One of Steinbeck's interesting features was that he named his suits Old Blue, Sweet George Brown, Funeral Black, Dorian Grey, and Old Horse.
John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, to an accountant father and a literary mother, in a town in California, an agricultural region open to immigration. He spent his childhood working on farms during the summer months.
He reads at Stanford University by taking courses that interest him. Therefore, he can complete his education in intervals between 1920 and 1926. During this period, he works as an assistant in a laboratory. Already, Steinbeck works in many professions, including farming, during his youth and uses these experiences in his books.
At the age of 14, he decided to become a writer. During the Great Depression (1929), he began to write full-time with the support of his family. He married his first wife, Carol, in 1930. His first remarkable book, Tortilla Flat, was published in 1935. With a sweet comedy, he tells the pure and instinctive lives of Paisonas, a mixture of Native American and Spanish, who came to California from Mexico in the Upper Quarter, which ignores urban value judgments. It is Steinbeck's novel in which he opens up to subjects not found in literature before him. This feature has given the author great fame. The work has also been adapted for cinema.
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception". He has been called "a giant of American letters."
“He struck a match, lit his cigar, shook the match, and threw it. The little matchstick had burned down and landed on an old newspaper at the foot of the wall. Although they all got up and were thrown into the fire, they all fell to the ground with divine power. They looked into each other's eyes and smiled; It was the smile of hopeless and immortal people. They watched the flames flash and glow as if they were dreaming. They were staring at the papers unfolding like flowers. Gods come to love for such small reasons. And people watch, laughing sweetly, as the paper burns smugly and the flames caress the drywall boards.”
Steinbeck became more interested in the life of migrant farm workers after his 1935 novel In Dubious Battle, published in 1936. In Dubious Battle is Steinbeck's most moving and most famous work, which has a distinguished and original place in world revolutionary literature. In Dubious Battle it is desirable to emphasize that the individual also plays an important historical role in revolutionary fights, if not decisive; the bloody cruelty-smelling dirty games of capitalism, its insatiable passion for profit, and its historical guilt are exposed and condemned. After In Dubious Battle, which he designed as a communist autobiography and took its name from Lost Cennet, he had to state that he did not feel close to communism.
It is known that Steinbeck often went to the Gridley Immigrant Camp north of Sacramento during the summer of 1936, enjoyed being with them, and considered going south with them to pick cotton. He also finished Of Mice and Men, in which he reflects on the dreams and dramas of mobile agricultural workers, this year. Published in 1937, Of Mice and Men tells the story of two friends and other workers on the farm who go to work on a farm in California's Salinas Valley, with the dream of buying a small house and land of their own, and their struggle to survive.
Published in 1939, The Grapes of Wrath is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece. He had thought of the name of an American anthem as the title for the novel: Battle Hym. He was planning to put the note of this anthem at the beginning of the novel. Eventually, the title of the novel was changed to a biblical phrase, The Grapes of Wrath. The author insisted on putting the anthem at the beginning of the novel for a long time. He argued that the name and lyrics of the anthem would gain a special status in the light of the novel. He also believed that the novel was a kind of anthem.
The Grapes of Wrath is an epic of solidarity. The epic of solidarity and organization of the poor. Events are like parables giving religious lessons. The farm cashier who makes the payment for the worker who can't afford to buy bread or candy, the saleswoman who is willing to give expensive sweets as much as the number of children (paying out of pocket) for the little money left over from the shopping of the traveling workers, the truck driver who participated in this solidarity and was rude not to show his emotion, saying that they had been working for ten days. The family who shared their breakfast with an unemployed and offered him a job… The Grapes of Wrath, which was banned and confiscated in many states, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939.
He cruises the Gulf of California in a trailer with his friend Ed. Later, this experience made him write the book Sea of Cortez. 1943 was an eventful year in John Steinbeck's private life. First, he divorces Carol Henning, with whom he has been married for thirteen years, and then marries Gwyn Conger, with whom he maintains a secret relationship. He had a short and unhappy marriage to Gwyn. That same year, his first child, Thom, was born. During this period, he also distanced himself from writing novels. Years later, in 1958, when his eldest son Thom wrote that he had fallen in love with a girl named Susan at boarding school, Steinbeck would write a compassionate, optimistic, wise letter in response.
As a war correspondent, John Steinbeck follows the developments from the Second World War on various fronts in 1943. The book Once There Was a War emerged as a result of this period. The book is a collection of articles written by Steinbeck for the New York Herald Tribune in the summer of 1943. Much of the book describes his days spent on a warship in British waters and then on land.
In 1947, he participated in the first cultural visits of the Westerners to the Soviet Union. He goes to Batumi, Tbilisi, Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kyiv. The result of this experience would be his job at A Russian Journal. In May 1948, the death of his close friend Ed, whom he often stars as Slim in Of Mice and Men, Lee in East of Eden, and Casy in The Grapes of Wrath, and his wife Gwyn's decision to divorce, plunges Steinbeck into a deep depression.
He married his third and last wife, Elaine Scott, in 1948, and East of Eden, published in 1952, shook the literary world. “What I have written so far has been a preparation for this book,” says John Steinbeck in his novel East of Eden. The book takes the reader to America in the early 20th century. The lives of Steinbeck's mother Olive's family, the Hamiltons, and the Trask family intersect in California's Salinas Valley. All aspects of pain, joy, success, grief, betrayal, and love are gathered in this work of Steinbeck and we look at the birth of the new century from American soil as we trace the two families.
As a friend, Steinbeck advises Adlai Stevenson, a politician, and diplomat who was the Democratic Party presidential candidate in the 1950s and worked in the founding of the United Nations. Between 1962 and 1963, he was the cultural ambassador of Democratic President John Kennedy to Russia. The period in which Steinbeck was most interested in politics was the Kennedy period after the Nobel Prize, and then the other Democratic President Lyndon Johnson, who was elected for two consecutive terms. Steinbeck, who prepared the official biography for Johnson's election campaign, wrote many important speeches, including his candidacy acceptance speech, and was not paid for his work. Reflecting his values, political views, and political stance in his work, Steinbeck also advises the president on communication. When asked if he deserved the 1962 Nobel Prize, he humbly replied, "No, frankly."
An interesting feature of Steinbeck was that he gave his suit names such as Old Blue, Sweet George Brown, Funeral Black, Dorian Gray, and Old Horse. By 1968, Steinbeck wrote in a letter to his doctor that he felt in his bones that his physical condition would no longer allow him to survive. Steinbeck died of a heart attack on December 20, 1968. He was cremated by his will, and his ashes were buried in the family cemetery in Salinas, California, where his parents were also buried.