John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California. His native region of Monterey Bay was later the setting for most of his fiction. Steinbeck's father was a county treasurer and mother a teacher. He attended the local high school and studied marine biology at Stanford University between 1920 and 1926, but did not take a degree. During these early years several of his poems and short stories appeared in university publications. After working for a short time as a laborer and reporter in New York City for the American, Steinbeck returned to California.
While writing, Steinbeck worked as a manual laborer. He was apprenticehood-carrier, apprentice painter, caretaker of an estate, surveyor, and fruit-picker. While working as a watchman of a house in the High Sierra Steinbeck wrote his first book, CUP OF GOLD (1929). In Pacific Grove in the early 1930s Steinbeck met Edward Ricketts, a marine biologist, whose views on the interdependence of all life deeply influenced Steinbeck's thinking. In the novel TO A GOD UNKNOWN (1933) he mingled Rickett's ideas with Jungian concepts and themes, which had been made familiar by the mythologist Joseph Campbell. The novel depicts a farmer, Joseph Wayne, who receives a blessing from his pioneer father, John Wayne, and goes to build himself a new farm in a distant valley. Joseph develops his own beliefs of death and life, and to bring an end to a drought he sacrifices himself on a stone, becoming "earth and rain". Steinbeck did not want to explain his story too much and he knew beforehand that the book would not find readers.
Steinbeck's first three novels went unnoticed, but in 1935 appeared his humorous tale of pleasure-loving Mexican-Americans, TORTILLA FLAT, which brought him wider recognition, but the theme of the book - the story of King Arthur and the forming of the Round Table - remained well hidden from the critics. IN DUBIOUS BATTLE (1936) was a strike novel set in the California apple country. The strike of nine hundred migratory workers is led by Jim Nolan, devoted to his cause, who confesses before his death: "I never had time to look at things, Mac, never. I never looked how leaves come out. I never looked at the way things happen." One the characters, Doc Burton, a detached observer, Steinbeck partly derived from his friend Ed Ricketts. Later Steinbeck developed the character with changes in such works as CANNERY ROW (1945), which returned to the world of Tortilla Flat. The novel was an account of the adventures and misadventures of workers in a California cannery and their friends. Its sequel, SWEET THURSDAY, appeared in 1954.
"At nine o'clock the wind sprang up and howled around the barn. And in spite of his worry, Jody grew sleepy. He got into his blankets and went to sleep, but the breathy groans of the pony sounded in his dreams. And in his sleep he heard a crashing noise which went on and on until it awakened him. The wind was rushing through the barn. He sprang up and looked down the lane of the stall. The barn door had blown open, and the pony was gone." (from The Red Pony)
OF MICE AND MEN (1937), a story of shattered dreams, became Steinbeck's first big success. In the same year appeared also THE RED PONY which is among Steinbeck's finest works. The events take place on the Tiflin ranch in the Salinas Valley, California. The first two sections of the story sequence, "The Gift" and "The Great Mountains", were published in the North American Review in 1933, and the third section, "The Promise," did not appear in Harpers until 1937. With "The Leader of the People," the four sections are connected by common characters, settings, and themes. The Red Pony follows Jody's initiation into adult life, in which the pony of the title functions as a symbol of his innocence and maturation. A movie version, for which Steinbeck wrote the screenplay, was made in 1949. Among Steinbeck's other film scripts is The Pearl, the story for Alfred Hitchcock's film Lifeboat (1944), and script for Viva Zapata! (1952, dir. by Elia Kazan).
For The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck traveled around California migrant camps in 1936. When the book appeared it was attacked by US Congressman Lyle Boren who characterized it as "a lie, a black, infernal creation of twisted, distorted mind". Later, when Steinbeck received his Nobel Prize, the Swedish Academy called it simply "an epic chronicle." The Exodus story of Okies on their way to an uncertain future in California ends with a scene in which Rose of Sharon, who has just delivered a stillborn child, suckles a starving man with her breast. "Rose of Sharon loosened one side of the blanket and bared her breast. 'You got to,' she said. She squirmed closer and pulled his head close. 'There!' she said. 'There.' Her hand moved behind his head and supported it. Her fingers moved gently in his hair. She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously." John Ford's film version from 1940, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, dismissed this ending - the final images optimistically celebrate President Roosevelt's New Deal. "We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out. They can't lick us. We'll go on forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people," says Ma Joad. Steinbeck himself was skeptical of Hollywood's faithfulness to his material. However, after seeing the film he said: "Zanuck has more than kept his word. He has a hard, straight picture in which the actors are submerged so completely that it looks and feels like a documentary film and certainly has a hard, truthful ring." Orson Welles did not like Ford's interpretation because he "made that into a story about mother love."
Fleeing publicity followed by the success of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck went to Mexico in 1940 to film the documentary Forgotten Village. During WW II Steinbeck served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune in Great Britain and the Mediterranean area. He wrote such government propaganda as the novel THE MOON IS DOWN (1942), which depicted resistance movement in a small town occupied by the Nazis. The film version of the book, starring Henry Travers, Cedric Hardwicke, and Lee J. Cobb, was shot on the set of How Green Was My Valley (1941), which depicted a Welsh mining village. "Free men cannot start a war," Steinbeck wrote in the book, "but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars." Steinbeck had visited Europe in 1937 after gaining success with Of Mice and Men, and met on a Swedish ship two Norwegians, with whom he had celebrated Norway's independence day.
In 1943 Steinbeck moved to New York City, his home for the rest of his life. His twelve-year marriage to Carol Henning ended in 1942. Next year he married the singer Gwyndolyn Conger; they had two sons, Thom and John. However, the marriage was unhappy and they were divorced in 1949. Steinbeck spent summers at Sag Harbor and travelled in Europe. Steinbeck's postwar works include THE PEARL (1947), a symbolic tale of a Mexican fisherman, and A RUSSIAN JOURNAL (1948), an account of the author's journey to the Soviet Union with the photographer Robert Capa. Steinbeck's idea was to describe the country without prejudices but he could not move freely, he could not speak Russian, and the Soviet hosts took care that there were more than enough vodka, champagne, caviar, chickens, honey, tomatoes, kebabs, and watermelons on their guest's table. The gormandizing was interrupted only by evenings at the ballet and theater, or cocktail-parties with swing music.
The Pearl - short story, published in 1947. Mexican Indian pearl diver Kino finds a valuable pearl which changes his life, but not in the way he did expect. Kino sees the pearl as his opportunity to better life. When the townsfolk of La Paz learn of Kino's find, he is soon surrounded by a greedy priest, doctor, and businessmen. Kino's family suffers series of disasters and finally he throws the pearl back into ocean. Thereafter his tragedy is legendary in the town.
The director Elia Kazan met Steinbeck when the author had separated from Gwyn and was drinking heavily. "I don't think John Steinbeck should have been living in New York, I don't think he should have been writing plays," Kazan wrote in his autobiography A Life (1988). "He was a prose writer, at home in the west, with land, with horses, or on a boat; in this big city, he was a dupe." Their most famous film project, East of Eden, covered the last part of the book. James Dean made his debut in the film. Kazan originally wanted Marlon Brando to play the role of Cal. He sent Dean to see Steinbeck, who considered him a snotty kid, but said he was Cal "sure as hell". Dean received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, but Lee Rogow in the Saturday Review was not satisfied (March 19, 1955); "Kazan has apparently attempted to graft a Brando-type personality and set of mannerisms upon Dean, and the result is less than successful... this artful construction of a performance is not, to get Stanislavskian about it, building a character."
In 1950 Steinbeck married Elaine Scott. His son John was hospitalized for codeine addiction at age seven, and he also had much problems in later years with drugs and alcohol. He died in 1991. In The Other Side of Eden John Steinbeck IV wrote about his famous father: "Artists by nature are not particularly gifted as parents. They can be very self-centered, very abusive, and dysfunctional when it comes to raising children. So the kid has to raise himself. Dad never had to be a parent except on his time and on his terms, and then he was very good at that, very good. Very Huck Finny. Had he had to do it day in, day out, he would have failed miserably."
EAST OF EDEN (1952), Steinbeck's long family novel, was based partly on the story of Cain and Abel. The story is set in rural California in the years around the turn of the century. In the center of the saga is two families of settlers, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, whose history reflect the formation of the United States when "the Church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously..." The second half of the book focus on the lives of the twins, Aron and Caleb, and their conflict. Between them is Cathy, tiny, pretty, but an adulteress and murderess. "It doesn't matter that Cathy was what I have called a monster. Perhaps we can't understand Cathy, but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins. And who in his mind has not probed the black water?" (from East of Eden)
In 1959 Stenbeck spent nearly a year at Discove Cottage in England working with Morte d'Arthur. After returning to the United States he travelled around his country with his poodle, Charley, and published in 1962 TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY IN SEARCH OF AMERICA (1962). His son John wrote in his memoir that Steinbeck was too shy to talk to any of the people in the book. "He couldn't handle that amount of interaction. So, the book is actually a great novel."
THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT (1961), set in contemporary America, was Steinbeck's last major novel, and continued his exploration of the moral dilemmas involved in being fully human. The book was not well received, and critics considered him an exhausted. The Nobel Prize did not change the opinions. The New York Times asked in an editoria, whether the prize committee might not have made a better choice. Steinbeck took this public humiliation hard. In later years he did much special reporting abroad, dividing his time between New York and California. He went to Vietnam to report on the war, and the New York Post attacked him for betraying his liberal past. Steinbeck died of heart attack in New York on December 20, 1968. In the posthumously published THE ACTS OF KING ARTHUR AND HIS NOBLE KNIGHTS (1976), Steinbeck turned his back on contemporary subjects and brought to life the Arthurian world.
Of Mice and Men - novel published in 1937. Story about two migrant laborers, adapted by Steinbeck into a three-act play, which was produced in 1937. George Milton and Lennia Small, two itinerant ranchhands, dream of one day owning a small farm. George acts as a father figure to Lennie, who is large and simpleminded. Lennie loves all that is soft, but his immense physical strength is a source of troubles and George is needed to calm him. The two friends find work from a farm and start saving money for their future. Annoyed by the bullying foreman of the ranch, Lenny breaks the foreman's arm, but also wakes the interest of the ranch owner's flirtatious daughter-in-law. Lenny accidentally kills her and escapes into the hiding place, that he and George have agreed to use, if they get into difficulties. George hurries after Lenny and shoots him before he is captured by a vengeful mob but at the same time he loses his own hopes and dreams of better future. Before he dies, Lennie says: "Let's do it now. Le's get that place now." - 'George still stared at Curley's wife. "Lennie never done it in meanness," he said. "All the time he done bad things, but he never done one of 'em mean."' (from Of Mice and Men) - For further reading: The Wide World of John Steinbeck by P. Lisca (1958); John Steinbeck by W. French (1961); John Steinbeck by F.W. Watt (1962); Steinbeck: The Man and His Work, ed. by R. Astro and T. Hayashi (1971); John Steinbeck by J. Gray (1971); Steinbeck and Covici: The Story of a Friendship by T. Fensch (1979); John Steinbeck by P. McCarthy (1980); John Steinbeck's Fiction by John H. Timmerman (1986); John Steinbeck by Jay Parini (1994); The Other Side of Eden: Life with John Steinbeck by John Steinbeck IV and Nancy Steinbeck (2000) - For further information: David ja Jean Nale's page of Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday ; Nancy Steinbeck
Selected bibliography:
CUP OF GOLD, 1929
THE PASTURES OF HEAVEN, 1932 - suom. Taivaan laitumet
TO GOD UNKNOWN, 1933 - suom. Tuntemattomalle jumalalle
TORTILLA FLAT, 1935 - suom. Ystävyyden talo - film 1942, dir. by Victor Fleming, starring Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, John Garfield, Frank Morgan
IN DUBIOUS BATTLE, 1936 - suom. Taipumaton tahto
SAINT KATY THE VIRGIN, 1936
NOTHING SO MONSTRUOS, 1936
OF MICE AND MEN, 1937 (also play) - suom. Hiiriä ja ihmisiä - opera adapted by Carlisle Floyd, 1970 - film 1939, dir. by Lewis Milestone, starring Burgess Meredith, Lon Chaney Jnr, Betty Field; television movie, 1973; film 1992, dir. by Gary Sinise
THE RED PONY, 1937 - suom. Punainen poni - film 1948, dir. by Lewis Milestone, starring Myrna Loy, Robert Mitchum, Petr Miles
THEIR BLOOD IS STRONG, 1938
THE LONG WALLEY, 1938 - suom. Pitkä laakso
THE GRAPES OF WRATH, 1939 - (the Pulizer Prize, the National Book Award) - suom. Vihan hedelmät (trans. into Finnish by Alex Matson) - film 1940, dir. by John Ford, written by Nunnally Johnson, starring Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charley Grapewin -
"Johnson's script also has some advantages over the novel, presenting a simpler, leaner narrative line in place of Steinbeck's often repetitious structure and keeping the biblical simplicity of his dialogue while jettisoning his preachy rhetorical interludes. And what Zanuck and Johnson muted in the screenplay, Ford and cinematographer Gregg Toland compensate for with searingly eloquent imagery." (Joseph McBride in Searching for John Ford, 2001)
A LETTER TO THE FRIENDS OF DEMOCRACY, 1940
THE SEA OF CORTEZ, 1941 (with Edward F. Rickett, who was model for Doc in Cannerry Row and Sweet Thursday)
THE FORGOTTEN VILLAGE, 1941
BOMBS AWAY! 1942
THE MOON IS DOWN, 1942 (also play) - film 1943, dir. byIrving Pichel, starring Henry Travers, Cedric Hardwicke, Lee J. Cobb
HOW EDITH MCGILLICUDDY MET R.L.S., 1943
STEINBECK, 1943 (ed. by Pascal Covici)
CANNERY ROW, 1945 - suom. Hyvien ihmisten juhla - film 1982, dir. by David S. Ward, starring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger
THE WAYWARD BUS, 1947 - suom. Oikutteleva bussi (trans. into Finnish by Alex Matson) - film 1957, dir. by Victor Vicas
THE PEARL, 1947 - suom. Helmi - film 1946, dir. by Emilio Fernandez, starring Pedro Armendariz, Maria Elena Marques
A RUSSIAN JOURNAL, 1948 (photographs by Robert Capa) - suom. Matkalla Neuvostoliitossa
BURNING BRIGHT, 1950 (also play)
EAST OF EDEN, 1952 - suom. Eedenistä itään - film 1954, dir. by Elia Kazan , starring Raymond Massey, James Dean, Julie Harris, Jo Van Fleet -
SHORT NOVELS, 1953
SWEET THURSDAY, 1954 - suom. Torstai on toivoa täynnä - musical: Pipe Dream, adapted by Oscar Hammerstein II, with music by Richard Rogers
THE SHORT REIGN OF PIPPIN IV, 1957 - suom. Päivä kuninkaana
THE CRAPSHOOTER, 1957
ONCE THERE WAS A WAR, 1958
THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT, 1961 - suom. Tyytymättömyyden talvi
TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY, 1962 - suom. Matka Charleyn kanssa - television movie, 1968
LETTERS TO ALICIA, 1965
AMERICA AND AMERICANS, 1966 - television movie, 1967
JOURNAL OF A NOVEL, 1969
STEINBECK: A LIFE IN LETTERS, 1975
THE ACTS OF KING ARTHUR AND HIS NOBLE KNIGHTS, 1976
THE COLLECTED POEMS OF AMNESIA GLASSCOCK, 1976 (as Amnesia Glasscock)
JOHN STEINBECK, 1902-1968, 1977
LETTERS TO ELIZABETH, 1978
contributor: FAMOUS AMERICAN PLAYS OF THE NINETEEN THIRTIES, 1980
THE SHORT NOVELS OF JOHN STEINBECK, 1981
THE HARVEST GYPSIES, 1988
WORKING DAYS, 1989