Lit eZine Vol 4 | p-25 | A WRITER’S LIFE | John Steinbeck

A WRITER’S LIFE

JOHN STEINBECK

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (1902-1968), an American writer and Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 1962 has authored twenty-five books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and several collections of short stories. his well-known works are the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939, and the novella, Of Mice and Men, published in 1937.

Born in Salinas, California, in a family of moderate means, John Steinbeck was the third of four children and the only son of John Ernst and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck. His father was County Treasurer and his mother, a former schoolteacher. He studied at Stanford University and worked during breaks and summers on farms but had to discontinue his studies and never graduated. In 1925 he went to New York to establish himself as a freelance writer, but soon returned to California. Steinbeck first became widely known with Tortilla Flat (1935), a series of humorous stories about Monterey paisanos.

Steinbeck’s novels are social novels that enumerate the economic problems of rural labour, but one can also see the worship of the soil in his books. The condition of migrants and seasonal workers was a recurring theme in his writings. His later work reflected his other interests, including marine biology, politics, religion, history, and mythology.

Seventeen of his works, including The Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, The Pearl, and East of Eden, were turned into Hollywood films. One of the few Nobel laureates for literature to be nominated for an Academy Award for writing, he was nominated thrice, for Lifeboat (1944), A Medal for Benny (1945) (with Jack Wagner) and Viva Zapata! (1952).

His wise words of advice in his letter to his son are invaluable…
There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you – of kindness and consideration and respect – not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak, but the second can release in you strength and courage and goodness, and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.

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