Steinbeck Reviews On The Way

I have long considered John Steinbeck one of my favorite authors. I mean, look at the guy -- he goes on the short list with Ernest Hemingway


as the only respected authors you'll learn about in English class that would be just as likely to beat you down as they would be to write a sonnet. Steinbeck was a man's man who dropped out of Stanford, worked as a handyman in Lake Tahoe, carried an automatic weapon on raids as a war correspondent, worked with the OSS (the precursor to the CIA) and posed for cigarette ads, all while producing work which would eventually bag him a Pulitzer and the Nobel Prize for Literature.


[I haven't been able to find the rest of this ad, and I have no idea what "...he comes bucking over" is referring to. It doesn't sound good.]

I came across Steinbeck at a fairly early age. Growing up my dad had a great den with bookshelves that lined the walls, and despite censoring my viewing of Punky Brewster and The Simpsons, I was given free reign of a library that spanned from Stephen King to Herman Wouk, and from John lé Carre to Alex Haley. When at age 14 or 15 I found The Winter of Our Discontent, I was totally hooked. It had just the right amount of bitterness, introspection and sex for my teenage mind, and I couldn't put it down (although after re-reading it recently I realized that I completely misinterpreted the ending the first time around.) From Discontent I went on to Cannery Row, where a Chinese man with a wicker basket turns into an eye the size of a church door, and the exploits of Mack and his fellow ne'er-do-wells introduced me to a world of drunken disorderliness and brothels that was nowhere to be found in the Hardy Boys books my friends were reading.

The language Steinbeck utilizes, the themes he explores and the characters that populate his works fascinate me. After struggling to find intelligent, well-written novels over my past few visits to the library I've decided to quit gambling on the unknown and instead spend the next few weeks finishing the Steinbeck canon. Because I have long since read the usual suspects (The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, etc.), I'll be focusing on some of his less well known short stories and non-fiction. I've already started, and I will say at the outset that I have been surprised at what I have found. Stay tuned.