On this day in 1940, John Steinbeck is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Grapes of Wrath.
The book traces the fictional Joad family of Oklahoma as they lose their family farm and move to California in search of a better life. They encounter only more difficulties and a downward slide into poverty. The book combines simple, plain-spoken language and compelling plot with rich description. One of Steinbeck’s most effective works of social commentary, the novel also won the National Book Award.
Like The Grapes of Wrath, much of Steinbeck’s work dealt with his native state of California. He was born and raised in the Salinas Valley, where his father was a county official and his mother a former schoolteacher. Steinbeck was a good student and president of his senior class in high school. He attended Stanford intermittently between 1920 and 1925, then moved to New York City, where he worked as a manual laborer and a journalist while writing stories and novels. His first two novels were not successful.
He married and moved to Pacific Grove in 1930, where his father gave him a house and a small income while he continued to write. His third novel, Tortilla Flat (1935), was a critical and financial success, as were his subsequent novels In Dubious Battle (1935) and Of Mice and Men (1937), both of which offered social commentaries on injustices of various types. His work after World War II, including Cannery Row and The Pearl, continued to offer social criticism but became more sentimental.
Steinbeck tried his hand at movie scripts in the 1940s, writing such successful films as Forgotten Village (1941) and Viva Zapata (1952). He also took up the serious study of marine biology and published a nonfiction book, The Sea of Cortez, in 1941. His book Travels with Charlie describes his trek across the U.S. in a camper truck with his poodle, Charlie, and his encounters with a fragmented America. Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in 1962 and died in New York in 1968.
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Every one of his novels was devoid of any mention of how government policies, created nearly all of these problems in the FIRST PLACE.
That’s true. So? Was that his job? Does every fucking thing have to point out the giant hypocrisy cocoon we’ve lived in? Does my art have to say, trillions of fairy dust dollars will eventually kill this country? Can’t anything be taken at face value?
OTOH, having read 1,000s of books, there have been but a couple that have moved me like Of Mice and Men. I was blubbering like a baby at the end of it.
I loved all of his books as well, but I am just pointing out that he, like the liberals in Hollywood with millions of followers, led folks down a misguided path with his own ignorance or exclusion of the truth.
You should read some of his later work, the exact opposite happened. In fact they went after him hard at the end because he was starting to point the finger in an uncomfortable direction.
before the new deal, america was a defacto libertarian society.
Mr. Lib, hindsight is 2020, I’m sure you feel pretty smug now. You sound like a woman, only women argue with the decisions made 20 to 1,000 years ago. Back in the day, socialism was a utopian dream. (America inspired the French Revolution and then later the Russian Revolution) It was only when big business undertook to demonize communism that we learned to love Big Brother.