John Steinbeck

Introduction

Although he spent a few years at Stanford University, the academic life did not suit John Steinbeck, because what he really wanted to do was to write. And write he did. Steinbeck penned twenty-seven novels, three collections of short stories, and numerous essays between 1929 and his death in 1968. He is best known for The Grapes of Wrath, a Depression-era (1930s) novel that follows the migratory experiences of the Joad family, who travel from the ravaged Oklahoma Dust Bowl to the “Promised Land” of California. Committed to diversity in his writing, Steinbeck’s other works of note include the semiautobiographical novel East of Eden, the comical Tortilla Flat, the travelogue Travels With Charley, and the nonfiction work Log From the Sea of Cortez.

Essential Facts

1. Although many people believe him to be a lifelong Californian, Steinbeck spent much of his life in New York and eventually shed most of his ties to the Salinas Valley.
2. Steinbeck had a lifelong fascination with the King Arthur tales.
3. Hollywood loved Steinbeck. Film adaptations of his work include The Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, East of Eden, Of Mice and Men, The Red Pony, and Tortilla Flat.
4. Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962 “for his realistic as well as imaginative writings, distinguished by a sympathetic humor and a keen social perception.” Privately, however, he feared that the prize usually spelled the end of a writer’s career.
5. The two things Steinbeck found most necessary to life were “work and women.”