John Steinbeck was a controversial and award-winning author who was considered to be one of the most significant authors of all time. He wrote many books throughout his lifetime and is known for his sharp, forceful writing style and wry humor. This paper will discuss Steinbeck?s childhood and early career as it influenced his writing. Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, and was the son of John Ernst Steinbeck and Olive Hamilton. He grew up in Salinas, California where most of his stories and novels take place. He used the surrounding Salinas Valley as an example of a serene and fruitful place in his books (DISCovering Authors 3,4).
In school Steinbeck was considered to be a wonderful student by his writing teachers and they often read his essays aloud in class. When Steinbeck graduated high school in 1919 he went to Stanford University to get a degree in English since he liked writing so much. When he got there, Steinbeck ignored Stanford?s set curriculum and took whatever courses interested him (Verde 102-103).
In 1925 Steinbeck gave up the idea of getting a degree and moved to New York City to be an author. At first he went to work on a construction crew for the new Madison Square Garden. He hated that so Steinbeck went to work as a reporter for the New York American. He ended up getting fired because he was more of a storyteller than a reporter. Eventually Steinbeck moved to California where he got a job on Lake Tahoe as a caretaker. While there he worked on his fiction and published his first short story in a magazine called The Smoker?s Companion. It was a fantasy story called Butler 2 ?The Gifts of Iban.? Steinbeck later lost the job and moved to San Francisco. There he wrote and published his first novel, The Cup of Gold. Steinbeck also married a woman named Carol Henning while there. Steinbeck?s second novel, To a God Unknown, was set in Salinas Valley and was said to be his first piece of ?local color.? But in the years of 1930 through 1935, Steinbeck?s books didn?t sell well and barely brought in enough money. Steinbeck?s career took a turn for the better when he got in an alliance with a new literary agency called McIntosh and Otis. With their help, Steinbeck sold the first two parts of The Red Pony in 1933. A year later he won an O. Henry prize for his short story, ?The Murder.? After that Steinbeck began working on another novel called Tortilla Flat. In 1934 a publisher named Pascal Covici of Covici-Friede heard about Steinbeck?s works and offered him a contract. Steinbeck got the movie and publication rights for Tortilla Flat and it brought him fame and fortune (Verde 104- 105).
The Essay on Grapes Of Wrath Steinbeck Story Characters
Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men: Character Study The American Novelist, John Steinbeck was a powerful writer of dramatic stories about good versus bad. His own views on writing were that not only should a writer make the story sound good but also the story written should teach a lesson. In fact, Steinbeck focused many of his novels, not on average literary themes rather he tended to relay ...
Later Steinbeck began to write articles on the migrant workers, or ?Okies?, who had been forced to move from the dustbowl states of the Midwest to find jobs in California. Through his experiences with these people, Steinbeck started on a novel called The Grapes of Wrath. This novel is what John Steinbeck is known most for. He won a Pulitzer Prize for the novel in 1938. Immediately after writing The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck published The Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research and The Forgotten Village. Though those novels would never gain the popularity of The Grapes of Wrath. In 1942 Steinbeck divorced Carol and moved to New York City with a singer named Gwyndolyn Congers whom he had met in Hollywood and was carrying on a secret affair with. Steinbeck married Gwyn in March of 1943. They had their first child together, Thom, in August of 1944 and their second son, John, was born two years later. In 1943 Steinbeck wrote a screenplay for the Alfred Hitchcock film, Lifeboat. With World War II coming, Steinbeck did his part for the war effort. He wrote several books during that period in his life. After the war Steinbeck became more critical and spiteful. It was in this period that he wrote one of his funniest books, Cannery Row.
The Essay on John Steinbeck Prize York Life
... While they were living in New York, Gwyn gave birth to their son, Thom and two years later, Steinbecks had another boy, John, whom ... and "The Sea of Cortez" is a scientific account. But Steinbeck wrote all of his books with a particular goal in mind. ... Salinas Valley at the time of World War I. The Steinbecks traveled to Somerset, England in 1959. John produced a modern version ...
As Steinbeck got older his happiness began to fade. In 1948, his marriage to Gwyn ended in a bitter divorce when she told him she didn?t love him anymore. During this time he started traveling more and more. When Steinbeck traveled he wrote about all of the things he was experiencing at the time. After traveling some, Steinbeck moved back to New York and wrote East of Eden. In 1950 he got a new wife, Elaine Scott. After that, he started writing political speeches for politician Adalai Stevens who ran for president in 1952. Three years later Steinbeck bought a home in Sag Harbor on Long Island in New York and it was there that he spent the rest of his years. Steinbeck liked Sag Harbor because it was so peaceful, and memorialized it in one of his last major works, The Winter of Our Last Discontent (Verde 106-112).
In 1962 Steinbeck was awarded a Nobel Prize for literature. From 1963 to 1967 Steinbeck traveled more than ever. In 1968 he suffered a small stroke and then had a major heart attack in July of that year. In November he was rushed from Sag Harbor to a New York hospital until December 20 when he went into a coma and later died (Verde 112).
In all, John Steinbeck was an amazing and note-worthy author. Some of his novels were best sellers and some flopped but through good and bad he kept writing about what he believed in and will be remembered as being one of the most legendary authors of all time.
Bibliography:
?John (Ernst) Steinbeck, DISCovering Authors 3.0, Gale Group, 1999 Kunitz, Stanley and Howard Hay, Twentieth Century Authors, The H.W. Wilson Company, New York, 1942 Verde, Thomas A., Twentieth Century Writers 1900-1950, Facts On File, Inc., New York,
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