JOHN STEINBECKThe death of John Steinbeck on December 20, 1968, at the age of 66, brought to an end one of the great literary careers of the 20th century.Mr Steinbeck became one of the most widely read authors of his era, winning The Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, as well as the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 for his novel “The Grapes of Wrath”.A liberal himself, Mr Steinbeck used novels such as “Of Mice and Men” to draw attention to the plight of migrant workers and the working classes in America, particularly around the time of The Great Depression.His ties to the left became strained later in life though, particularly when he came out in support of the war in Vietnam, believing it to be heroic.John Ernst Steinbeck II was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California and it was his mother, Olive, a former school teacher who identified and encouraged her son’s love of literature from an early age.After graduating from Salinas High School in 1919, he attended Stanford University to study English, but favoured his own path of independent study and left in 1925 before graduating to follow his dream of becoming a writer.After a stint in New York, Mr Steinbeck had his first novel, “Cup of Gold” published in 1929, swiftly followed by “The Pastures of Heaven” in 1932 and “To a God Unknown” a year later, though they were not successful.His first breakthrough came with “Tortilla Flat” in 1935, a humorous tale of pleasure-loving Mexican-Americans, which received the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal for best novel by a Californian author.Following the rough humour of “Tortilla Flat”, he moved on to more serious fiction with his next novel, “In Dubious Battle” (1936), a social criticism which dealt with the strikes of the migratory fruit pickers on California plantations.“Of Mice and Men” (1937) followed, before the novel regarded as his finest, “The Grapes of Wrath”, the story of Oklahoma farmers who, unable to earn a living from the land, move to California where they become migratory workers, was published in 1939.Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the novel in 1940, Mr Steinbeck then developed a close friendship with Eddie Ricketts, a marine biologist who led him on a number of voyages, heavily influencing his writing in doing so.Having served as a war correspondent for the New York Times during World War II, he returned from the conflict and penned “East of Eden” in 1952, to give his sons some idea of their heritage and was the book he repeatedly referred to as his life's work.Mr Steinbeck’s final novel, “The Winter of Our Discontent” (1961), was said to be his statement on the moral decay of American culture, but it was savaged by the critics and was unusually unpopular with the masses.In 1962 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his “realistic and imaginative writing, combining as it does sympathetic humour and keen social perception”, followed two years later with the United States Medal of Freedom.Shortly before his death he travelled to Vietnam to report on the war, though his sympathetic portrait of the United States Army resulted in the “New York Post” denouncing him for betraying his liberal past, something blamed on his personal affection for President Johnson, whom he considered a friend.Mr Steinbeck died of a heart attack in New York and was survived by his third wife, Elaine and one son from a previous marriage, Thomas.
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