Author won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) born in Salinas, California,
grew up in a fertile agricultural valley, about twenty-five miles
from the Pacific Coast. Both the valley and the coast would serve
as settings for some of his best fiction. In 1919 he went to
Stanford University, where he intermittently enrolled in literature
and writing courses until he left in 1925 without taking a degree.
During the next five years he supported himself as a laborer and
journalist in New York City, all the time working on his first
novel, Cup of Gold (1929).
After marriage and a move to Pacific Grove, he published two
California books, The Pastures of Heaven (1932)
and To a God Unknown (1933), and worked on short stories
later collected in The Long Valley (1938). Popular
success and financial security came only with Tortilla
Flat (1935), stories about Monterey’s paisanos. A ceaseless
experimenter throughout his career, Steinbeck changed courses
regularly. Three powerful novels of the late 1930s focused on the
California laboring class: In Dubious
Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and the book
considered by many his finest, The Grapes of
Wrath (1939). The Grapes of Wrath won both the
National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1939.
Early in the 1940s, Steinbeck became a filmmaker with The
Forgotten Village (1941) and a serious student of marine
biology with Sea of Cortez (1941). He devoted his
services to the war, writing Bombs Away (1942) and the
controversial play-novelette The Moon is
Down (1942).Cannery Row (1945), The Wayward
Bus (1948), another experimental drama, Burning
Bright (1950), and The Log from the Sea of
Cortez (1951) preceded publication of the monumental East
of Eden (1952), an ambitious saga of the Salinas Valley and
his own family’s history.
The last decades of his life were spent in New York City and Sag
Harbor with his third wife, with whom he traveled widely. Later
books include Sweet Thursday (1954), The Short Reign
of Pippin IV: A Fabrication (1957), Once There Was a
War (1958), The Winter of Our
Discontent (1961), Travels with Charley in Search of
America (1962), America and Americans (1966), and
the posthumously published Journal of a Novel: The East of
Eden Letters (1969), Viva Zapata! (1975), The
Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976),
and Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of
Wrath (1989).
Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962, and, in
1964, he was presented with the United States Medal of Freedom by
President Lyndon B. Johnson. Steinbeck died in New York in 1968.
Today, more than thirty years after his death, he remains one of
America's greatest writers and cultural figures.
Susan Shillinglaw (introducer) is a professor of English San Jose State University. She is the author of On Reading the Grapes of Wrath and Carol and John Steinbeck: Portrait of a Marriage.
By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
“John Steinbeck knew and understood America and Americans better
than any other writer of the twentieth century.” —The Dallas
Morning News
“A man whose work was equal to the vast social themes that drove
him.” —Don DeLillo
Steinbeck's 1945 novel is a snapshot of life in a hard-living neighborhood adjacent to the sardine and tuna canneries in Monterey, CA. The memorable characters include Lee Chong, the Chinese merchant; Dora Flood, the local madam; Doc, biologist and owner of Western States Biological Supply; and "the boys"-Mack, Hazel, and Eddie. The latter trio decide to throw a surprise party for Doc to repay his generosity. To earn money for the event, they catch hundreds of frogs that Doc will buy and then sell to his customers. In the process, the boys acquire a puppy and a cask of whiskey. The bash gets wild, and Doc's house is trashed. To make it up to him, they surprise him with another party involving the entire neighborhood. Steinbeck shows that friendship and community can be forged anywhere. VERDICT Steinbeck makes the characters, who may be considered marginal, endearing. Narrator Jerry Farden reads the story as it is written: dispassionately, almost like reporting, which allows the listener to appreciate the wonderful humor and delicious irony. Note that this Penguin Audio edition is a reissue of the 1989 Recorded Books production.-Nann Blaine Hilyard, Zion-Benton P.L., IL (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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