John Steinbeck was an American novelist, story writer, playwright, and an essayist. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. He is best known for the novel ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ (1939). This novel was generally considered to be a 20th-century classic. Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California in 1902. His local region of Monterey Bay was later the setting for most of his fiction. His father was a county treasurer and his mother was teacher. Steinbeck learned to love books. He attended the local high school and worked on farms and ranches during his vacations. He had many jobs and sometimes he dropped out of college for whole quarters in order to finance his education. In 1929, Steinbeck took a general zoology course at the Hopkins Marine station, Pacific Grove but he didn’t continue his studies any further – he always planned to be a writer. His early poems and short stories appeared in diverse magazines. He spent a short time as a laborer on the construction of Madison Square Garden in New York City. Steinbeck took odd jobs while he was writing. Some of the odd jobs that he had was an intern hood-carrier, intern painter, caretaker of an estate, surveyor, and a fruit-picker. While he was a watchman of a house in the High Sierra, he wrote his first book, ‘Cup of Gold’ (1929). The publisher had given him $250 in advance but the book failed to earn that much back. In the early 1930s, Steinbeck met Edward Ricketts in Pacific Grove. Ricketts was a marine biologist and his views on the interdependence of all life deeply influenced Steinbeck’s thinking. His first three novels went unnoticed. ‘Tortilla Flat’ (1935) was a humorous tale of pleasure-loving Mexican-Americans which brought him great recognition. Steinbeck’s financial situation improved significantly. He had earned $35 a week for a long time but now he was paid thousands of dollars for the film rights to Tortilla Flat. Steinbeck served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune in Great Britain and the Mediterranean area during World War II. Steinbeck was married to Carol Henning for twelve years but their marriage ended in 1942. The next year he married the singer Gwyndolyn Conger and they had two sons named Thom and John. Their marriage ended with a divorce in 1949. In 1950, he married Elaine (Anderson) Scott. She was the independent daughter of a Texas oilman and the ex-wife of Zachery Scott, an actor. Steinbeck served as an advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson, whose Vietnam policies he agreed with. The president asked for him to go to Vietnam to report on the war. Steinbeck wrote for the newspaper Newsday a series of articles that divided his readers. The New York post attacked him for betraying his open-minded past. On December 20, 1968, John Steinbeck dies of a heart attack in New York. He had started the work with eagerness but he never finished it. His son John had problems in later years with drugs and alcohol. He died in 1991.
"John Steinbeck Biography - Life, Family, Children, Story, School, Mother, Son, Book, Information, Born, House." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Web. 26 Mar. 2011.
"John Steinbeck - Biography". Nobelprize.org. 27 Mar 2011
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