Introduction
I
Places of the Heart 1
Always Something to Do in Salinas 4
The Golden Handcuff 13
A Primer on the '30s 17
Making of a New Yorker 32
My War with the Ospreys 41
Conversation at Sag Harbor 50
II
Engaged Artist 65
Dubious Battle in California 71
The Harvest Gypsies: Squatters' Camps 78
Starvation Under the Orange Trees 83
From Writers Take Sides 88
I Am a Revolutionary 89
Duel Without Pistols 91
The Trial of Arthur Miller 101
Atque Vale 105
Dear Adlai 108
G.O.P. Delegates Have Bigger, Better Badges 110
L'Envoi 112
III
Occasional Pieces 117
Then My Arm Glassed Up 125
On Fishing 132
Circus 136
Random Thoughts on Random Dogs 139
... like captured fireflies 142
The Joan in All of Us 144
A Model T Named "It" 147
IV
On Writing 151
The Play-Novelette 155
My Short Novels 158
Rationale 161
Critics-from a Writer's Viewpoint 163
Some Random and Randy Thoughts on Books 167
Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech 172
V
Friends 175
From About Ed Ricketts 179
Ernie Pyle 213
Tom Collins 215
Robert Capa 217
Adlai Stevenson 219
Henry Fonda 223
Woody Guthrie 225
VI
Journalist Abroad 227
The Soul and Guts of France 233
One American in Paris (fourth piece) 246
One American in Paris (thirteenth piece) 248
Positano 251
Florence: The Explosion of the Chariot 259
I Go Back to Ireland 262
The Ghost of Anthony Daly 270
VII
War Correspondent 275
Troopship 282
Waiting 285
Stories of the Blitz 288
Lilli Marlene 291
Bob Hope 293
Vietnam War: No Front, No Rear 296
Action in the Delta 299
Terrorism 304
Puff, the Magic Dragon 307
An Open Letter to Poet Yevtushenko 311
VIII
America and Americans 313
Foreword 317
E Pluribus Unum 319
Paradox and Dream 330
Government of the People 339
Created Equal 346
Genus Americanus 354
The Pursuit of Happiness 369
Americans and the Land 377
Americans and the World 383
Americans and the Future 392
Afterword 403
Works Cited 405
Selected Bibliography of Steinbeck's Nonfiction 407
Index 417
John Steinbeck, born in Salinas, California, in 1902,
grew up in a fertile agricultural valley, about twenty-five miles
from the Pacific Coast. Both the valley and the coast would serve
as settings for some of his best fiction. In 1919 he went to
Stanford University, where he intermittently enrolled in literature
and writing courses until he left in 1925 without taking a degree.
During the next five years he supported himself as a laborer and
journalist in New York City, all the time working on his first
novel, Cup of Gold (1929).
After marriage and a move to Pacific Grove, he published two
California books, The Pastures of Heaven (1932)
and To a God Unknown (1933), and worked on short stories
later collected in The Long Valley (1938). Popular
success and financial security came only with Tortilla
Flat (1935), stories about Monterey’s paisanos. A ceaseless
experimenter throughout his career, Steinbeck changed courses
regularly. Three powerful novels of the late 1930s focused on the
California laboring class: In Dubious
Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and the book
considered by many his finest, The Grapes of
Wrath (1939). The Grapes of Wrath won both the
National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1939.
Early in the 1940s, Steinbeck became a filmmaker with The
Forgotten Village (1941) and a serious student of marine
biology with Sea of Cortez (1941). He devoted his
services to the war, writing Bombs Away (1942) and the
controversial play-novelette The Moon is
Down (1942).Cannery Row (1945), The Wayward
Bus (1948), another experimental drama, Burning
Bright(1950), and The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951)
preceded publication of the monumental East of
Eden (1952), an ambitious saga of the Salinas Valley and his
own family’s history.
The last decades of his life were spent in New York City and Sag
Harbor with his third wife, with whom he traveled widely. Later
books include Sweet Thursday (1954), The Short Reign
of Pippin IV: A Fabrication (1957), Once There Was a
War (1958), The Winter of Our
Discontent (1961),Travels with Charley in Search of
America (1962), America and Americans (1966), and
the posthumously published Journal of a Novel: The East of
Eden Letters (1969), Viva Zapata!(1975), The Acts of
King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976), and Working
Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath (1989).
Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962, and, in
1964, he was presented with the United States Medal of Freedom by
President Lyndon B. Johnson. Steinbeck died in New York in 1968.
Today, more than thirty years after his death, he remains one of
America's greatest writers and cultural figures.
Jackson J. Benson teaches American Literature at San Diego
State University. His biography, The True Adventures of John
Steinbeck, Writer, won the PEN USA West award for nonfiction. He
lives in La Mesa, California.
Susan Shillinglaw is a professor of English San Jose State University. She is the author of On Reading the Grapes of Wrath and Carol and John Steinbeck: Portrait of a Marriage.
By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
"A feast of good reading." —Jay Parini, Los Angeles Times
"Captures Steinbeck's fierce and unrelenting moral vision, while
providing an intriguing glimpse of the writer's life and
work." —Chicago Tribune
Just in time for the centenary of Steinbeck's birth: a reissue of his last published book and a collection of his journalism. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
"A feast of good reading." -Jay Parini, Los Angeles
Times
"Captures Steinbeck's fierce and unrelenting moral vision,
while providing an intriguing glimpse of the writer's life and
work." -Chicago Tribune
Ask a Question About this Product More... |