About John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck of New York

By David Houston, adapted from Internet sources

Usually considered a California writer, John Steinbeck lived almost half of his life in New York, many of those in Sag Harbor, Long Island—where, he claimed, he was happiest.

He was born in Salinas, California, in 1902, the third of four children and the only son. His father was County Treasurer and his mother a former schoolteacher. Steinbeck studied writing at Stanford University. A year before he might have graduated, he decided it was time to try making it as a writer in New York. In 1926, the big City was unkind to the small-town boy. While writing his first novel, he worked as a construction laborer. He pushed 100-pound wheelbarrows of concrete at the construction site of Madison Square Garden. He tried freelancing and for a short time was a reporter for the New York American—from which job he was fired for being inadequately prepared in journalism. After a year, he decided to return to California. He later wrote, “I didn’t leave the City in disgust, I left it with the respect plain unadulterated fear gives.”

In California he married in 1930 and published his first important work in 1935. The book was Tortilla Flat—about the antics of rootless drifters who share a house in California. The novel became a financial and critical success. Steinbeck’s next works, In Dubious Battle (1936) and Of Mice and Men (1937), were both successful. In 1939, his masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath, won the Pulitzer Prize. He became interested in marine biology and published a non-fiction book The Sea of Cortez in 1941.

In 1941 when he was in the midst of a tumultuous separation from his first wife Carol, he moved to New York City with singer Gwen Conger, who would become his second wife.

In 1943, Steinbeck wrote an essay for the New York Times, called “The Making of a New Yorker,” in which he stated, “Every once in a while I go away for several months and always come back with a 'thank God I'm home' feeling. For New York is the world with every vice and blemish and beauty, and there's privacy thrown in. What more could you ask?" But the pace of a small-town and life on the road seemed to be his more natural way of life. Upon his return from the war, Steinbeck was nostalgic for California but postponed moving back there until after the birth of his first son, Thom. The publication of Cannery Row in 1945 made him nostalgic for the California of his youth, which he had used as a background for the novel. The move was a mistake. As he later explained in Travels With Charley, “My return caused only confusion and uneasiness. Tom Wolfe was right. You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.”

The Steinbecks moved back to New York City in December 1945. June of 1946 brought the arrival of second son, John IV. In 1947 he published two more novels: The Wayward Bus and The Pearl. In May of 1948, his life changed again when he learned that Gwyn was seeking a divorce. The end of Steinbeck's second marriage set him wandering once more, through California, Mexico and eventually back to New York. In 1949 he met Elaine Scott, the woman who would become his third and final wife. They were married in 1950.

It was during Steinbeck's years with Elaine that he finally found a nest—in Sag Harbor. He and Elaine discovered the place in the summer of 1953. The couple loved the ocean and Sag Harbor was nearly surrounded by water. They purchased a two-acre wedge of land across from the water. John loved not only his home, but the village, too. He got to know most of the shop owners and regulars who hung out at the bars. In an Internet essay, Paige Grande writes: “He was paid the highest compliment by a shop owner in Sag Harbor who said, ‘He should have been born here and shouldn't have been famous.’” And: “In 1958, Steinbeck described his love for Sag Harbor in a letter to John O'Hara, ‘I grow into this countryside with a lichen grip.’”

His 1961 travel memoir, Travels with Charley describes his trek across the U.S. in a camper. Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize (Lifetime Achievement) in 1962, and the U.S. Medal of Freedom in 1964. When asked by a reporter if he deserved the Nobel Prize, Steinbeck replied, "Frankly, no."

John Steinbeck died of heart disease in Sag Harbor in 1968.

The Novels and Major Published Works of John Steinbeck

Cup of Gold (1929), The Pastures of Heaven (1932), The Red Pony (1933), To A God Unknown (1933), Tortilla Flat (1935), In Dubious Battle (1936), Nothing So Monstrous (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), The Long Valley (1938), The Grapes of Wrath (1939), The Forgotten Village (1941), The Sea of Cortez (1941), Bombs Away (1942), The Moon Is Down (1942), Cannery Row (1945), The Wayward Bus (1947), The Pearl (1948), A Russian Journal (1948), Burning Bright (1950), East of Eden (1952), Sweet Thursday (1954), The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957), Once There Was A War (1958), The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Travels With Charley (1962), The World of Li'l Abner (with Charles Chaplin) (1965).

David Houston's website is at http://www.davidhouston.net/index.html.

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