by Jay Parini
(New York: Henry Holt, 1995)
When John Steinbeck died in 1968, he was the most popular American novelist in the world, and one of a small handful of writers whose work deeply affected the American people. The continuing popularity of his novels, worldwide, attests to his power. Though his reputation among critics remains uncertain--not even Steinbeck's Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964 was enough for some--the author of Tortilla Flat, The Ped Pony, and East of Edenremains unfailingly attractive to readers of all ages and levels of sophistication.
Born in a small town in northern California in 1902, Steinbeck refused from the outset to fit himself to any mold, digging ditches and washing dishes while intermittently attending Stanford University. Failing to take a degree, he struggled for more than a decade to establish himself as a writer, always putting his work first. Eventually he enjoyed an extraordinary period of creativity during which he summoned a powerful vision of the Depression. Books such as Of Mice and Men, The Long Valley,and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes qf Wrathbecame battle cries that aroused international indignation and brought Steinbeck a world audience.
Jay Parini explores Steinbeck's love-hate relationship with Hollywood and Broadway, his career as a war correspondent, his difficult first and second marriages, and his often tempestuous associations with numerous celebrities, among them Joseph Campbell, Charlie Chaplin, Lyndon Johnson, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner. Drawing on interviews with dozens of people who knew Steinbeck intimately--including his beloved third wife, Elaine--and on published and unpublished letters, diaries, and manuscripts, Jobn Steinbeckis both an important reassessment and a masterful portrait of one of the greatest American novelists.