John Steinbeck

American writer (1902–1968)

"Steinbeck" redirects here. For other people with this surname, see Steinbeck (surname).

John Steinbeck

Steinbeck in 1939

Born| John Ernst Steinbeck III
(1902-02-27)February 27, 1902
Salinas, California, U.S.
Died| December 20, 1968(1968-12-20) (aged 66)
New York City, U.S.
Occupation|

* Novelist
* short story writer
* war correspondent

Education| Stanford University
Notable works|

* Of Mice and Men (1937)
* The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
* East of Eden (1952)[1]

Notable awards|

* Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1940)
* Nobel Prize in Literature (1962)

Spouses|

Carol Henning

(m. 1930; div. 1943)​

Gwyn Conger

(m. 1943; div. 1948)​

Elaine Scott

(m. 1950)​

Children| Thom, John IV
Signature

John Ernst Steinbeck (/ˈstaɪnbɛk/ STYNE-bek; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception".[2] He has been called "a giant of American letters."[3][4]

During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multigeneration epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939)[5] is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon.[6] By the 75th anniversary of its publishing date, it had sold 14 million copies.[7]

Much of Steinbeck's work employs settings in his native central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists.

## Early life

[edit]

Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California.[8] He was of German, English, and Irish descent.[9] Johann Adolf Großsteinbeck (1828–1913), Steinbeck's paternal grandfather, was a founder of Mount Hope, a short-lived farming colony in Palestine that disbanded after Arab attackers killed his brother and raped his brother's wife and mother-in-law.[10] He arrived in the United States in 1858, shortening the family name to Steinbeck. The family farm in Heiligenhaus, Mettmann, Germany, is still named "Großsteinbeck".

His father, John Ernst Steinbeck (1862–1935), served as Monterey County treasurer. John's mother, Olive Hamilton (1867–1934), a former school teacher, shared Steinbeck's passion for reading and writing.[11] The Steinbecks were members of the Episcopal Church,[12] although Steinbeck later became agnostic.[13] Steinbeck lived in a small rural valley (no more than a frontier settlement) set in fertile soil, about 25 miles from the Pacific Coast. Both valley and coast would serve as settings for some of his best fiction.[14] He spent his summers working on nearby ranches including the Post Ranch in Big Sur.[15] He later labored with migrant workers on Spreckels sugar beet farms. There he learned of the harsher aspects of the migrant life and the darker side of human nature, which supplied him with material expressed in Of Mice and Men. He explored his surroundings, walking across local forests, fields, and farms.[16] While working at Spreckels Sugar Company, he sometimes worked in their laboratory, which gave him time to write. He had considerable mechanical aptitude and fondness for repairing things he owned.[17]

The Steinbeck House at 132 Central Avenue, Salinas, California, the Victorian home where Steinbeck spent his childhood

Steinbeck graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and went on to study English literature at Stanford University near Palo Alto, leaving without a degree in 1925. He traveled to New York City where he took odd jobs while trying to write. When he failed to publish his work, he returned to California and worked in 1928 as a tour guide and caretaker[17] at Lake Tahoe, where he met Carol Henning, his first wife.[11][17][18] They married in January 1930 in Los Angeles, where, with friends, he attempted to make money by manufacturing plaster mannequins.[17]

When their money ran out six months later due to a slow market, Steinbeck and Carol moved back to Pacific Grove, California, to a cottage owned by his father, on the Monterey Peninsula a few blocks outside the Monterey city limits. The elder Steinbecks gave John free housing, paper for his manuscripts, and from 1928, loans that allowed him to write without looking for work. During the Great Depression, Steinbeck bought a small boat, and later claimed that he was able to live on the fish and crabs that he gathered from the sea, and fresh vegetables from his garden and local farms. When those sources failed, Steinbeck and his wife accepted welfare, and on rare occasions, stole bacon from the local produce market.[17] Whatever food they had, they shared with their friends.[17] Carol became the model for Mary Talbot in Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row.[17]

In 1930, Steinbeck met the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who became a close friend and mentor to Steinbeck during the following decade, teaching him a great deal about philosophy and biology.[17] Ricketts, usually very quiet, yet likable, with an inner self-sufficiency and an encyclopedic knowledge of diverse subjects, became a focus of Steinbeck's attention. Ricketts had taken a college class from Warder Clyde Allee, a biologist and ecological theorist, who would go on to write a classic early textbook on ecology. Ricketts became a proponent of ecological thinking, in which man was only one part of a great chain of being, caught in a web of life too large for him to control or understand.[17] Meanwhile, Ricketts operated a biological lab on the coast of Monterey, selling biological samples of small animals, fish, rays, starfish, turtles, and other marine forms to schools and colleges.

Between 1930 and 1936, Steinbeck and Ricketts became close friends. Steinbeck's wife began working at the lab as secretary-bookkeeper.[17] Steinbeck helped on an informal basis.[19] They formed a common bond based on their love of music and art, and John learned biology and Ricketts's ecological philosophy.[20] When Steinbeck became emotionally upset, Ricketts sometimes played music for him.[21]

## Career

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### Writing

[edit]

Steinbeck's first novel, Cup of Gold, published in 1929, is loosely based on the life and death of privateer Henry Morgan. It centers on Morgan's assault and sacking of Panamá Viejo, sometimes referred to as the "Cup of Gold", and on the women, brighter than the sun, who were said to be found there.[22] In 1930, Steinbeck wrote a werewolf murder mystery, Murder at Full Moon, that has never been published because Steinbeck considered it unworthy of publication.[23]

Between 1930 and 1933, Steinbeck produced three shorter works. The Pastures of Heaven, published in 1932, consists of twelve interconnected stories about a valley near Monterey, which was discovered by a Spanish corporal while chasing runaway Indian slaves. In 1933 Steinbeck published The Red Pony, a 100-page, four-chapter story weaving in memories of Steinbeck's childhood.[22] To a God Unknown, named after a Vedic hymn,[17] follows the life of a homesteader and his family in California, depicting a character with a primal and pagan worship of the land he works.

Before his novel Tortilla Flat (1935), Steinbeck was an obscure writer "with little success".[24] Although he had not achieved the status of a well-known writer, he never doubted that he would achieve greatness.[17]

Steinbeck achieved his first critical success with Tortilla Flat, a novel set in post-war Monterey, California, that won the California Commonwealth Club's gold medal.[22] It portrays the adventures of a group of classless and usually homeless young men in Monterey after World War I, just before U.S. prohibition. They are portrayed in ironic comparison to mythic knights on a quest and reject nearly all the standard mores of American society in enjoyment of a dissolute life devoted to wine, lust, camaraderie and petty theft. In presenting the 1962 Nobel Prize to Steinbeck, the Swedish Academy cited "spicy and comic tales about a gang of paisanos, asocial individuals who, in their wild revels, are almost caricatures of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table. It has been said that in the United States this book came as a welcome antidote to the gloom of the then prevailing depression."[1] Tortilla Flat was adapted as a 1942 film of the same name, starring Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr and John Garfield, a friend of Steinbeck.[25] With some of the proceeds, he built a summer ranch-home in Los Gatos.[citation needed]

Steinbeck began to write a series of "California novels" and Dust Bowl fiction, set among common people during the Great Depression. These included In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. He also wrote an article series called The Harvest Gypsies for the San Francisco News about the plight of the migrant worker.

Of Mice and Men was a drama about the dreams of two migrant agricultural laborers in California. Steinbeck, on vacations to Mexico, witnessed sold-out theater troupes with often poor and illiterate workers consisting of the audience. As such, Steinbeck chose to write Of Mice and Men with a stage play in mind. It was critically acclaimed[22] and Steinbeck's 1962 Nobel Prize citation called it a "little masterpiece".[1] Its stage production was a hit, starring Wallace Ford as George and Broderick Crawford as George's companion, the mentally childlike, but physically powerful itinerant farmhand Lennie. Steinbeck refused to travel from his home in California to attend any performance of the play during its New York run, telling director George S. Kaufman that the play as it existed in his own mind was "perfect" and that anything presented on stage would only be a disappointment. Steinbeck wrote two more stage plays (The Moon Is Down and Burning Bright).

Of Mice and Men was also adapted as a 1939 Hollywood film, with Lon Chaney Jr. as Lennie (he had filled the role in the Los Angeles stage production) and Burgess Meredith as George.[26] Meredith and Steinbeck became close friends for the next two decades.[17] Another film based on the novella was made in 1992 starring Gary Sinise as George and John Malkovich as Lennie.

Steinbeck followed this wave of success with The Grapes of Wrath (1939), based on newspaper articles about migrant agricultural workers that he had written in San Francisco. In August 1936, the San Francisco News asked Steinbeck to personally interview multiple families in the impoverished Hoovervilles of the San Joaquin Valley. As Steinbeck visited the slums that hugged the highways across the Central Valley, he was harrowed by what he saw. He talked with multiple families and vowed to make a book depicting their struggles. It is commonly considered his greatest work. According to The New York Times, it was the best-selling book of 1939 and 430,000 copies had been printed by February 1940. In that month, it won the National Book Award, favorite fiction book of 1939, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association.[27] Later that year, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction[28] and was adapted as a film directed by John Ford, starring Henry Fonda as Tom Joad; Fonda was nominated for the best actor Academy Award. Grapes was controversial. Steinbeck's New Deal political views, negative portrayal of aspects of capitalism, and sympathy for the plight of workers, led to a backlash against the author for displaying communist views, especially in his hometown of Salinas.[29] Steinbeck received so many threats that he purchased a handgun for his own safety. Claiming the book both was obscene and misrepresented conditions in the county, the Kern County Board of Supervisors banned the book from the county's publicly funded schools and libraries in August 1939. This ban lasted until January 1941.[30]

Of the controversy, Steinbeck wrote, "The vilification of me out here from the large landowners and bankers is pretty bad. The latest is a rumor started by them that the Okies hate me and have threatened to kill me for lying about them. I'm frightened at the rolling might of this damned thing. It is completely out of hand; I mean a kind of hysteria about the book is growing that is not healthy."[31]

The then First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, already a fan of Steinbeck's work from Of Mice and Men, defended Steinbeck's work in her nationally syndicated newspaper column, "My Day". She wrote: "Now I must tell you that I have just finished a book which is an unforgettable experience in reading. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, both repels and attracts you. The horrors of the picture, so well drawn, make you dread sometimes to begin the next chapter, and yet you cannot lay the book down or even skip a page."[32] After visiting California labor camps in 1940, a reporter asked her if she believed that The Grapes of Wrath was exaggerated. Roosevelt responded, "I have never believed that The Grapes of Wrath was exaggerated".[33]

### Ed Ricketts

[edit]

In the 1930s and 1940s, Ed Ricketts strongly influenced Steinbeck's writing. Steinbeck frequently took small trips with Ricketts along the California coast to give himself time off from his writing[34] and to collect biological specimens, which Ricketts sold for a living. Their coauthored book, Sea of Cortez (December 1941), about a collecting expedition to the Gulf of California in 1940, which was part travelogue and part natural history, published just as the U.S. entered World War II, never found an audience and did not sell well.[34] However, in 1951, Steinbeck republished the narrative portion of the book as The Log from the Sea of Cortez, under his name only (though Ricketts had written some of it). This work remains in print today.[35]

Although Carol accompanied Steinbeck on the trip, their marriage was beginning to suffer, and ended a year later, in 1941, even as Steinbeck worked on the manuscript for the book.[17] In 1942, after his divorce from Carol he married Gwyndolyn "Gwyn" Conger.[36]

Ricketts was Steinbeck's model for the character of "Doc" in Cannery Row (1945) and Sweet Thursday (1954), "Friend Ed" in Burning Bright, and characters in In Dubious Battle (1936) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Ecological themes recur in Steinbeck's novels of the period.[37]

Steinbeck's close relations with Ricketts ended in 1941 when Steinbeck moved away from Pacific Grove and divorced his wife Carol.[34] Ricketts's biographer Eric Enno Tamm opined that, except for East of Eden (1952), Steinbeck's writing declined after Ricketts's untimely death in 1948.[37]

### World War II

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Steinbeck's novel The Moon Is Down (1942), about the Socrates-inspired spirit of resistance in an occupied village in Northern Europe, was made into a film almost immediately. It was presumed that the unnamed country of the novel was Norway and the occupiers the Germans. In 1945, Steinbeck received the King Haakon VII Freedom Cross for his literary contributions to the Norwegian resistance movement.[38]

In 1943, Steinbeck served as a World War II war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and worked with the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the CIA).[39] It was at that time he became friends with Will Lang Jr. of Time/Life magazine. During the war, Steinbeck accompanied the commando raids of Douglas Fairbanks Jr.'s Beach Jumpers program, which launched small-unit diversion operations against German-held islands in the Mediterranean. At one point, he accompanied Fairbanks on an invasion of an island off the coast of Italy and used a Thompson submachine gun to help capture Italian and German prisoners. Some of his writings from this period were incorporated in the documentary Once There Was a War (1958).

Steinbeck returned from the war with a number of wounds from shrapnel and some psychological trauma. He treated himself, as ever, by writing.[40] He wrote Alfred Hitchcock's movie, Lifeboat (1944), and with screenwriter Jack Wagner, A Medal for Benny (1945), about paisanos from Tortilla Flat going to war. He later requested that his name be removed from the credits of Lifeboat, because he believed the final version of the film had racist undertones. In 1944, bruised, battered, and homesick, Steinbeck wrote Cannery Row (1945), a love letter to the city of Monterey. In 1958, Ocean View Avenue in Monterey, the setting of the book, was renamed Cannery Row in his honor.

John Steinbeck plaque in Sag Harbor, N.Y. (20180916 151050)

After the war, he wrote The Pearl (1947), knowing it would be filmed eventually. Steinbeck's relationship with Hollywood had solidified to the point where his books were being green-lit as movies as they released. The story first appeared in the December 1945 issue of Woman's Home Companion magazine as "The Pearl of the World". It was illustrated by John Alan Maxwell. The novel is an imaginative telling of a story which Steinbeck had heard in La Paz in 1940, as related in The Log From the Sea of Cortez, which he described in Chapter 11 as being "so much like a parable that it almost can't be". Steinbeck traveled to Cuernavaca,[41] Mexico for the filming with Wagner who helped with the script; on this trip he would be inspired by the story of Emiliano Zapata, and subsequently wrote a film script (Viva Zapata!) directed by Elia Kazan and starring Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn.

In 1947, Steinbeck made his first trip to the Soviet Union with photographer Robert Capa. They visited Moscow, Kyiv, Tbilisi, Batumi and Stalingrad, some of the first Americans to visit many parts of the USSR since the communist revolution. Steinbeck's 1948 book about their experiences, A Russian Journal, was illustrated with Capa's photos. In 1948, the year the book was published, Steinbeck was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

### New York

[edit]

Over the course of 276 days in 1952, Steinbeck wrote the first draft of East of Eden, a book he considered his ultimate test as a writer. He wrote a daily letter to his editor while writing the book. Through them, Steinbeck explored himself, his creative process, his love for writing, and his family life, for he had just married his third wife, Elaine Scott, the year prior. Steinbeck, according to Elaine Scott, considered East of Eden his magnum opus, his greatest novel. As the book was released, he wrote to John Beskow, a Swedish artist and a confidant of his: "I have put all the things I have wanted to write all my life. This is 'the book'... having done this, I can do anything I want".[17] Also in 1952, John Steinbeck appeared as the on-screen narrator of 20th Century Fox's film, O. Henry's Full House. Although Steinbeck later admitted he was uncomfortable before the camera, he provided interesting introductions to several filmed adaptations of short stories by the legendary writer O. Henry. About the same time, Steinbeck recorded readings of several of his short stories for Columbia Records; the recordings provide a record of Steinbeck's deep, resonant voice.

Following the success of Viva Zapata!, Steinbeck collaborated with Kazan on the 1955 film East of Eden, James Dean's movie debut. Jack Moffitt of The Hollywood Reporter, in a review that appeared after the March 1955 premiere, wrote "Beautifully acted, and superbly directed by Elia Kazan, it is bound to be one of the year’s important contributions to screen literature."[42]

From March to October 1959, Steinbeck and his third wife Elaine rented a cottage in the hamlet of Discove, Redlynch, near Bruton in Somerset, England, while Steinbeck researched his retelling of the Arthurian legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Glastonbury Tor was visible from the cottage, and Steinbeck also visited the nearby hillfort of Cadbury Castle, the supposed site of King Arthur's court of Camelot. The unfinished manuscript was published after his death in 1976, as The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights. Steinbeck grew up enthralled by the stories of King Arthur, and the Steinbecks recounted the time spent in Somerset as the happiest of their life together.[43][44]

Rocinante, camper truck in which Steinbeck traveled across the United States in 1960

Travels with Charley: In Search of America is a travelogue of his 1960 road trip with his poodle Charley. Steinbeck bemoans his lost youth and roots, while dispensing both criticism and praise for the United States. According to Steinbeck's son Thom, Steinbeck made the journey because he knew he was dying and wanted to see the country one last time.[45]

Steinbeck's last novel, The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), examines moral decline in the United States. The protagonist Ethan grows discontented with his own moral decline and that of those around him.[46] The book has a very different tone from Steinbeck's amoral and ecological stance in earlier works such as Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row. It was not a critical success. Many reviewers recognized the importance of the novel but were disappointed that it was not another Grapes of Wrath.[46] In the Nobel Prize presentation speech the next year, however, the Swedish Academy cited it most favorably: "Here he attained the same standard which he set in The Grapes of Wrath. Again 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."[1]

Apparently taken aback by the critical reception of this novel, and the critical outcry when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962,[47] Steinbeck published no more fiction in the remaining six years before his death.

### Nobel Prize

[edit]

Main article: 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature

Steinbeck in Sweden during his trip to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962

In 1962, Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for literature for his "realistic and imaginative writing, combining as it does sympathetic humor and keen social perception". The selection was heavily criticized, and described as "one of the Academy's biggest mistakes" in one Swedish newspaper.[47] The reaction of American literary critics was also harsh. The New York Times asked why the Nobel committee gave the award to an author whose "limited talent is, in his best books, watered down by tenth-rate philosophising", noting that "[T]he international character of the award and the weight attached to it raise questions about the mechanics of selection and how close the Nobel committee is to the main currents of American writing. ... [W]e think it interesting that the laurel was not awarded to a writer ... whose significance, influence and sheer body of work had already made a more profound impression on the literature of our age".[47] Steinbeck, when asked on the day of the announcement if he deserved the Nobel, replied: "Frankly, no."[17][47] Biographer Jackson Benson notes, "[T]his honor was one of the few in the world that one could not buy nor gain by political maneuver. It was precisely because the committee made its judgment ... on its own criteria, rather than plugging into 'the main currents of American writing' as defined by the critical establishment, that the award had value."[17][47] In his acceptance speech later in the year in Stockholm, he said:

> the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for 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 of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

— Steinbeck Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech[48]

Fifty years later, in 2012, the Nobel Prize opened its archives and it was revealed that Steinbeck was a "compromise choice" among a shortlist consisting of Steinbeck, British authors Robert Graves and Lawrence Durrell, French dramatist Jean Anouilh and Danish author Karen Blixen.[47] The declassified documents showed that he was chosen as the best of a bad lot.[47] "There aren't any obvious candidates for the Nobel prize and the prize committee is in an unenviable situation," wrote committee member Henry Olsson.[47] Although the committee believed Steinbeck's best work was behind him by 1962, committee member Anders Österling believed the release of his novel The Winter of Our Discontent showed that "after some signs of slowing down in recent years, [Steinbeck has] regained his position as a social truth-teller [and is an] authentic realist fully equal to his predecessors Sinclair Lewis and Ernest Hemingway."[47]

Although modest about his own talent as a writer, Steinbeck talked openly of his own admiration of certain writers. In 1953, he wrote that he considered cartoonist Al Capp, creator of the satirical Li'l Abner, "possibly the best writer in the world today".[49] At his own first Nobel Prize press conference he was asked his favorite authors and works and replied: "Hemingway's short stories and nearly everything Faulkner wrote."[17]

In September 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded Steinbeck the Presidential Medal of Freedom.[50]

In 1967, at the behest of Newsday magazine, Steinbeck went to Vietnam to report on the war. He thought of the Vietnam War as a heroic venture and was considered a hawk for his position on the war. His sons served in Vietnam before his death, and Steinbeck visited one son in the battlefield. At one point he was allowed to man a machine-gun watch position at night at a firebase while his son and other members of his platoon slept.[51]

## Personal life

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John and Elaine Steinbeck in 1950

Steinbeck and his first wife, Carol Henning, married in January 1930 in Los Angeles.[11] By 1940, their marriage was beginning to suffer, and it ended a year later.[17] In 1942, after his divorce from Carol, Steinbeck married Gwyndolyn "Gwyn" Conger.[36] With his second wife Steinbeck had two sons, Thomas ("Thom") Myles Steinbeck (1944–2016) and John Steinbeck IV (1946–1991).

In May 1948, Steinbeck returned to California on an emergency trip to be with his friend Ed Ricketts, who had been seriously injured when a train struck his car. Ricketts died hours before Steinbeck arrived. Upon returning home, Steinbeck was confronted by Gwyn, who asked for a divorce, which became final in October. Steinbeck spent the year after Ricketts's death in deep depression.

In June 1949, Steinbeck met stage manager Elaine Scott at a restaurant in Carmel, California. Steinbeck and Scott eventually began a relationship, and in December 1950 they married, within a week of Scott's finalizing her own divorce from actor Zachary Scott. This third marriage for Steinbeck lasted until his death in 1968.[22]

Steinbeck was an acquaintance of modernist poet Robinson Jeffers, a Californian neighbor. In a letter to Elizabeth Otis, Steinbeck wrote: "Robinson Jeffers and his wife came in to call the other day. He looks a little older but that is all. And she is just the same."[52]

In 1962, Steinbeck began acting as friend and mentor to the young writer and naturalist Jack Rudloe, who was trying to establish his own biological supply company, now Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Florida. Their correspondence continued until Steinbeck's death.[53]

In February 1966, Steinbeck and his wife traveled to Israel.[54] He visited in Tel Aviv the site of Mount Hope, a farm community established by his grandfather, whose brother, Friedrich Großsteinbeck, had been murdered by Arab marauders in 1858 during the Outrages at Jaffa.[55]

## Death and legacy

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The Steinbeck family graves in the Hamilton plot at the Salinas Cemetery

John Steinbeck died in New York City, where his writing career had begun, on December 20, 1968, during the 1968 flu pandemic of heart disease and congestive heart failure. He was 66, and had been a lifelong smoker. An autopsy showed nearly complete occlusion of the main coronary arteries.[22]

In accordance with his wishes, his body was cremated, and interred on March 4, 1969[56] at the Hamilton family gravesite in Salinas, with those of his parents and maternal grandparents. His third wife, Elaine, was buried in the plot in 2004. He had written to his doctor that he felt deeply "in his flesh" that he would not survive his physical death, and that the biological end of his life was the final end to it.[34]

Steinbeck's incomplete novel based on the King Arthur legends of Malory and others, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, was published in 1976.

Many of Steinbeck's works are required reading in American high schools. In England, Of Mice and Men was one of the key texts used by the examining body AQA for its English Literature GCSE until its removal from the reformed specification that was first examined in June 2018. Following concerns about racist language used in the book, it was also removed from the English Literature GCSE syllabus in Wales, along with To Kill A Mockingbird, by WJEC.[57] It continues to be studied in Northern Ireland, although calls have also been made for its removal there.[58] A study by the Center for the Learning and Teaching of Literature in the United States found that Of Mice and Men was one of the ten most frequently read books in public high schools.[59] Steinbeck's works have also been banned. The Grapes of Wrath was banned in August 1939 by the Kern County Board of Supervisors from the county's publicly funded schools and libraries.[30] It was burned in Salinas on two occasions.[60][61] In 2003, a school board in Mississippi banned it on the grounds of profanity.[62] According to the American Library Association, Steinbeck was one of the ten most frequently banned authors from 1990 to 2004, with Of Mice and Men ranking sixth out of 100 such books in the United States.[63][64]

### Literary influences

[edit]

Steinbeck grew up in California's Salinas Valley, a culturally diverse place with a rich migratory and immigrant history. This upbringing imparted a regionalistic flavor to his writing, giving many of his works a distinct sense of place.[16][22] Salinas, Monterey and parts of the San Joaquin Valley were the setting for many of his stories. The area is now sometimes referred to as "Steinbeck Country".[34] Most of his early work dealt with subjects familiar to him from his formative years. An exception was his first novel, Cup of Gold, which concerns the pirate/privateer Henry Morgan, whose adventures had captured Steinbeck's imagination as a child.

In his subsequent novels, Steinbeck found a more authentic voice by drawing upon direct memories of his life in California. His childhood friend, Max Wagner, a brother of Jack Wagner and who later became a film actor, served as inspiration for The Red Pony. Later he used actual American conditions and events in the first half of the 20th century, which he had experienced first-hand as a reporter. Steinbeck often populated his stories with struggling characters; his works examined the lives of the working class and migrant workers during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.

His later work reflected his wide range of interests, including marine biology, politics, religion, history and mythology. One of his last published works was Travels with Charley, a travelogue of a road trip he took in 1960 to rediscover America.

### Commemoration

[edit]

Cannery Row in Monterey National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California U.S. Route 101 is signed as the John Steinbeck Highway through Salinas.

Steinbeck's boyhood home, a turreted Victorian building in downtown Salinas, has been preserved and restored by the Valley Guild, a nonprofit organization. Fixed menu lunches are served Monday through Saturday, and the house is open for tours on Sunday afternoons during the summer.[65]

The National Steinbeck Center is two blocks away at 1 Main Street. Dana Gioia (chair of the National Endowment for the Arts) told an audience at the center, "This is really the best modern literary shrine in the country, and I've seen them all."[citation needed] Its "Steinbeckiana" includes "Rocinante", the camper-truck in which Steinbeck made the cross-country trip described in Travels with Charley.

His father's cottage on Eleventh Street in Pacific Grove, where Steinbeck wrote some of his earliest books, also survives.[34]

In Monterey, Ed Ricketts's laboratory survives (though it is not yet open to the public), and at the corner that Steinbeck describes in Cannery Row, also the store that once belonged to Lee Chong and the adjacent vacant lot frequented by the hoboes of Cannery Row. The site of the Hovden Sardine Cannery next to Doc's laboratory is now occupied by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. In 1958, the street that Steinbeck described as "Cannery Row" in the novel, once named Ocean View Avenue, was renamed Cannery Row in honor of the novel. The town of Monterey has commemorated Steinbeck's work with an avenue of flags depicting characters from Cannery Row, historical plaques, and sculptured busts depicting Steinbeck and Ricketts.[34]

On February 27, 1979 (the 77th anniversary of the writer's birth), the United States Postal Service issued a stamp featuring Steinbeck, starting the Postal Service's Literary Arts series honoring American writers.[66]

Steinbeck was inducted into the DeMolay International Hall of Fame in 1995.[67]

On December 5, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Steinbeck into the California Hall of Fame, located at the California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.[68] His son, author Thomas Steinbeck, accepted the award on his behalf.

Monterey Bay Roller Derby was founded in 2010. Their team names over the years have referenced Steinbeck, including Beasts of Eden, Cannery Rollers, Steinwreckers and Babes of Wrath. Their juniors league was known as the Dread Ponies.

To commemorate the 112th anniversary of Steinbeck's birthday on February 27, 2014, Google displayed an interactive doodle utilizing animation which included illustrations portraying scenes and quotes from several novels by the author.[69][70][71]

Steinbeck and his friend Ed Ricketts appear as fictionalized characters in the 2016 novel Monterey Bay, about the founding of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, by Lindsay Hatton (Penguin Press).[72]

In February 2016, Caltrans installed signage to identify a five-mile segment of U.S. Route 101 in Salinas as the John Steinbeck Highway, in accordance with a 2014 state legislative resolution.[73]

John Steinbeck Waterfront Park

In 2019 the Sag Harbor town board approved the creation of the John Steinbeck Waterfront Park across from the iconic town windmill. The structures on the parcel were demolished and park benches installed near the beach. The Beebe windmill replica already had a plaque memorializing the author who wrote from a small hut overlooking the cove during his sojourn in the literary haven.

## Religious views

[edit]

Steinbeck was affiliated to the St. Paul's Episcopal Church and he stayed attached throughout his life to Episcopalianism although Steinbeck later became agnostic.[13] Especially in his works of fiction, Steinbeck was highly conscious of religion and incorporated it into his style and themes. The shaping of his characters often drew on the Bible and the theology of Anglicanism, combining elements of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.[74][75]

Steinbeck distanced himself from religious views when he left Salinas for Stanford. However, the work he produced still reflected the language of his childhood at Salinas, and his beliefs remained a powerful influence within his fiction and non-fiction work. William Ray considered his Episcopal views are prominently displayed in The Grapes of Wrath, in which themes of conversion and self-sacrifice play a major part in the characters Casy and Tom, who achieve spiritual transcendence through conversion.[76]

## Political views

[edit]

John Steinbeck, with his 19-year-old son John (left), visits his friend, President Lyndon B. Johnson, in the Oval Office, May 16, 1966. John Jr. is shortly to leave for active duty in Vietnam.

Steinbeck's contacts with leftist authors, journalists, and labor union figures may have influenced his writing. He joined the League of American Writers, a Communist organization, in 1935.[77] Steinbeck was mentored by radical writers Lincoln Steffens and his wife Ella Winter. Through Francis Whitaker, a member of the Communist Party USA's John Reed Club for writers, Steinbeck met with strike organizers from the Cannery and Agricultural Workers' Industrial Union.[78] In 1939, he signed a letter with some other writers in support of the Soviet invasion of Finland and the Soviet-established puppet government.[79]

Documents released by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2012 indicate that Steinbeck offered his services to the Agency in 1952, while planning a European tour, and the Director of Central Intelligence, Walter Bedell Smith, was eager to take him up on the offer.[80] What work, if any, Steinbeck may have performed for the CIA during the Cold War is unknown. Documents released by the Security Service of Ukraine following the Revolution of Dignity in 2014 indicate that the Soviet KGB suspected him of being an American agent when he visited locations within the USSR, including Kyiv, in 1947. Consequently, they watched Steinbeck closely and solicited information about him from their informers.[citation needed]

Steinbeck was a close associate of playwright Arthur Miller. In June 1957, Steinbeck took a personal and professional risk by supporting him when Miller refused to name names in the House Un-American Activities Committee trials.[60] Steinbeck called the period one of the "strangest and most frightening times a government and people have ever faced".[60]

In 1963, Steinbeck visited the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic at the behest of President John F. Kennedy. During his visit he sat for a rare portrait by painter Martiros Saryan and visited Geghard Monastery. He also met with Armenian poet Hovhannes Shiraz in Yerevan. Steinbeck's letter of thanks for Shiraz's hospitality is now displayed at the Shiraz house museum in Gyumri.[81] Footage of this visit filmed by Rafael Aramyan was sold in 2013 by his granddaughter.[82]

In 1967, when he was sent to Vietnam to report on the war, his sympathetic portrayal of the United States Army led the New York Post to denounce him for betraying his leftist past. Steinbeck's biographer, Jay Parini, says Steinbeck's friendship with President Lyndon B. Johnson[83] influenced his views on Vietnam.[22] Steinbeck may also have been concerned about the safety of his son serving in Vietnam.[84] Steinbeck opposed the anti-war movement in the United States, denouncing the "fallout, drop-out, cop-out insurgency of our children and young people, the rush to stimulant as well as hypnotic drugs, the rise of narrow, ugly, and vengeful cults of all kinds, the mistrust and revolt against all authority – this in a time of plenty such as has never been known."[85]

Along with Albert Einstein, Steinbeck was one of the sponsors of the Peoples' World Convention (PWC), also known as Peoples' World Constituent Assembly (PWCA), which took place in 1950–51 at Palais Electoral, Geneva, Switzerland.[86][87]

### Government harassment

[edit]

Steinbeck complained publicly about government harassment.[88] Thomas Steinbeck, the author's eldest son, said that J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI at the time, could find no basis for prosecuting Steinbeck and therefore used his power to encourage the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to audit Steinbeck's taxes every single year of his life, just to annoy him. According to Thomas, a true artist is one who "without a thought for self, stands up against the stones of condemnation, and speaks for those who are given no real voice in the halls of justice, or the halls of government. By doing so, these people will naturally become the enemies of the political status quo."[89]

In a 1942 letter to United States Attorney General Francis Biddle, John Steinbeck wrote: "Do you suppose you could ask Edgar's boys to stop stepping on my heels? They think I am an enemy alien. It is getting tiresome."[90] The FBI denied that Steinbeck was under investigation.[91]

## Major works

[edit]

### Tortilla Flat

[edit]

Main article: Tortilla Flat

Steinbeck's first commercial success, published in 1935, is an episodic fiction recounting adventures of a loosely attached group of delinquent locals in a shabby coastal district of California. Like other books of Steinbeck's, Tortilla Flat was adapted into a feature film.[92]

### In Dubious Battle

[edit]

Main article: In Dubious Battle

Salinas migrant workers, photo by Dorothea Lange

In 1936, Steinbeck published the first of what came to be known as his Dust Bowl trilogy, which included Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. This first novel tells the story of a fruit pickers' strike in California which is both aided and damaged by the help of "the Party", generally taken to be the Communist Party, although this is never spelled out in the book.

### Of Mice and Men

[edit]

Main article: Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men is a 1937 tragic novel that Steinbeck rewrote as a play that same year. The story is about two traveling ranch workers, George and Lennie, trying to earn enough money to buy their own farm/ranch. As it is set in 1930s America, it provides an insight into The Great Depression, encompassing themes of racism, loneliness, prejudice against the mentally ill, and the struggle for personal independence. Along with The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and The Pearl, Of Mice and Men is one of Steinbeck's best known works. It was made into movies three times: in 1939, starring Burgess Meredith, Lon Chaney Jr., and Betty Field; in 1981, starring Randy Quaid, Robert Blake and Ted Neeley; and in 1992, starring Gary Sinise and John Malkovich.

### The Grapes of Wrath

[edit]

Main article: The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath was published during the Great Depression and had a contemporary setting, describing a family of sharecroppers, the Joads, who were driven from their land by the dust storms of the Dust Bowl. The title is a reference to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Some critics found it too sympathetic to the workers' plight and too critical of capitalism,[93] but it found a large audience of its own. It won both the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction (novels) and was adapted as a film starring Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell and directed by John Ford.

### Cannery Row

[edit]

Main article: Cannery Row

The 1945 novel tells of a marine biologist in a seedy district dotted with sardine canneries in Monterey, California, who is feted by colorful neighbors in gratitude for his kindness to them. Cannery Row and its sequel, Sweet Thursday, were adapted into a movie in 1982.

### East of Eden

[edit]

Main article: East of Eden (novel)

Steinbeck deals with the nature of good and evil in this 1952 Salinas Valley saga. The story follows two families: the Hamiltons – based on Steinbeck's own maternal ancestry[94] – and the Trasks, reprising stories about the biblical Adam and his progeny. His paternal ancestry is also reflected in the story.[95] The book was published in 1952. Portions of the novel were made into a 1955 movie directed by Elia Kazan and starring James Dean.

### Travels with Charley

[edit]

Main article: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

In 1960, Steinbeck bought a pickup truck and had it modified with a custom-built camper top - which was rare at the time - and drove across the United States with his faithful "blue" standard poodle, Charley. Steinbeck nicknamed his truck Rocinante after Don Quixote's "noble steed". In this sometimes comical, sometimes melancholic book, Steinbeck describes what he sees as he travels from Maine to Montana to California, and from there to Texas and Louisiana and back to his home on Long Island. However, in 2011, after his death, a reporter who had followed Travels with Charley's trail using the author's own diaries controverted the book's accuracy, casting Steinbeck's claimed reportage as largely fictionalized, allegations supported by scholars and Steinbeck's son John.

The restored camper truck is on exhibit in the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas.

## Bibliography

[edit]

Main article: John Steinbeck bibliography

## See also

[edit]

* Pigasus – a personal stamp used by Steinbeck

## References

[edit]

### Citations

[edit]

1. ^ a b c d The Swedish Academy cited The Grapes of Wrath and The Winter of Our Discontent most favorably.
"The Nobel Prize in Literature 1962: Presentation Speech by Anders Österling, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy". NobelPrize.org. Archived from the original on April 19, 2008. Retrieved April 21, 2008.
2. ^ "Nobel Prize in Literature 1962". Nobel Foundation. Archived from the original on October 21, 2008. Retrieved October 17, 2008.
3. ^ "Swedish Academy reopens controversy surrounding Steinbeck's Nobel prize". The Guardian. January 3, 2013. Archived from the original on October 22, 2013. Retrieved January 12, 2019.
4. ^ "Who, what, why: Why do children study Of Mice and Men?". BBC News. BBC. March 25, 2011. Archived from the original on January 7, 2015. Retrieved December 6, 2014.
5. ^ "Novel". The Pulitzer Prizes. Archived from the original on August 21, 2008.
6. ^ Bryer, R. Jackson (1989). Sixteen Modern American Authors, Volume 2. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. p. 620. ISBN 978-0-8223-1018-1.
7. ^ Chilton, Martin (September 16, 2015). "The Grapes of Wrath: 10 surprising facts about John Steinbeck's novel". The Telegraph. Telegraph (London). Archived from the original on October 10, 2022. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
8. ^ "John Steinbeck Biography". Biography.com website. A&E Television Networks. February 6, 2018. Archived from the original on April 6, 2019. Retrieved February 26, 2018.
9. ^ "Okie Faces & Irish Eyes: John Steinbeck & Route 66". Irish America. June 2007. Archived from the original on November 21, 2012. Retrieved October 23, 2012.
10. ^ Yaron, Perry (2004). "John Steinbeck's Roots in Nineteenth-Century Palestine". Steinbeck Studies. 15 (1): 46–72 [47–48, 59–63]. doi:10.1353/stn.2004.0018. ISSN 1551-6903.
11. ^ a b c "John Steinbeck Biography". Archived from the original on March 5, 2010. Retrieved April 14, 2010.. National Steinbeck Centre
12. ^ Alec Gilmore. John Steinbeck's View of God Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. gilco.org.uk
13. ^ a b Jackson J. Benson (1984). The true adventures of John Steinbeck, writer: a biography. Viking Press. p. 248. ISBN 978-0-670-16685-5. "Ricketts did not convert his friend to a religious point of view—Steinbeck remained an agnostic and, essentially, a materialist—but Ricketts's religious acceptance did tend to work on his friend, ..."
14. ^ John Steinbeck (1993). Of Mice and Men. Penguin Books. p. 0\. ISBN 978-0-14-017739-8.
15. ^ "Billy Post dies at 88; Big Sur's resident authority". Los Angeles Times. August 2, 2009. Archived from the original on February 14, 2022. Retrieved February 14, 2022.
16. ^ a b Introduction to John Steinbeck, The Long Valley, pp. 9–10, John Timmerman, Penguin Publishing, 1995
17. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Jackson J. Benson, The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer New York: The Viking Press, 1984. ISBN 978-0-14-014417-8, pp. 147, 915a, 915b, 133
18. ^ Introduction to 'The Grapes of Wrath' Penguin edition (1192) by Robert DeMott
19. ^ Jackson J. Benson, The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer New York: The Viking Press, 1984. ISBN 978-0-14-014417-8, p. 196
20. ^ Jackson J. Benson, The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer New York: The Viking Press, 1984. ISBN 978-0-14-014417-8, p. 197
21. ^ Jackson J. Benson, The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer New York: The Viking Press, 1984. ISBN 978-0-14-014417-8, p. 199
22. ^ a b c d e f g h Jay Parini, John Steinbeck: A Biography, Holt Publishing, 1996
23. ^ Scott, Sam (July 27, 2021). "Beast of Eden". Stanford Magazine. Archived from the original on August 4, 2021. Retrieved August 4, 2021.
24. ^ Meyer, Michael (2008). The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing (8th ed.). Boston: St. Martin/Bedford. pp. 744–745\. ISBN 978-0-312-47200-9.
25. ^ Railsback, Brian E.; Meyer, Michael J. (2006). A John Steinbeck Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 387\. ISBN 978-0-313-29669-7.
26. ^ "Of Mice and Men (1939)". Internet Movie Database. January 12, 1940. Archived from the original on October 30, 2007. Retrieved October 10, 2007.
27. ^ "1939 Book Awards Given by Critics: Elgin Groseclose's 'Ararat' is Picked as Work Which Failed to Get Due Recognition", The New York Times, February 14, 1940, p. 25. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851–2007).
28. ^ "Novel" Archived August 21, 2008, at the Wayback Machine (Winners 1917–1947). The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved January 28, 2012.
29. ^ Keith Windschuttle (June 2, 2002). "Steinbeck's myth of the Okies". Archived from the original on February 4, 2004. Retrieved August 10, 2005.`{{cite web}}`: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link). The New Criterion.
30. ^ a b "Steinbecks works banned". Archived from the original on October 5, 2006. Retrieved June 4, 2006.`{{cite web}}`: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link). pacific.net.au
31. ^ Steiner, Bernd (November 2007). A Survey on John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath". GRIN Verlag. p. 6\. ISBN 978-3-638-84459-8. Archived from the original on July 5, 2023. Retrieved February 26, 2018.
32. ^ "My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, June 28, 1939". www2.gwu.edu. Archived from the original on February 16, 2024. Retrieved February 16, 2024.
33. ^ "THE PRESIDENCY: First Lady's Week". Time. April 15, 1940. ISSN 0040-781X. Archived from the original on February 16, 2024. Retrieved February 16, 2024.
34. ^ a b c d e f g Susan Shillinglaw (2006). A Journey into Steinbeck's California. Roaring Forties Press.
35. ^ A website devoted to Sea of Cortez literature, with information on Steinbeck's expedition. Archived July 20, 2009, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved July 6, 2009.
36. ^ a b Fensch, Thomas (2002). Steinbeck and Covici. New Century exceptional lives. New Century Books. p. 33\. ISBN 978-0-930751-35-7.[permanent dead link]
37. ^ a b Bruce Robison, "Mavericks on Cannery Row," American Scientist, vol. 92, no. 6 (November–December 2004), p. 1: a review of Eric Enno Tamm, Beyond the Outer Shores: The Untold Odyssey of Ed Ricketts, the Pioneering Ecologist who Inspired John Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell Archived June 4, 2009, at the Wayback Machine, Four Walls Eight Windows, 2004.
38. ^ "THE MOON IS DOWN by John Steinbeck on Sumner & Stillman". Sumner & Stillman. Archived from the original on January 13, 2019. Retrieved January 13, 2019.
39. ^ Coers, Donald V. (1995). "Introduction". The Moon Is Down. Penguin.
40. ^ "Once There Was a War". International Churchill Society. December 28, 2013. Archived from the original on January 17, 2024. Retrieved January 17, 2024.
41. ^ "Cuernavaca, Mexico, 1945 – Mrs. Stanford Steinbeck, Gwyndolyn, Thom and John Steinbeck". California Faces: Selections from The Bancroft Library Portrait Collection. UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library. Archived from the original on January 12, 2019. Retrieved January 13, 2019 - via Calisphere.
42. ^ Moffitt, Jack (March 9, 2023). "'East of Eden': THR's 1955 Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on July 2, 2023. Retrieved February 16, 2024.
43. ^ Irvine, Lindesay (July 19, 2011). "Meeting John Steinbeck in Somerset". The Guardian. Retrieved July 3, 2021.
44. ^ "John Steinbeck 1902–68". Bruton Museum. October 16, 2017. Archived from the original on June 24, 2021. Retrieved July 3, 2021.
45. ^ Steinbeck knew he was dying Archived September 27, 2007, at archive.today," September 13, 2006. Audio interview with Thom Steinbeck
46. ^ a b Cynthia Burkhead, The students companion to John Steinbeck, Greenwood Press, 2002, p. 24 ISBN 978-0-313-31457-5
47. ^ a b c d e f g h i Alison Flood (January 3, 2013). "Swedish Academy reopens controversy surrounding Steinbeck's Nobel prize". The Guardian. Archived from the original on July 13, 2013. Retrieved January 3, 2013.
48. ^ Steinbeck Nobel Prize Banquet Speech Archived January 9, 2010, at the Wayback Machine. Nobelprize.org (December 10, 1962). Retrieved August 26, 2011.
49. ^ "ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive: Biography: Al Capp 2 – A CAPPital Offense". Archived from the original on March 24, 2009. Retrieved November 18, 2009.. animationarchive.org (May 2008).
50. ^ "Remarks at the Presentation of the 1964 Presidential Medal of Freedom Awards. | The American Presidency Project". www.presidency.ucsb.edu. Archived from the original on June 18, 2018. Retrieved July 9, 2019.
51. ^ Steinbeck, A Life in Letters.
52. ^ Benson, Jackson J. (1984). The true adventures of John Steinbeck, writer : a biography. New York. p. 557\. ISBN 0-670-16685-5. OCLC 8806095.`{{cite book}}`: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
53. ^ Manning, Thomas; North, Suzanne Matos; Adler, Brian (2005). "Hidden Treasure: The Steinbeck-Rudloe Letters". Steinbeck Studies. 16 (1): 108–118\. doi:10.1353/stn.2007.0014. ISSN 1551-6903. S2CID 146337768. Project MUSE 212985.
54. ^ He wrote: "The impact of the country is stunning. The energy of the people is incredible." (Jackson J. Benson (1984). The true adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer. New York: The Viking Press, 1984. ISBN 0-670-16685-5. p. 978) He met officials, e.g. Teddy Kollek. "At one of the receptions, he got talking about his grandfather's journey to the Holy Land". (Benson. p. 979)
55. ^ Perry, Yaron (2004). "John Steinbeck's Roots in Nineteenth-Century Palestine". Steinbeck Studies. 15 (1): 46–72\. doi:10.1353/stn.2004.0018. S2CID 144101837. Project MUSE 172416.
56. ^ Burial in timeline at this site, taken from "Steinbeck: A Life in Letters". Steinbeck.org. Retrieved on August 26, 2011.
57. ^ "Of Mice and Men: Classic US novel taken off GCSE course in Wales". BBC News. December 22, 2024. Retrieved January 14, 2025.
58. ^ "Call to remove Of Mice and Men from GCSE course". BBC News. May 25, 2023. Retrieved January 14, 2025.
59. ^ Books taught in Schools Archived October 12, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, Center for the Learning and Teaching of Literature. Retrieved 2007.
60. ^ a b c Jackson J. Benson, John Steinbeck, Writer: A Biography, Penguin, 1990 ISBN 978-0-14-014417-8
61. ^ The Grapes of Wrath Burnt in Salinas Archived October 29, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, National Steinbeck Centre. Retrieved 2007.
62. ^ Steinbecks work banned in Mississippi 2003 Archived October 18, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, American Library Association. Retrieved 2007.
63. ^ "Steinbeck 10 most banned list". Archived from the original on July 15, 2004. Retrieved October 5, 2007.`{{cite web}}`: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link), American Library Association.
64. ^ "100 Most Frequently banned books in the U.S." Archived from the original on March 23, 2008. Retrieved July 22, 2008., American Library Association. Retrieved 2007.
65. ^ "John Steinbeck's Home and Birthplace". Archived from the original on October 16, 2006. Retrieved October 3, 2007.`{{cite web}}`: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link), Information Point. Retrieved 2007.
66. ^ "Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Gets 'Stamp of Approval'". United States Postal Service. February 21, 2008. Archived from the original on March 26, 2008. Retrieved March 15, 2008.
67. ^ "John Steinbeck". Archived from the original on July 10, 2017. Retrieved July 10, 2017.
68. ^ Steinbeck inducted into California Hall of Fame Archived September 28, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, California Museum. Retrieved 2007.
69. ^ Laura Stampler (February 27, 2014). "Google Doodle Celebrates John Steinbeck". Time Inc. Archived from the original on August 27, 2016. Retrieved March 8, 2014.
70. ^ Alison Flood (February 27, 2014). "John Steinbeck: Google Doodle pays tribute to author on 112th anniversary". The Guardian. Archived from the original on March 4, 2014. Retrieved March 8, 2014.
71. ^ Carolyn Kellogg (February 27, 2014). "Google Doodle celebrates the work of John Steinbeck". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on March 8, 2014. Retrieved March 8, 2014.
72. ^ "Penguin Press – Penguin Books USA". Archived from the original on December 20, 2016. Retrieved December 6, 2016.
73. ^ Zentz, Rachel (February 26, 2016). "Signs up marking 'John Steinbeck Highway'". The Salinas Californian. Archived from the original on October 1, 2022. Retrieved October 1, 2022.
74. ^ Ray, William (December 1, 2013). "John Steinbeck, Episcopalian: St. Paul's, Salinas". Steinbeck Review. 10 (2): 118–140\. doi:10.5325/steinbeckreview.10.2.0118. ISSN 1546-007X.
75. ^ Tate, William (2015). "Picturing Religious Experience: George Herbert, Calvin, and the Scriptures by Daniel W. Doerksen (review)". Christianity & Literature. 64 (3): 365–368\. doi:10.1177/0148333115574407. ISSN 2056-5666.
76. ^ Ray, William (December 11, 2013). "John Steinbeck, Episcopalian: St. Paul's, Salinas, Part One". Steinbeck Review. 10 (2): 118–140\. doi:10.5325/steinbeckreview.10.2.0118. S2CID 142177070. Project MUSE 530751.
77. ^ Dave Stancliff (February 24, 2013). "Remembering John Steinbeck, a great American writer". Times-Standard. Archived from the original on June 29, 2014. Retrieved June 28, 2014.
78. ^ Steinbeck and radicalism Archived February 4, 2004, at the Wayback Machine New Criterion. Retrieved 2007.
79. ^ "Terijoen hallitus sai outoa tukea" [The Terijoki Government received odd support]. Helsingin Sanomat (in Finnish). November 29, 2009.
80. ^ Brian Kannard, Steinbeck: Citizen Spy, Grave Distractions, 2013 ISBN 978-0-9890293-9-1, pp. 15–17. The correspondence is also available at "Steinbeck Documents and Excerpt". Archived from the original on March 1, 2014. Retrieved October 1, 2013.
81. ^ Bedevian, Ruth (December 5, 2006). "The Fragrance of the Roses Lingers On ... Hovhannes Shiraz". Armenian News Network / Groong. Archived from the original on April 1, 2023. "Among all the memorabilia, a letter from American writer, John Steinbeck, who was awarded both a Pulitzer Prize for his `Grapes of Wrath' (1939) and a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, caught my attention. I immediately asked to photograph it which was generously allowed. It was dated May 9, 1964 in which Steinbeck thanked Shiraz for his hospitality when he visited him in Yerevan."
82. ^ Coe, Alexis. "Recent Acquisitions: John Steinbeck's Cold War Armenian Legacy". SF Weekly. Archived from the original on May 2, 2021. Retrieved May 2, 2021.
83. ^ Jeanette Rumsby (2016). "Steinbeck's Influences". Steinbeck in the Schools. San Jose State University. Archived from the original on January 13, 2019. Retrieved January 12, 2019.
84. ^ Gladstein, Mimi R.; Meredith, James H. (March 2011). "John Steinbeck and the Tragedy of the Vietnam War". Steinbeck Review. 8 (1): 39–56\. doi:10.1111/j.1754-6087.2011.01137.x. S2CID 109014468.
85. ^ Perlstein, Rick (2008). Nixonland : the rise of a president and the fracturing of America. Internet Archive. New York : Scribner. p. 62\. ISBN 978-0-7432-4302-5.`{{cite book}}`: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
86. ^ Einstein, Albert; Nathan, Otto; Norden, Heinz (1968). Einstein on peace. Internet Archive. New York, Schocken Books. pp. 539, 670, 676.
87. ^ "[Carta] 1950 oct. 12, Genève, [Suiza] [a] Gabriela Mistral, Santiago, Chile [manuscrito] Gerry Kraus". BND: Archivo del Escritor. Archived from the original on October 28, 2023. Retrieved October 19, 2023.
88. ^ "John Steinbeck biography". biographyonline.net. Archived from the original on July 13, 2022. Retrieved January 12, 2019.
89. ^ Steinbeck, Thomas (September 27, 2010). "John Steinbeck, Michael Moore, and the Burgeoning Role of Planetary Patriotism". Huffington Post. Archived from the original on September 30, 2010.
90. ^ "John Steinbeck And The FBI's Wrath". The Smoking Gun. Archived from the original on October 22, 2005. Retrieved July 3, 2021.
91. ^ Williams, Charles (2014). "Steinbeck as Anti-Fascist". American Studies. 53 (4): 49–71\. ISSN 0026-3079. JSTOR 24589397.
92. ^ Levant, Howard (1970). "Tortilla Flat: the Shape of John Steinbeck's Career". Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. 85 (5): 1087–1095\. doi:10.2307/1261550. ISSN 0030-8129. JSTOR 1261550.
93. ^ "The Grapes of Wrath: Literary Criticism & Critical Analysis". Study.com. Archived from the original on January 13, 2019. Retrieved January 13, 2019.
94. ^ Nolte, Carl (February 24, 2002). "In Steinbeck Country". Sfgate. Archived from the original on September 22, 2017.
95. ^ DeMott, Robert (1996). Steinbecks's Typewriter: Essays on His Art. Troy, New York: The Whitston Publishing Company. p. 215. ISBN 0-87875-446-6. "the paternal Steinbeck line, whose gruesome experiences, including rape and murder, in Jaffa in the 1850s throw some startling new light on East of Eden".

### General sources

[edit]

* Benson, Jackson J. John Steinbeck, Writer (second ed.). Penguin Putnam Inc., New York, 1990, 0-14-01.4417X,
* Benson, Jackson J. (ed.) The Short Novels of John Steinbeck: Critical Essays with a Checklist to Steinbeck Criticism Archived December 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. Durham: Duke UP, 1990 ISBN 978-0-8223-0994-9.
* Benson, Jackson J. Looking for Steinbeck's Ghost[permanent dead link]. Reno: U of Nevada P, 2002 ISBN 978-0-87417-497-7.
* Davis, Robert C. The Grapes of Wrath: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1982. PS3537 .T3234 G734
* DeMott, Robert and Steinbeck, Elaine A., eds. John Steinbeck, Novels and Stories 1932–1937 (Library of America, 1994) ISBN 978-1-883011-01-7
* DeMott, Robert and Steinbeck, Elaine A., eds. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath and Other Writings 1936–1941 (Library of America, 1996) ISBN 978-1-883011-15-4
* DeMott, Robert, ed. John Steinbeck, Novels 1942–1952 (Library of America, 2002) ISBN 978-1-931082-07-5
* DeMott, Robert and Railsback, Brian, eds. John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley and Later Novels, 1947–1962 (Library of America, 2007) ISBN 978-1-59853-004-9
* Ditsky, John. John Steinbeck and the Critics Archived December 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000 ISBN 978-1-57113-210-9.
* French, Warren. John Steinbeck's Fiction Revisited. NY: Twayne, 1994 ISBN 978-0-8057-4017-2.
* Heavilin, Barbara A. John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002 ISBN 978-0-313-31837-5.
* Hughes, R. S. John Steinbeck: A Study of the Short Fiction. R.S. Hughes. Boston : Twayne, 1989. ISBN 978-0-8057-8302-5.
* Li, Luchen. ed. John Steinbeck: A Documentary Volume. Detroit: Gale, 2005 ISBN 978-0-7876-8127-2.
* Meyer, Michael J. The Hayashi Steinbeck Bibliography, 1982–1996. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 1998 ISBN 978-0-8108-3482-8.
* Steigerwald, Bill. Dogging Steinbeck: Discovering America and Exposing the Truth about 'Travels with Charley. Kindle Edition. 2013.
* Steinbeck, John Steinbeck IV and Nancy (2001). The Other Side of Eden: Life with John Steinbeck. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-57392-858-8
* Tamm, Eric Enno (2005). Beyond the Outer Shores: The Untold Odyssey of Ed Ricketts, the Pioneering Ecologist who Inspired John Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell Archived August 10, 2015, at the Wayback Machine. Thunder's Mouth Press. ISBN 978-1-56025-689-2.

## Further reading

[edit]

Library resources about
John Steinbeck

* * *

* Online books
* Resources in your library
* Resources in other libraries

By John Steinbeck

* Online books
* Resources in your library
* Resources in other libraries

* Nathaniel Benchley (Fall 1969). "John Steinbeck, The Art of Fiction No. 45". The Paris Review. Fall 1969 (48). Archived from the original on October 28, 2010. Retrieved November 23, 2010.
* George Plimpton and Frank Crowther (Fall 1975). "John Steinbeck, The Art of Fiction No. 45 (Continued)". The Paris Review. Fall 1975 (63). Archived from the original on October 28, 2010. Retrieved November 23, 2010.
* Souder, William (2020). Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393292268.

## External links

[edit]

John Steinbeck at Wikipedia's sister projects

* Definitions from Wiktionary
* Media from Commons
* News from Wikinews
* Quotations from Wikiquote
* Texts from Wikisource
* Textbooks from Wikibooks
* Resources from Wikiversity

* Works by John Steinbeck in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
* Works by John Steinbeck at Faded Page (Canada)
* Works by John Steinbeck at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
* National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California Archived December 18, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
* FBI file on John Steinbeck  Archived April 16, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
* The Steinbeck Quarterly journal
* John Steinbeck Biography Early Years: Salinas to Stanford: 1902–1925 from National Steinbeck Center
* Western American Literature Journal: John Steinbeck Archived November 12, 2018, at the Wayback Machine
* Cuernavaca, Mexico, 1945 – Mrs. Stanford Steinbeck, Gwyndolyn, Thom and John Steinbeck Archived January 12, 2019, at the Wayback Machine
* John Steinbeck on Nobelprize.org

### Libraries

[edit]

* John Steinbeck Collection, 1902–1979 Archived October 7, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
* Wells Fargo John Steinbeck Collection, 1870–1981 Archived July 30, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
* John Steinbeck and George Bernard Shaw legal files collection, 1926–1970s Archived January 5, 2022, at the Wayback Machine, held by the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library.

### Videos

[edit]

* Nobel Laureate page Archived January 9, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
* "Writings of John Steinbeck" Archived March 12, 2016, at the Wayback Machine from C-SPAN's American Writers: A Journey Through History

* v
* t
* e

John Steinbeck

Novels and
novellas|

* Cup of Gold (1929)
* The Red Pony (1933)
* To a God Unknown (1933)
* Tortilla Flat (1935)
* In Dubious Battle (1936)
* Of Mice and Men (1937)
* The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
* The Moon Is Down (1942)
* Cannery Row (1945)
* The Wayward Bus (1947)
* The Pearl (1947)
* Burning Bright (1950)
* East of Eden (1952)
* Sweet Thursday (1954)
* The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication (1957)
* The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)
* The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976)

Short story
collections|

* The Pastures of Heaven (1932)
* The White Quail (1935)
* The Long Valley (1938)

Screenplays|

* The Forgotten Village (1941)
* Lifeboat (1944)
* The Pearl (1947)
* The Red Pony (1949)
* Viva Zapata! (1952)

Adaptations|

| Of Mice and Men|

* 1937 play
* 1939 film
* 1969 opera
* 1992 film
* Best Laid Plans (2012 film)

|

The Grapes of Wrath|

* 1940 film
* 1988 play
* 2007 opera

The Red Pony|

* 1949 film
* score
* 1973 film

East of Eden|

* 1955 film
* 1981 miniseries
* Upcoming miniseries

Other|

* Tortilla Flat (1942 film)
* The Moon Is Down (1943 film)
* La perla (The Pearl) (1947 film)
* The Wayward Bus (1957 film)
* Cannery Row (1982 film)
* The Winter of Our Discontent (1983 film)
* In Dubious Battle (2016 film)

Non-fiction|

* The Harvest Gypsies (1936)
* Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research (1941)
* Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team (1942)
* A Russian Journal (1948)
* The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951)
* Once There Was a War (1958)
* Travels with Charley (1962)
* America and Americans (1966)
* Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters (1969)
* Steinbeck in Vietnam (2012)

Legacy|

* National Steinbeck Center
* Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies
* John Steinbeck Award
* John Steinbeck Award for Fiction

Related|

* Elaine Anderson Steinbeck (third wife)
* Thomas Steinbeck (son)
* John Steinbeck IV (son)
* Salinas boyhood home
* Monte Sereno home
* Pacific Biological Laboratories
* Ed Ricketts
* Western Flyer (boat)
* Personal stamp (Pigasus)
* Cathy Ames (character)
* An Impression of John Steinbeck: Writer (1969 documentary)

* v
* t
* e

Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Literature

1901–1920|

* 1901: Sully Prudhomme
* 1902: Theodor Mommsen
* 1903: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
* 1904: Frédéric Mistral / José Echegaray
* 1905: Henryk Sienkiewicz
* 1906: Giosuè Carducci
* 1907: Rudyard Kipling
* 1908: Rudolf Eucken
* 1909: Selma Lagerlöf
* 1910: Paul Heyse
* 1911: Maurice Maeterlinck
* 1912: Gerhart Hauptmann
* 1913: Rabindranath Tagore
* 1914
* 1915: Romain Rolland
* 1916: Verner von Heidenstam
* 1917: Karl Gjellerup / Henrik Pontoppidan
* 1918
* 1919: Carl Spitteler
* 1920: Knut Hamsun

1921–1940|

* 1921: Anatole France
* 1922: Jacinto Benavente
* 1923: W. B. Yeats
* 1924: Władysław Reymont
* 1925: George Bernard Shaw
* 1926: Grazia Deledda
* 1927: Henri Bergson
* 1928: Sigrid Undset
* 1929: Thomas Mann
* 1930: Sinclair Lewis
* 1931: Erik Axel Karlfeldt (posthumously)
* 1932: John Galsworthy
* 1933: Ivan Bunin
* 1934: Luigi Pirandello
* 1935
* 1936: Eugene O'Neill
* 1937: Roger Martin du Gard
* 1938: Pearl S. Buck
* 1939: Frans Eemil Sillanpää
* 1940

1941–1960|

* 1941
* 1942
* 1943
* 1944: Johannes V. Jensen
* 1945: Gabriela Mistral
* 1946: Hermann Hesse
* 1947: André Gide
* 1948: T. S. Eliot
* 1949: William Faulkner
* 1950: Bertrand Russell
* 1951: Pär Lagerkvist
* 1952: François Mauriac
* 1953: Winston Churchill
* 1954: Ernest Hemingway
* 1955: Halldór Laxness
* 1956: Juan Ramón Jiménez
* 1957: Albert Camus
* 1958: Boris Pasternak
* 1959: Salvatore Quasimodo
* 1960: Saint-John Perse

1961–1980|

* 1961: Ivo Andrić
* 1962: John Steinbeck
* 1963: Giorgos Seferis
* 1964: Jean-Paul Sartre (declined award)
* 1965: Mikhail Sholokhov
* 1966: Shmuel Yosef Agnon / Nelly Sachs
* 1967: Miguel Ángel Asturias
* 1968: Yasunari Kawabata
* 1969: Samuel Beckett
* 1970: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
* 1971: Pablo Neruda
* 1972: Heinrich Böll
* 1973: Patrick White
* 1974: Eyvind Johnson / Harry Martinson
* 1975: Eugenio Montale
* 1976: Saul Bellow
* 1977: Vicente Aleixandre
* 1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer
* 1979: Odysseas Elytis
* 1980: Czesław Miłosz

1981–2000|

* 1981: Elias Canetti
* 1982: Gabriel García Márquez
* 1983: William Golding
* 1984: Jaroslav Seifert
* 1985: Claude Simon
* 1986: Wole Soyinka
* 1987: Joseph Brodsky
* 1988: Naguib Mahfouz
* 1989: Camilo José Cela
* 1990: Octavio Paz
* 1991: Nadine Gordimer
* 1992: Derek Walcott
* 1993: Toni Morrison
* 1994: Kenzaburō Ōe
* 1995: Seamus Heaney
* 1996: Wisława Szymborska
* 1997: Dario Fo
* 1998: José Saramago
* 1999: Günter Grass
* 2000: Gao Xingjian

2001–2020|

* 2001: V. S. Naipaul
* 2002: Imre Kertész
* 2003: J. M. Coetzee
* 2004: Elfriede Jelinek
* 2005: Harold Pinter
* 2006: Orhan Pamuk
* 2007: Doris Lessing
* 2008: J. M. G. Le Clézio
* 2009: Herta Müller
* 2010: Mario Vargas Llosa
* 2011: Tomas Tranströmer
* 2012: Mo Yan
* 2013: Alice Munro
* 2014: Patrick Modiano
* 2015: Svetlana Alexievich
* 2016: Bob Dylan
* 2017: Kazuo Ishiguro
* 2018: Olga Tokarczuk
* 2019: Peter Handke
* 2020: Louise Glück

2021–present|

* 2021: Abdulrazak Gurnah
* 2022: Annie Ernaux
* 2023: Jon Fosse
* 2024: Han Kang
* 2025: to be determined

* v
* t
* e

1962 Nobel Prize laureates

Chemistry|

* Max Perutz (Great Britain)
* John Kendrew (Great Britain)

Literature (1962)|

* John Steinbeck (United States)

Peace|

* Linus Pauling (United States)

Physics|

* Lev Landau (Soviet Union)

Physiology or Medicine|

* Francis Crick (Great Britain)
* James D. Watson (United States)
* Maurice Wilkins (Great Britain/Australia)

Nobel Prize recipients
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967

* v
* t
* e

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Previously the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel from 1917–1947

1918–1925|

* His Family by Ernest Poole (1918)
* The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (1919)
* The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1921)
* Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (1922)
* One of Ours by Willa Cather (1923)
* The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson (1924)
* So Big by Edna Ferber (1925)

1926–1950|

* Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (1926; declined)
* Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield (1927)
* The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1928)
* Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin (1929)
* Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge (1930)
* Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes (1931)
* The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (1932)
* The Store by Thomas Sigismund Stribling (1933)
* Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Pafford Miller (1934)
* Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson (1935)
* Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis (1936)
* Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1937)
* The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand (1938)
* The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1939)
* The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1940)
* In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow (1942)
* Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair (1943)
* Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin (1944)
* A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (1945)
* All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1947)
* Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener (1948)
* Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens (1949)
* The Way West by A. B. Guthrie Jr. (1950)

1951–1975|

* The Town by Conrad Richter (1951)
* The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk (1952)
* The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1953)
* A Fable by William Faulkner (1955)
* Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor (1956)
* A Death in the Family by James Agee (1958)
* The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (1959)
* Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (1960)
* To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1961)
* The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor (1962)
* The Reivers by William Faulkner (1963)
* The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau (1965)
* The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter (1966)
* The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (1967)
* The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron (1968)
* House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (1969)
* The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford (1970)
* Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (1972)
* The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (1973)
* No award given (1974)
* The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (1975)

1976–2000|

* Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow (1976)
* No award given (1977)
* Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (1978)
* The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (1979)
* The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (1980)
* A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1981)
* Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike (1982)
* The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1983)
* Ironweed by William Kennedy (1984)
* Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (1985)
* Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1986)
* A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (1987)
* Beloved by Toni Morrison (1988)
* Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1989)
* The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos (1990)
* Rabbit at Rest by John Updike (1991)
* A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (1992)
* A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (1993)
* The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (1994)
* The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (1995)
* Independence Day by Richard Ford (1996)
* Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (1997)
* American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1998)
* The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1999)
* Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)

2001–present|

* The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2001)
* Empire Falls by Richard Russo (2002)
* Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2003)
* The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2004)
* Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2005)
* March by Geraldine Brooks (2006)
* The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2007)
* The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2008)
* Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (2009)
* Tinkers by Paul Harding (2010)
* A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2011)
* No award given (2012)
* The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson (2013)
* The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (2014)
* All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2015)
* The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2016)
* The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2017)
* Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2018)
* The Overstory by Richard Powers (2019)
* The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (2020)
* The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (2021)
* The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen (2022)
* Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver / Trust by Hernan Diaz (2023)
* Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips (2024)
* James by Percival Everett (2025)

* v
* t
* e

John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

Characters|

* Tom Joad
* Jim Casy
* Grandpa William James Joad
* Ruthie Joad
* Connie Rivers
* Muley Graves

Performances|

* The Grapes of Wrath (1940 film)
* The Grapes of Wrath (1988 play)
* The Grapes of Wrath (2007 opera)

Music|

* "The Ghost of Tom Joad"
* Dust Bowl Ballads ("Tom Joad"
* "Do Re Mi")
* "Pastures of Plenty"
* Dust and Dreams

Related|

* Great Depression
* Dust Bowl
* Blue Willow
* "Over Logging"
* "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"

* v
* t
* e

John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (1937)

Film|

* Of Mice and Men (1939)
* Of Mice and Men (1992)
* Best Laid Plans (2012)

Television|

* Of Mice and Men (1968)

Stage|

* Of Mice and Men (1937 play)
* Of Mice and Men (1969 opera)

Related|

* Hoppy Go Lucky

* v
* t
* e

Salinas, California

Points of interest|

* Sheriff William Joseph Nesbitt House
* Krough House
* Rancho Las Palmas
* Republic Cafe
* John Steinbeck House
* National Steinbeck Center
* Samuel M. Black House
* Peter J. Bontadelli House
* Jose Eusebio Boronda Adobe
* Monterey County Court House
* Monterey County Jail
* B. V. Sargent House
* Palma School
* Salinas High School
* California Rodeo Salinas
* Notre Dame High School
* Salinas Intermodal Transportation Center

People|

* William Joseph Nesbitt
* Peter Krough
* Hiram Corey
* John Steinbeck
* Mike Rianda
* Howard H. Leach

Portals:

* Literature
* Books
* Novels
* Film

Authority control databases

International|

* ISNI
* VIAF
* FAST
* WorldCat

National|

* Germany
* United States
* France
* BnF data
* Japan
* Italy
* Australia
* Czech Republic
* Russia
* Spain
* Portugal
* Netherlands
* Norway
* Latvia
* Croatia
* Chile
* Greece
* Argentina
* Korea
* Sweden
* Poland
* Vatican
* Israel
* Catalonia
* Belgium

Academics|

* CiNii

Artists|

* ULAN
* MusicBrainz
* KulturNav
* FID

People|

* Trove
* Deutsche Biographie
* DDB

Other|

* IdRef
* NARA
* SNAC
* Yale LUX

*[m.]: married
*[div.]: divorced
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