john steinbeck first breakout work john steinbeck first breakout work

Steinbeck's boyhood home, a turreted Victorian building in downtown Salinas, has been preserved and restored by the Valley Guild, a nonprofit organization. [W]e think it interesting that the laurel was not awarded to a writer whose significance, influence and sheer body of work had already made a more profound impression on the literature of our age". "[29], The film versions of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men (by two different movie studios) were in production simultaneously, allowing Steinbeck to spend a full day on the set of The Grapes of Wrath and the next day on the set of Of Mice and Men. From 1926-1928, he was a caretaker in Lake Tahoe, CA. The story is about two traveling ranch workers, George and Lennie, trying to earn enough money to buy their own farm/ranch. His last published book, America and Americans (1966), reconsiders the American character, the land, the racial crisis, and the seemingly crumbling morality of the American people. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. He explored his surroundings, walking across local forests, fields, and farms. In 1960, he toured America in a camper truck designed to his specifications, and on his return published the highly praised Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962), another book that both celebrates American individuals and decries American hypocrisy; the climax of his journey is his visit to the New Orleans "cheerleaders" who daily taunted black children newly registered in white schools. In May 1948, Steinbeck returned to California on an emergency trip to be with his friend Ed Ricketts, who had been seriously injured when a train struck his car. Steinbeck's wife began working at the lab as secretary-bookkeeper. Fixed menu lunches are served Monday through Saturday, and the house is open for tours on Sunday afternoons during the summer.[56]. In 1953, he wrote that he considered cartoonist Al Capp, creator of the satirical Li'l Abner, "possibly the best writer in the world today. In 1943, Steinbeck served as a World War II war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and worked with the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the CIA). "[16], In September 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded Steinbeck the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His later work reflected his wide range of interests, including marine biology, politics, religion, history and mythology. Immediately after returning to the States, a shattered Steinbeck wrote a nostalgic and lively account of his days on Cannery Row, Cannery Row (1945). In this sometimes comical, sometimes melancholic book, Steinbeck describes what he sees from Maine to Montana to California, and from there to Texas and Louisiana and back to his home on Long Island. directed by Elia Kazan and starring Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn. Home alachua county covid relief fund john steinbeck first breakout work. If you're wondering where to start with this writer's strong, clean prose, we've compiled a list of the 15 best John Steinbeck books. [citation needed]. Footage of this visit filmed by Rafael Aramyan was sold in 2013 by his granddaughter. True enough that with greater wealth came the chance to spend money more freely. In addition, Ricketts was remarkable for a quality of acceptance; he accepted people as they were and he embraced life as he found it. Steinbeck deals with the nature of good and evil in this Salinas Valley saga. John Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men' has been controversially banned due to the inclusion of graphic, historically-accurate dialogue and tragic events. In these late years, in fact since his final move to New York in 1950, many accused John Steinbeck of increasing conservatism. He later requested that his name be removed from the credits of Lifeboat, because he believed the final version of the film had racist undertones. [10] The Steinbecks were members of the Episcopal Church,[11] although Steinbeck later became agnostic. Brown never published the memoir, for unknown reasons. After the best-selling success of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck went to Mexico to collect marine life with the freelance biologist Edward F. Ricketts, and the two men collaborated in writing Sea of Cortez (1941), a study of the fauna of the Gulf of California. Here you will find articles that address key elements intersecting Steinbeck's life and work: background on his controversial, censored 1941 film The Forgotten Village. The author was not alone in that thought; many literary critics were also unhappy with the decision. Source/s of this information: Two memorable characters created by Steinbeck: 1. The book was published in 1952. .a black-white story like a parable" as he wrote his agent, tells of a young man who finds an astounding pearl, loses his freedom in protecting his wealth, and finally throws back into the sea the cause of his woes. Steinbeck frequently took small trips with Ricketts along the California coast to give himself time off from his writing[30] and to collect biological specimens, which Ricketts sold for a living. Three adjectives to describe Steinbeck's life: Describe a personal or professional obstacle Steinbeck faced: Two adjectives to describe Steinbeck's literary works: Education: One . Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. He was a Stevenson Democrat in the 1950s. At age fourteen he decided to be a writer and spent hours as a teenager living in a world of his own making, writing stories and poems in his upstairs bedroom. 5.0. During the 1950s and 1960s the perpetually "restless" Steinbeck traveled extensively throughout the world with his third wife, Elaine. John Steinbeck. A study by the Center for the Learning and Teaching of Literature in the United States found that Of Mice and Men was one of the ten most frequently read books in public high schools. The Guardian reported that Steinbeck, whose pseudonym was Peter Pym, destroyed two of his unpublished novels but did not destroy the werewolf story.The novel is housed as part of the John Steinbeck Collection at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas, Austin.. The family farm in Heiligenhaus, Mettmann, Germany, is still named "Grosteinbeck". Steinbeck grew up in California's Salinas Valley, a culturally diverse place with a rich migratory and immigrant history. John Steinbeck knew Ed Ricketts for eighteen years, first meeting him in a dentist's waiting room in October 1930, although John has, over the years, given different versions of where they met. [41] Although the committee believed Steinbeck's best work was behind him by 1962, committee member Anders sterling believed the release of his novel The Winter of Our Discontent showed that "after some signs of slowing down in recent years, [Steinbeck has] regained his position as a social truth-teller [and is an] authentic realist fully equal to his predecessors Sinclair Lewis and Ernest Hemingway. Steinbeck is most known for his iconic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, 1939, which described in detail the migration of the Joad family from their dust storm devastated farm land to California seeking work and eventually, they hoped, to accumulate enough money to buy land in this presumed mecca. In the United Kingdom, Of Mice and Men is one of the key texts used by the examining body AQA for its English Literature GCSE. This first novel tells the story of a fruit pickers' strike in California which is both aided and damaged by the help of "the Party", generally taken to be the Communist Party, although this is never spelled out in the book. While the elder Steinbecks established their identities by sending roots deep in the community, their son was something of a rebel. [31], Although Carol accompanied Steinbeck on the trip, their marriage was beginning to suffer, and ended a year later, in 1941, even as Steinbeck worked on the manuscript for the book. Omissions? John Steinbeck, in full John Ernst Steinbeck, (born February 27, 1902, Salinas, California, U.S.died December 20, 1968, New York, New York), American novelist, best known for The Grapes of Wrath (1939), which summed up the bitterness of the Great Depression decade and aroused widespread sympathy for the plight of migratory farmworkers. Examine why its content sparked backlash, censorship through bans, and even . Steinbeck bemoans his lost youth and roots, while dispensing both criticism and praise for the United States. His most famous works include Of Mice and Men (1937), The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and East of Eden (1952). It has been said that in the United States this book came as a welcome antidote to the gloom of the then prevailing depression. Their coauthored book, Sea of Cortez (December 1941), about a collecting expedition to the Gulf of California in 1940, which was part travelogue and part natural history, published just as the U.S. entered World War II, never found an audience and did not sell well. His actual family name was not Steinbeck. This article was most recently revised and updated by, 49 Questions from Britannicas Most Popular Literature Quizzes, https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Steinbeck, Spartacus Educational - Biography of John Steinbeck, San Jos State University - Center for Steinbeck Studies - John Steinbeck, American Writer, John Steinbeck - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up), Travels with Charley: In Search of America. Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 for "The Grapes of Wrath," and a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, an award he did not think he deserved. And true enough that the man who spent a lifetime "whipping" his sluggard will (read Working Days: The Journals of "The Grapes of Wrath" [1989] for biting testimony of the struggle) felt intolerance for 1960s protesters whose zeal, in his eyes, was unfocused and whose anger was explosive, not turned to creative solutions. In a Letter to Elizabeth Otis, Steinbeck wrote, "Robinson Jeffers and his wife came in to call the other day. When those sources failed, Steinbeck and his wife accepted welfare, and on rare occasions, stole bacon from the local produce market. Steinbeck's early work and writing as an independent adult were varied and difficult. John Steinbeck's Books - His most well-known novels include Of Mice and Men (1937), Grapes of Wrath (1939) and East of Eden (1952). [28], Of the controversy, Steinbeck wrote, "The vilification of me out here from the large landowners and bankers is pretty bad. 120 Ocean View Blvd. Dec 19, 2019. This upbringing imparted a regionalistic flavor to his writing, giving many of his works a distinct sense of place. The Log portion that Steinbeck wrote (from Ed's notes) in 1940 - at the same time working on a film in Mexico, The Forgotten Village - contains his and Ed's philosophical musings, his ecological perspective, as well as keen observations on Mexican peasantry, hermit crabs, and "dryball" scientists. The site of the Hovden Sardine Cannery next to Doc's laboratory is now occupied by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Steinbeck returned from the war with a number of wounds from shrapnel and some psychological trauma. About the same time, Steinbeck recorded readings of several of his short stories for Columbia Records; the recordings provide a record of Steinbeck's deep, resonant voice. [18] They formed a common bond based on their love of music and art, and John learned biology and Ricketts' ecological philosophy. (2) $2.50. In 1962, Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for . Early critics dismissed as incoherent the two-stranded story of the Hamiltons, his mother's family, and the Trasks, "symbol people" representing the story of Cain and Abel; more recently critics have come to recognize that the epic novel is an early example of metafiction, exploring the role of the artist as creator, a concern, in fact, in many of his books. Ricketts had taken a college class from Warder Clyde Allee, a biologist and ecological theorist, who would go on to write a classic early textbook on ecology. "[41], Although modest about his own talent as a writer, Steinbeck talked openly of his own admiration of certain writers. He set out to write a "biography of a strikebreaker," but from his interviews with a hounded organizer hiding out in nearby Seaside, he turned from biography to fiction, writing one of the best strike novels of the 1900s, In Dubious Battle. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. [16] Meanwhile, Ricketts operated a biological lab on the coast of Monterey, selling biological samples of small animals, fish, rays, starfish, turtles, and other marine forms to schools and colleges. by | Jul 3, 2022 | belgium police number from uk | toniebox polska wersja | Jul 3, 2022 | belgium police number from uk | toniebox polska wersja It was not a critical success. After their marriage in 1930, he and Carol settled, rent-free, into the Steinbeck family's summer cottage in Pacific Grove, she to search for jobs to support them, he to continue writing. Californians claimed the novel was a scourge on the state's munificence, and an indignant Kern County, its migrant population burgeoning, banned the book well into the 1939-1945 war. [21] Steinbeck was also an acquaintance with the modernist poet Robinson Jeffers, a Californian neighbor. His third wife, Elaine, was buried in the plot in 2004. ThoughtCo, Apr. John Steinbeck was born in the farming town of Salinas, California on 27 February 1902. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and catapulted Steinbeck into his generation's literary elite. The structures on the parcel were demolished and park benches installed near the beach. Farm workers in California suffered. Names of two other important works by Steinbeck and their genres: Four interesting facts I learned about John Steinbeck. In 1947, Steinbeck made his first trip to the Soviet Union with photographer Robert Capa. The town of Monterey has commemorated Steinbeck's work with an avenue of flags depicting characters from Cannery Row, historical plaques, and sculptured busts depicting Steinbeck and Ricketts. In 1930, Steinbeck met the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who became a close friend and mentor to Steinbeck during the following decade, teaching him a great deal about philosophy and biology. The story follows two families: the Hamiltons based on Steinbeck's own maternal ancestry[77] and the Trasks, reprising stories about the Biblical Adam and his progeny. [37][38], Travels with Charley: In Search of America is a travelogue of his 1960 road trip with his poodle Charley. Like The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden is a defining point in his career. [51] Steinbeck called the period one of the "strangest and most frightening times a government and people have ever faced. April 9, 1989 12 AM PT. John Steinbeck's books depict a realistic and tender image of his childhood and life spent in "Steinbeck Country," the region around the city of Monterey, California. His father, John Ernst Steinbeck, was not a terribly successful man; at one time or another he was the manager of a Sperry flour plant, the owner of a feed and grain store, the treasurer of Monterey County. [32] With his second wife Steinbeck had two sons, Thomas ("Thom") Myles Steinbeck (19442016) and John Steinbeck IV (19461991). He wrote a total of 27 books, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories. Ed was a lover of Gregorian chants and Bach; Spengler and Krishnamurti; Whitman and Li Po. Whatever his "experiment" in fiction or journalistic prose, he wrote with empathy, clarity, perspicuity: "In every bit of honest writing in the world," he noted in a 1938 journal entry, "there is a base theme. The elder Steinbecks gave John free housing, paper for his manuscripts, and from 1928, loans that allowed him to write without looking for work. Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California. "1939 Book Awards Given by Critics: Elgin Groseclose's 'Ararat' is Picked as Work Which Failed to Get Due Recognition", Bruce Robison, "Mavericks on Cannery Row,", Learn how and when to remove this template message, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, Travels with Charley: In Search of America, the California Museum for History, Women and the Arts, Cannery and Agricultural Workers' Industrial Union, Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research, The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication, Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters, Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck in Vietnam: Dispatches from the War, "The Nobel Prize in Literature 1962: Presentation Speech by Anders sterling, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy", "Swedish Academy reopens controversy surrounding Steinbeck's Nobel prize", "Who, what, why: Why do children study Of Mice and Men? In this highly successful attempt to render Malory into Modern English, Steinbeck recreated the rhythm and tone of the original Middle English. In 1936, Steinbeck published the first of what came to be known as his Dustbowl trilogy, which included Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. The righteous attacked the book's language or its crass gestures: Granpa's struggle to keep his fly buttoned was not, it seemed to some, fit for print. John Ernst Steinbeck III is born in Salinas, California. John Steinbeck was born in 1902 in Salinas, California, a region that became the setting for much of his fiction. John Steinbeck was an American novelist whose Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Grapes of Wrath, summed up the bitterness of the Great Depression decade and aroused widespread sympathy for the plight of migratory farmworkers. [20], Steinbeck's first novel, Cup of Gold, published in 1929, is loosely based on the life and death of privateer Henry Morgan. Identify the reasonings of the ban related to . The President of the English Club said that Steinbeck, who regularly attended meetings to read his stories aloud, "had no other interests or talents that I could make out. He was 66, and had been a lifelong smoker. [16] Another film based on the novella was made in 1992 starring Gary Sinise as George and John Malkovich as Lennie. In 1945 John Steinbeck's book Cannery Row was published, followed by The . During the war, Steinbeck accompanied the commando raids of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.'s Beach Jumpers program, which launched small-unit diversion operations against German-held islands in the Mediterranean. Increasingly disillusioned with American greed, waste, and spongy morality - his own sons seemed textbook cases - he wrote his jeremiad, a lament for an ailing populace. Steinbeck traveled to Cuernavaca,[36] Mexico for the filming with Wagner who helped with the script; on this trip he would be inspired by the story of Emiliano Zapata, and subsequently wrote a film script (Viva Zapata!) [21] In 1930, Steinbeck wrote a werewolf murder mystery, Murder at Full Moon, that has never been published because Steinbeck considered it unworthy of publication. See the fact file below for more information on the John Steinbeck or alternatively, you can download our 27-page . The selection was heavily criticized, and described as "one of the Academy's biggest mistakes" in one Swedish newspaper. 2. Steinbeck attended Stanford University, Stanford, California, intermittently between 1920 and 1926 but did not take a degree. The protagonist Ethan grows discontented with his own moral decline and that of those around him. Quipped New York Times critic Lewis Gannett, there is, in Sea of Cortez, more "of the whole man, John Steinbeck, than any of his novels": Steinbeck the keen observer of life, Steinbeck the scientist, the seeker of truth, the historian and journalist, the writer. That same year Steinbeck was numbed by Ed Ricketts's death. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. The observant, shy but often mischievous only son had, for the most part, a happy childhood growing up with two older sisters, Beth and Esther, and a much-adored younger sister, Mary. The mood of gentle humour turned to one of unrelenting grimness in his next novel, In Dubious Battle (1936), a classic account of a strike by agricultural labourers and a pair of Marxist labour organizers who engineer it. He wrote a handful of stories in the next few years but found his first major success in 1935 with Tortilla Flat, which won the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal. Wounded by the blindside attack, unwell, frustrated and disillusioned, John Steinbeck wrote no more fiction. Steinbeck wrote two more stage plays (The Moon Is Down and Burning Bright). [69] What work, if any, Steinbeck may have performed for the CIA during the Cold War is unknown. In 1957 he published the satiric The Short Reign of Pippin IV, a tale about the French Monarchy gaining ascendancy. The following year, 1962, Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature; the day after the announcement the New York Times ran an editorial by the influential Arthur Mizener, "Does a Writer with a Moral Vision of the 1930s Deserve the Nobel Prize?" In 1945, however, few reviewers recognized that the book's central metaphor, the tide pool, suggested a way to read this non-teleological novel that examined the "specimens" who lived on Monterey's Cannery Row, the street Steinbeck knew so well. [47], In 1966, Steinbeck traveled to Tel Aviv to visit the site of Mount Hope, a farm community established in Israel by his grandfather, whose brother, Friedrich Grosteinbeck, was murdered by Arab marauders in 1858 in what became known as the Outrages at Jaffa. Mr. Steinbeck was a Mason, Mrs. Steinbeck a member of the Order of the Eastern Star and founder of The Wanderers, a women's club that traveled vicariously through monthly reports. When he failed to publish his work, he returned to California and worked in 1928 as a tour guide and caretaker[16] at Lake Tahoe, where he met Carol Henning, his first wife. He claimed his books had "layers," yet many claimed his symbolic touch was cumbersome. 0 . [16] In 1942, after his divorce from Carol, Steinbeck married Gwyndolyn "Gwyn" Conger. The Grapes of Wrath sold out an advance edition of 19,804 by 1939 mid-April; was selling 10,000 copies per week by early May; and had won the Pulitzer Prize for the year (1940). Outstanding among the scripts he wrote directly for motion pictures were Forgotten Village (1941) and Viva Zapata! Steinbeck's 1948 book about their experiences, A Russian Journal, was illustrated with Capa's photos. During World War II Steinbeck wrote some effective pieces of government propaganda, among them The Moon Is Down (1942), a novel of Norwegians under the Nazis, and he also served as a war correspondent. Maybe you've been working excitedly on your novel, but suddenly have absolutely no idea how the story . Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. 4. My Life With John Steinbeck recalls a troubled marriage that spanned 1943 to 1948, a period in which he would write classics including. Was he alive then? The novel is an imaginative telling of a story which Steinbeck had heard in La Paz in 1940, as related in The Log From the Sea of Cortez, which he described in Chapter 11 as being "so much like a parable that it almost can't be". Perhaps his writing suffered as a result; some claim that even East of Eden, his most ambitious post-Grapes novel, cannot stand shoulder to shoulder with his searing social novels of the 1930s. To please his parents he enrolled at Stanford University in 1919; to please himself he signed on only for those courses that interested him: classical and British literature, writing courses, and a smattering of science. In June 1957, Steinbeck took a personal and professional risk by supporting him when Miller refused to name names in the House Un-American Activities Committee trials. Rather than his typical stomping grounds of California, Steinbeck set The Pearl in Mexico, where a pearl diver, Kino, can't afford to pay the town doctor to save his sick infant son. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Posted on 1 second ago; June 24, 2022 Steinbeck was determined to participate in the war effort, first doing patriotic work (The Moon Is Down, 1942, a play-novelette about an occupied Northern European country, and Bombs Away, 1942, a portrait of bomber trainees) and then going overseas for the New York Herald Tribune as a war correspondent. He wrote with a "detached quality," simply recording what "is." Written by American author John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men was first published in 1937. The short stories were mainly about rural life in California. Ecological themes recur in Steinbeck's novels of the period. Corrections? In 1935, having finally published his first popular success with tales of Monterey's paisanos, Tortilla Flat, Steinbeck, goaded by Carol, attended a few meetings of nearby Carmel's John Reed Club. A humorous text like Cannery Row seemed fluff to many. "It is what I have been practicing to write all of my life," he wrote to painter and author Bo Beskow early in 1948, when he first began research for a novel about his native valley and his people; three years later when he finished the manuscript he wrote his friend again, "This is 'the book'Always I had this book waiting to be written." He is the third of four children (and the only boy) born to John Steinbeck, Sr., the treasurer of Monterey County, and his wife Olive Hamilton Steinbeck, a schoolteacher. [23] With some of the proceeds, he built a summer ranch-home in Los Gatos. [16] Ricketts, usually very quiet, yet likable, with an inner self-sufficiency and an encyclopedic knowledge of diverse subjects, became a focus of Steinbeck's attention. These included In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. As it is set in 1930s America, it provides an insight into The Great Depression, encompassing themes of racism, loneliness, prejudice against the mentally ill, and the struggle for personal independence. Of Mice and Men was also adapted as a 1939 Hollywood film, with Lon Chaney, Jr. as Lennie (he had filled the role in the Los Angeles stage production) and Burgess Meredith as George. Steinbeck was able to build a house with the proceeds from this book. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. [57], Steinbeck was inducted in to the DeMolay International Hall of Fame in 1995.[58]. In 1945, Steinbeck received the King Haakon VII Freedom Cross for his literary contributions to the Norwegian resistance movement.[34]. After leaving Stanford, he briefly tried construction work and newspaper reporting in New York City, and then returned to his native state in order to hone his craft. John Steinbeck, in full John Ernst Steinbeck, (born February 27, 1902, Salinas, California, U.S.died December 20, 1968, New York, New York), American novelist, best known for The Grapes of Wrath (1939), which summed up the bitterness of the Great Depression decade and aroused widespread sympathy for the plight of migratory farmworkers. Considering the depth of his eighteen-year friendship with Ricketts, it is hardly surprising that the bond acknowledged most frequently in Steinbeck's oeuvre is friendship between and among men. [16] In 1942, after his divorce from Carol he married Gwyndolyn "Gwyn" Conger. John Steinbeck. [21] To a God Unknown, named after a Vedic hymn,[16] follows the life of a homesteader and his family in California, depicting a character with a primal and pagan worship of the land he works. His childhood friend, Max Wagner, a brother of Jack Wagner and who later became a film actor, served as inspiration for The Red Pony. [10][16][17] They married in January 1930 in Los Angeles, where, with friends, he attempted to make money by manufacturing plaster mannequins. The restored camper truck is on exhibit in the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas. He looks a little older but that is all. William Ray considered his Episcopal views are prominently displayed in The Grapes of Wrath, in which themes of conversion and self-sacrifice play a major part in the characters Casy and Tom who achieve spiritual transcendence through conversion. Never wealthy, the family was nonetheless prominent in the small town of 3,000, for both parents engaged in community activities. [16], When their money ran out six months later due to a slow market, Steinbeck and Carol moved back to Pacific Grove, California, to a cottage owned by his father, on the Monterey Peninsula a few blocks outside the Monterey city limits. Steinbeck spent the year after Ricketts' death in deep depression. Here are 10 unbelievable facts about John Steinbeck. His disenchantment with American waste, greed, immorality and racism ran deep. side hustle quiz nickelodeon john steinbeck title of breakout work. In 1952, John Steinbeck appeared as the on-screen narrator of 20th Century Fox's film, O. Henry's Full House. Respectable Salinas circumscribed the restless and imaginative young John Steinbeck and he defined himself against "Salinas thinking." The National Steinbeck Center. A masterpiece of Biblical scope, and the magnum opus of one of America's most enduring authors A Penguin Classic In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. The working title for Of Mice and Men, for example, was "Something That Happened "- this is simply the way life is.