, at his apartment in New York City. He was 66 years old. His wife took him home to Salinas, and he was buried not far from the many towns and ranches that sprang from his imagination and grace the pages of his books. A controversial writer during much of his life, Steinbeck is often remembered with the phrase used in the awarding of his Nobel Prize: "… he holds his position as an independent expounder of the truth with an unbiased instinct for what is genuinely American, be it good or bad."
