John Steinbeck - Wikipedia

Reads like my HS English reading requirements.

Thank you, my friend Maj Marty Hogan for making us aware that February 27 is the anniversary of the birth of renowned American author John Ernst Steinbeck Jr.

BBC's documentary about John Steinbeck and a few of his most popular novels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaKy4hcb7kY


Images:
1. John Steinbeck - Hulton Archives - Getty images
2. John Steinbeck and his 3rd wife Elaine Anderson
3. John Steinbeck 'Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them and pretty soon you have a dozen.'
4. John Steinbeck 'Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.'


Biographies:
1. imdb.com/name/nm0825705/bio
2. bs.eferrit.com/biografija-pisca-john-steinbeck/]

1. Background from {[https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0825705/bio]}
John Steinbeck Biography
Overview
Born February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California, USA
Died December 20, 1968 in New York City, New York, USA (heart disease)
Birth Name John Ernst Steinbeck
Height 6' (1.83 m)

Mini Bio
John Steinbeck was the third of four children and the only son born to John Ernst and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck. His father was County Treasurer and his mother, a former schoolteacher. John graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and attended classes at Stanford University, leaving in 1925 without a degree. He was variously employed as a sales clerk, farm laborer, ranch hand and factory worker. In 1925, he traveled by freight from Los Angeles to New York, where he was a construction worker. From 1926-1928, he was a caretaker in Lake Tahoe, CA. His first novel, "Cup of Gold," was published in 1929. During the 1930s, he produced most of his famous novels ("To a God Unknown," "Tortilla Flat," "In Dubious Battle," "Of Mice and Men," and his Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Grapes of Wrath"). In 1941, he moved with the singer who would become his second wife to New York City. They had two sons, Thom (b. 1944) and John IV (b. 1946). In 1948, his close friend Ed Ricketts died, he went through a divorce, he took a a tour of Russia, and he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His wrote the screenplay for Viva Zapata! (1952), and 17 of his works have been made into movies. He received three Academy Award nominations. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. US President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded him the United States Medal of Freedom in 1964, and he was commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp on what would have been his 75th birthday. His ashes lie in Garden of Memories Cemetery in Salinas.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Ed Stephan < [login to see] .edu>

Spouse (3)
Elaine Anderson (28 December 1950 - 20 December 1968) ( his death)
Gwyndolyn Conger (29 March 1943 - 1948) ( divorced) ( 2 children)
Carol Henning (14 January 1930 - 18 March 1943) ( divorced)


Trivia (10)
1. Born at 3:00pm-PST.
2. His novella "Sweet Thursday," a sequel to his classic "Cannery Row," is based on the original book he wrote for the 1955 Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein musical, "Pipe Dream." Although it won five 1956 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and ran for 246 performances, "Pipe Dreams" is considered one of their least successful shows, just as the book itself is considered one of Steinbeck's weaker works. "Sweet Thursday" also serves as the basis for David S. Ward's film Cannery Row (1982), as the story, plot, and characters rely more on the former rather than the latter.
3. According to his biographer Jay Parini and the New York Times, Steinbeck in the mid-1990s was the most popular deceased American writer, with 750,00 copies of his works selling annually. His popularity has not diminished over the years but has rather increased, particularly after Oprah Winfrey made his "East of Eden" the first selection of her revived book club in 2003. The book immediately became the #2 bestseller on amazon.com, and Steinbeck's publisher, Penguin Group USA, printed 600,000 new copies. Normally, the book sells fewer than 50,000 copies annually. It is a remarkable phenomenon considering that the book originally was a #1 best seller when it was published in 1952!.
4. Steinbeck, one of the seminal American authors of the 20th century, was humiliated when the N.Y. Times excoriated the Swedish Academy for naming him the winner of the Nobel Prize Literature for 1962, saying there were more deserving writers to honor. Humble and blunt, when asked whether he deserved it at his press conference after receiving the news of the prize, he answered, "No." The criticism that he was undeserving of literature's greatest prize was soon picked up by the American literati, further compounding the wound. While Steinbeck had been enormously popular in his home country, penning four #1 best sellers, his critical reputation had sagged since the mid-1940s. However, he had remained a highly respected author outside the U.S., particularly among those who enjoyed his harsh critique of American materialism, although he was bewildered by foreign fans who still believed that the U.S. was the Depression-era America he had described in the 1930s. He was particularly beloved by Scandinavians for his WWII novella "The Moon is Down," a 1942 propaganda piece about the Norwegian resistance. In fact, so high was his esteem, he was singled out for extra-special treatment during the Stockholm ceremonies. Though that pleased him, he remained bitter about the criticism his fellow Americans had put him through until the end of his life.
5. Two sons with 2nd wife: Thom and John IV. Only Thom survives as of this writing (June 2005). He has recently published a book of short-stories, and is said to be working on a novel.
6. Steinbeck, a noted liberal whom the government suspected was a member of the Communist Party, was outraged by what he regarded as director Alfred Hitchcock's racism as manifested in his condescension towards the George 'Joe' Spencer character played by Canada Lee in Lifeboat (1944).
7. Was denied a military commission during World War II due to his left-wing politics. His future collaborator, Elia Kazan, similarly was turned down during the war due to his own political beliefs. Both served the war effort in a civilian capacity, Steinbeck as a journalist and propagandist.
8. One of the few Nobel laureates for literature to be nominated for an Academy Award for writing. Steinbeck was nominated three times for Lifeboat (1944), A Medal for Benny (1945) (with Jack Wagner) and Viva Zapata! (1952). Other Oscar-nominated Nobel laureates include George Bernard Shaw, who won an Oscar for Pygmalion (1938), as well as Jean-Paul Sartre and Harold Pinter.
9. The stage version for "Of Mice and Men" was awarded the 1977 Joseph Jefferson Citation for Play Production at the Wisdom Bridge Theatre in Chicago, Illinois.
10. Through his ancestors John Rolfe and Mary Sculliard is a seventh cousin twice removed of Barack Obama.

Personal Quotes (13)
1. A man on a horse is spiritually, as well as physically, bigger than a man on foot.
2. Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, and then steps in it.
3. It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.
4. I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why then do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?
5. The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid stable business.
6. [advice to his young son] There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you - of kindness and consideration and respect - not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak, but the second can release in you strength and courage and goodness, and even wisdom you didn't know you had.
7. It is a common experience that a problem, difficult at night, is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
8. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.
9. Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.
10. We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.
11. I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quick vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
12. In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
13. If you're in trouble or hurt or need-go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help-the only ones.

Salary (1)
The Grapes of Wrath (1940) $75,000 (film rights)"


2. Background from {[https://bs.eferrit.com/biografija-pisca-john-steinbeck/]}
by Patricia Daniels, Contributing Writer
Updated February 27, 2018
John Steinbeck was an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist who is best known for his Depression-era novel, "The Grapes of Wrath," which earned him a Pulitzer Prize.
Several of Steinbeck's novels have become modern classics and many were made into successful films and plays. John Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962 and the Presidential Medal of Honor in 1964.

Dates: Feb. 27, 1902 – Dec. 20, 1968
Also Known As: John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr.
Famous Quote: "Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps on it."
Steinbeck's Childhood
John Steinbeck was born Feb. 27, 1902, in Salinas, California to Olive Hamilton Steinbeck, a former teacher, and John Ernst Steinbeck, the manager of a local flour mill. Young Steinbeck had three sisters. As the only boy in the family, he was somewhat spoiled and pampered by his mother.
John Ernst Sr. instilled in his children a deep respect for nature and taught them about farming and how to care for animals. The family raised chickens and hogs and owned a cow and a Shetland pony. (The beloved pony, named Jill, would become the inspiration for one of Steinbeck's later stories, "The Red Pony.")
Reading was highly valued in the Steinbeck household. Their parents read classics to the children and young John Steinbeck learned to read even before he started school. He soon developed a knack for making up his own stories.

High School and College Years
Shy and awkward as a young child, Steinbeck became more confident during high school. He worked on the school newspaper and joined the basketball and swim teams. Steinbeck blossomed under the encouragement of his ninth-grade English teacher, who praised his compositions and persuaded him to keep writing.
After graduating from high school in 1919, Steinbeck attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Bored by many of the subjects required to earn a degree, Steinbeck only signed up for classes that appealed to him, such as literature, history, and creative writing. Steinbeck dropped out of college periodically (in part because he needed to earn money for tuition), only to resume classes later on.
In between stints at Stanford, Steinbeck worked on various California ranches during harvest time, living among itinerant farmhands. From this experience, he learned about the life of the California migrant worker. Steinbeck loved hearing stories from his fellow workers and offered to pay anyone who told him a story he could later use in one of his books.
By 1925, Steinbeck decided he'd had enough of college. He left without ever finishing his degree, ready to move on to the next phase of his life. While many aspiring writers of his era traveled to Paris for inspiration, Steinbeck set his sights on New York City.

Steinbeck in New York City
After working all summer to earn money for his trip, Steinbeck set sail for New York City in November 1925. He traveled on a freighter down the coasts of California and Mexico, through the Panama Canal and up through the Caribbean before reaching New York.
Once in New York, Steinbeck supported himself by working a variety of jobs, including as a construction worker and a newspaper reporter. He wrote steadily during his off hours and was encouraged by an editor to submit his group of stories for publication.
Unfortunately, when Steinbeck went to submit his stories, he learned that the editor no longer worked at that publishing house; the new editor refused to even look at his stories.
Angry and disheartened by this turn of events, Steinbeck abandoned his dream of making it as a writer in New York City. He earned passage back home by working onboard a freighter and arrived in California in the summer of 1926.

Marriage and Life as a Writer
Upon his return, Steinbeck found a job as a caretaker at a vacation home in Lake Tahoe, California. During the two years he spent working there, he was very productive, writing a collection of short stories and completing his first novel, "Cup of Gold." After several rejections, the novel was finally picked up by a publisher in 1929.
Steinbeck worked at a number of jobs to support himself while continuing to write as often as he could. At his job in a fish hatchery, he met Carol Henning, the woman who would become his first wife. They were married in January 1930, following Steinbeck's modest success with his first novel.
When the Great Depression hit, Steinbeck and his wife, unable to find jobs, were forced to give up their apartment. In a show of support for his son's writing career, Steinbeck's father sent the couple a small monthly allowance and allowed them to live rent-free in the family cottage at Pacific Grove on Monterey Bay in California.

Literary Success
The Steinbecks enjoyed life at Pacific Grove, where they made a lifelong friend in neighbor Ed Ricketts. A marine biologist who ran a small laboratory, Ricketts hired Carol to help out with the bookkeeping in his lab.
John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts engaged in lively philosophical discussions, which greatly influenced Steinbeck's worldview. Steinbeck came to see similarities between the behaviors of animals in their environment and those of people in their respective surroundings.
Steinbeck settled into a regular writing routine, with Carol serving as his typist and editor. In 1932, he published his second set of short stories and in 1933, his second novel, "To a God Unknown."
Steinbeck's run of good luck changed, however, when his mother suffered a severe stroke in 1933. He and Carol moved into his parents' house in Salinas to help care for her.
While sitting at his mother's bedside, Steinbeck wrote what would become one of his most popular works — "The Red Pony," which was first published as a short story and later expanded into a novella.
Despite these successes, Steinbeck and his wife struggled financially. When Olive Steinbeck died in 1934, Steinbeck and Carol, along with the elder Steinbeck, moved back into the Pacific Grove house, which required less upkeep than the large house in Salinas.
In 1935, Steinbeck's father died, only five days before the publication of Steinbeck’s novel Tortilla Flat, Steinbeck's first commercial success. Because of the book's popularity, Steinbeck became a minor celebrity, a role he did not relish.

"The Harvest Gypsies"
In 1936, Steinbeck and Carol built a new home in Los Gatos in an attempt to get away from all of the publicity generated by Steinbeck's growing fame. While the house was being built, Steinbeck worked on his novella, "Of Mice and Men."
Steinbeck's next project, assigned by the San Francisco News in 1936, was a seven-part series on the migrant farm workers populating the farming regions of California.
Steinbeck (who titled the series "The Harvest Gypsies") traveled to several squatters' camps, as well as to a government-sponsored "sanitary camp" to gather information for his report. He found appalling conditions in many of the camps, where people were dying of disease and starvation.
John Steinbeck felt great sympathy for the downtrodden and displaced workers, whose ranks now included not only immigrants from Mexico but also American families fleeing the Dust Bowl states.
He decided to write a novel about the Dust Bowl migrants and planned to call it "The Oklahomans." The story was centered on the Joad family, Oklahomans who — like so many others during the Dust Bowl years — were forced to leave their farm to seek a better life in California.

Steinbeck's Masterpiece: 'The Grapes of Wrath'
Steinbeck began work on his new novel in May 1938. He later said that the story was already fully formed in his head before he started writing it.
With Carol's help typing and editing the 750-page manuscript (she also came up with the title), Steinbeck completed "The Grapes of Wrath" in October 1938, exactly 100 days after he had begun. The book was published by Viking Press in April 1939.
"The Grapes of Wrath" caused an uproar among California produce farmers, who claimed that conditions for the migrants were not nearly as bleak as Steinbeck had portrayed them. They accused Steinbeck of being a liar and a communist.
Soon, reporters from newspapers and magazines set out themselves to investigate the camps and found that they were just as dismal as Steinbeck had described. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited several camps and came to the same conclusion.
One of the best-selling books of all time, "The Grapes of Wrath" won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and was made into a successful movie that same year.
Despite Steinbeck's phenomenal success, his marriage suffered from the strain of getting the novel completed. To make matters worse, when Carol became pregnant in 1939, Steinbeck pressured her to terminate the pregnancy. The botched procedure resulted in Carol needing a hysterectomy.

Voyage to Mexico
Weary of all the publicity, Steinbeck and his wife embarked upon a six-week boat voyage to Mexico's Gulf of California in March 1940 with their friend Ed Ricketts. The purpose of the trip was to collect and catalog plant and animal specimens.
The two men published a book about the expedition called "Sea of Cortez." The book was not a commercial success but was praised by some as a significant contribution to marine science.
Steinbeck's wife had come along in hopes of patching up their troubled marriage but to no avail. John and Carol Steinbeck separated in 1941. Steinbeck moved to New York City, where he began dating actress and singer Gwyn Conger, who was 17 years his junior. The Steinbecks divorced in 1943.
One good outcome of the trip came from a story Steinbeck heard in a small village, inspiring him to write one of his best-known novellas: "The Pearl." In the story, a young fisherman's life takes a tragic turn after he finds a valuable pearl. "The Pearl" was also made into a movie.

Steinbeck's Second Marriage
Steinbeck married Gwyn Conger in March 1943 when he was 41 and his new wife a mere 24 years old. Only months after the wedding — and much to his wife's displeasure — Steinbeck took an assignment as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. His stories covered the human side of World War II, rather than describing actual battles or military maneuvers.
Steinbeck spent several months living alongside American soldiers and was present during combat on numerous occasions.
In August 1944, Gwyn gave birth to son Thom. The family moved into a new home in Monterey in October 1944. Steinbeck began work on his novel, "Cannery Row," a more lighthearted story than his previous works, featuring a main character who was based upon Ed Ricketts. The book was published in 1945.
The family moved back to New York City, where Gwyn gave birth to son John Steinbeck IV in June of 1946. Unhappy in the marriage and longing to return to her career, Gwyn asked Steinbeck for a divorce in 1948 and moved back to California with the boys.
Just prior to his break-up with Gwyn, Steinbeck was devastated to learn of the death of his good friend Ed Ricketts, who had been killed when his car collided with a train in May 1948.

Third Marriage and the Nobel Prize
Steinbeck eventually returned to the family house in Pacific Grove. He was sad and lonely for some time before meeting the woman who became his third wife — Elaine Scott, a successful Broadway stage manager. The two met in California in 1949 and married in 1950 in New York City when Steinbeck was 48 years old and Elaine was 36.
Steinbeck began working on a new novel that he called "The Salinas Valley," later renaming it "East of Eden." Published in 1952, the book became a bestseller. Steinbeck continued to work on novels as well as writing shorter pieces for magazines and newspapers. He and Elaine, based in New York, traveled frequently to Europe and spent nearly a year living in Paris.

Steinbeck's Last Years
Steinbeck remained productive, despite suffering a mild stroke in 1959 and a heart attack in 1961. Also in 1961, Steinbeck published "The Winter of Our Discontent" and a year later, he published "Travels with Charley," a non-fiction book about a road trip he took with his dog.
In October 1962, John Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Some critics believed he didn't deserve the award because his greatest work, "The Grapes of Wrath," had been written so many years before.
Awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor in 1964, Steinbeck himself felt his body of work didn't warrant such recognition.
Weakened by another stroke and two heart attacks, Steinbeck became dependent upon oxygen and nursing care in his home. On Dec. 20, 1968, he died of heart failure at the age of 66."


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Maj Marty Hogan One of the greatest authors of all time.