John Steinbeck was a man of experience first and words second. He lived passionately and observed both shrewdly and humanely, focusing on human struggles with the forces of nature around him and the passions within him. Using as its backdrop the tremendous beauty and epic power of the California land he knew so well, Steinbeck’s writing strove to make meaning out of the hardships he saw.
Family and Education
From his earliest memory, John Steinbeck wanted to be a serious writer. He was born on February 27, 1902, to a middle-class family in Salinas, California. His father, John Ernst, Sr., was a well-to-do miller and local politician, and his mother, Olivia Hamilton, taught school. Under his mother’s influence, Steinbeck read widely and was influenced by many great authors: Eliot, Dostoevsky, Hardy, and most notably, Malory. Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, given to Steinbeck on his ninth birthday, took him away from his own middle-class existence and showed him the power of the theme of good versus evil. While Malory had a great influence on Steinbeck’s writing style, Steinbeck described the syntactical rhythms and sweeping epic scope of the King James Bible as having the most lasting impression on his work.
Never a scholar, Steinbeck spent a large part of his youth outdoors, working and playing in the Salinas Valley, midway up the California coast. This lush, fertile, and often harsh land would become the backdrop for his most enduring works. Although stifled by academic discipline, Steinbeck loved to write, publishing pieces in his high school paper, and later, in the student paper at Stanford University. Steinbeck’s studies at the university often took a back seat to more active pursuits: he worked on ranches, in factories, did construction work, and was even a member of a road-building gang. Although he came from a strongly middle-class background, Steinbeck’s experiences as a laborer provided him with the first-hand observations that would fuel so much of his writing. After five years of intermittent studies, he left Stanford without a degree.
Early Work
In 1925, Steinbeck traveled to New York in an attempt to make a living as a writer. The city was not welcoming, however, and when it was suggested that he try writing advertising copy to break into the industry, Steinbeck said farewell. He completed a set of short stories, which was rejected by publishers, and returned to California.
While working as a lodge caretaker in the Sierra Mountains, Steinbeck completed his first novel, a historical swashbuckler entitled Cup of Gold. However, success continued to elude the young writer. With monumental bad timing, his first novel was published in late 1929, just two months before the stock market crash changed the atmosphere of the entire country. According to Lewis Gannett, about 1,500 copies of the book were sold, but it was not taken seriously by the few critics who reviewed it.
Shortly after the publication of Cup of Gold, Steinbeck eloped with a local girl named Carol Henning, and with his father’s help, they set up home in the small community of Pacific Grove. Here Steinbeck met Ed Ricketts, the man who was to have the greatest influence on both his life and his work. Ricketts, the proprietor of a marine specimen supply house on the outskirts of Pacific Grove, proved a perfect companion for Steinbeck: Both men loved to drink, think, and discuss life philosophies. Together they would develop a non-teological philosophy (focusing on the world as it is, not as it should or might be) that would figure prominently in the pragmatism of many of the main characters in The Grapes of Wrath. Ricketts would later be immortalized as “Doc” in Cannery Row.
Steinbeck’s first, and arguably best, novel to be set in California was published in 1932. Unfortunately, the Depression was in full swing, and the first two publishing houses that handled The Pastures of Heaven went broke before the novel could be bound. In 1933, the author published To A God Unknown, an unsuccessful allegory, and sold the first two parts of his short story, “The Red Pony.”
His first national recognition came when “The Murder” won the O. Henry Prize for short stories in 1934, and was cemented the following year with the strong commercial reception of Tortilla Flat. The publication of this light-hearted tale about vagabonds on the Monterey peninsula marked the beginning of his association with Pascal Covici, the man who was to publish the rest of Steinbeck’s major works. The critical reviews were mixed, but the novel proved popular enough with the reading public that Steinbeck was able to sell the movie rights for $3,000, a sum of money greater than any he had received before.
After a trip to Mexico with Ed Ricketts and a change of residence to Los Gatos, a suburb of San Jose, Steinbeck settled down to write In Dubious Battle, a powerful study of a labor strike, which stirred up considerable critical controversy. The year 1936 proved to be a busy one for Steinbeck. Not only did he publish In Dubious Battle, he finished several short stories and was commissioned to write a series of articles for The San Francisco News about conditions in California migrant worker camps. These articles were published in October 1936, and later gathered together in a pamphlet entitled “Their Blood Was Strong.” Steinbeck’s experiences with these migrant workers would be the foundation on which he based The Grapes of Wrath.
