John Steinbeck (USA) - one of the most famous American writers of our time. His work, included in the so-called great triptych of American prose writers of the 20th century, is put on a par with Hemingway and Faulkner. John Steinbeck's diverse literary creations include 28 novels and about 45 books consisting of essays, plays, short stories, diaries, journalism, and film scripts.
John Steinbeck Years of life
The ancestors of the writer had Jewish and German roots, and the surname itself is an American version of the original surname in German - Grosssteinbek. John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, in the small provincial town of Salinas, California in the United States. He died at 66 in 1968 on December 20.
A family
The future American novelist John Steinbeck and his family lived in average prosperity and had a two-story house with a land plot in their property, on which children learned to work. John Ernst Steinbeck, Sr., his father, served as treasurer in public service, and his mother, Olivia Hamilton, was a former schoolteacher. John had three sisters.
John Steinbeck Biography Summary
In early childhood, he formed a rather complicated character - independent and wayward. From a young age, the future writer John Steinbeck was very passionate about literature, despite his rather mediocre performance at school. And by the time it ended, in 1919, it had finally made the decision to devote its life and the fate of writing. In this, he received the full support of his mother, who supported and shared his son's passion for reading and writing.
With some interruptions, from 1919 to 1925, John Steinbeck was educated at Stanford University.
The beginning of the creative path
John Steinbeck, whose biography as a writer began in the mid-20s of the last century, managed to try many professions and worked as a sailor, and a driver, and a carpenter, and even a janitor and guard. Here he was helped by the parental school of labor, passed by him in childhood, which in many respects influenced his worldview.
At first, he worked in the field of journalism and soon his first stories began to get into print. Steinbeck’s first debut as a writer took place in 1929, after moving to San Francisco, where his first serious work, the novel The Golden Cup, was published.
A little later, the work “Quarter Tortilla-Flat” - a humorous description of the life of ordinary farmers living in the hills of Monterey County, released in 1935, brought him his first success. For such a naturalistic narrative, it was approved by literary critics.
All the following years, John Steinbeck was fruitfully and almost continuously engaged in the creation of new works. Already in 1937 he saw the light of his new story "On People and Mice", after which critics and the literary community started talking about him as a major writer.
His title and outstanding work, “The Bunches of Wrath,” is a novel that tells of an era that changed the fate of the country in the 30s. It caused a huge resonance in public circles, going far beyond the literary world. World criticism did not remain indifferent and was choked with positive reviews about the novel, which was number one on the bestseller list for two years. John Steinbeck received letters from around the world that hotly discussed The Bunches of Wrath. Hollywood also drew attention to such a sensational work, and director John Ford made his film adaptation in 1940. The film, based on the novel by John Steinbeck, was wildly popular, was highly appreciated by film critics and won the Oscar in two categories. It is worth noting that this was not the last such achievement. Films based on the author’s books continued to be a resounding success.
The surging glory did not interfere with the further fruitful work of the American writer. Already in 1947, the whole world was reading the book “Russian Diary”, consisting of travel essays and telling about Steinbeck’s trip to the USSR together with photo correspondent Robert Kapa. Despite the fact that the work appeared at the beginning of the Cold War between the USA and the USSR and the growing confrontation between the countries, throughout the book one can feel open respect for the Soviet Union, but it also contains sharp and insightful comments about the processes that occurred then in a totalitarian state .
John Steinbeck, whose biography (briefly) is described in this article, in addition to working in the field of literature, was also actively involved in social activities. He supported his friend Democrat Adlai Stevenson, who adhered to anti-conservative attitudes, taking part in the presidential elections of 1952 and 1956.
Behind his shoulders and direct participation in the events in Vietnam, where he went to the jungle for a month and a half as a war correspondent.
His health was undermined by the consequences that led to a serious and complex operation carried out by the writer in 1967. Subsequently, after several heart attacks, John Steinbeck died at the age of 66 in 1968.
His name was included in the California Hall of Fame in 2007 through the efforts of State Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Travel to the Soviet Union
The prose writer John Steinbeck went on a trip to the Soviet Union in 1947, accompanied by Robert Kapa, a well-known photographer and master of photo essays. The time for the trip was chosen by a restless, but at the same time alluring writer because of conflicting news about the USSR and from the USSR.
Only 2 years have passed since the Second World War ended and the Cold War with the States lasted a year - the allies yesterday were ready to become sworn enemies today.
Countries were slowly recovering, military resources were gaining strength again, there was constant talk of developing nuclear programs and developing superpowers, and the great Stalin seemed immortal at all. No one made predictions about how these “games” will end.
The desire to visit the Soviet Union was facilitated by the idea of a future book that came to the writer and his friend photographer Robert Cape in New York to discuss a new collaboration project at the Bedford hotel bar in 1947.
Steinbeck told Cape that dozens of newspapers constantly write about the Soviet Union, devoting almost a few articles to it daily. The questions raised in the articles sounded something like this: "What are Stalin’s thoughts? What are the plans of the General Staff of Russia and where are their troops located? At what stage are the experimental developments of the atomic bomb and radio-controlled missiles?" In all of this, Steinbeck was hurt that all these materials were written by people who had never been to the USSR and were unlikely to ever be there. And about their sources of information, there was no talk at all.
And friends got the idea that the Union probably has a lot of things that no one writes at all and is not even interested in. And here they were already seriously interested, questions arose: "What do people wear in Russia? What do they eat and how do they cook? Do they have parties, do they dance, play? How do Russians love and die? What are they talking with friend? Do Russian children go to school? "
They decided that it would be nice to find out all this and write about it. Publishers vividly responded to the new plan of friends, and in the summer of 1947 a trip to the USSR took place, the route of which looked like this: Moscow, then Stalingrad, Ukraine and Georgia.
The purpose of the trip was to write and tell the Americans about the real Soviet people and what they really are.
In those years, getting into the Soviet Union was considered a miracle, but Steinbeck and Kapu were not only allowed into Russia, but they even received permission to visit Ukraine and Georgia. When leaving, the footage was practically not touched, which was also surprising for that time. Only strategically important, from the point of view of the security services, seized landscapes taken from the plane, but did not touch the most important thing for the writer - photographs of people.
There was an agreement between friends that they would not run into trouble in an unfamiliar and harsh country, would try to be objective - not to praise, but at the same time not to criticize the Russians, and not to pay attention to the Soviet bureaucratic machine and not to react all kinds of obstacles. They wanted to write honest material, in which there would be no comments or conclusions, and were prepared for the fact that they would encounter something incomprehensible or unpleasant to them and many inconveniences could arise. With a similar can be found in any other country in the world.
The result of a trip to the USSR was the Russian Diary, a book of essays published in 1948, telling about the author’s observations of the life of the people of the Soviet Union of those times: how they worked, how they lived, how they rested, and why museums are so revered in the Union.
Then the book did not appeal to either America or Russia. The Americans considered it too positive, and the Russians did not like the too negative description of the life of their country and its citizens. But for those who would like to learn about the Soviet Union and life in it, the book will be pleasant reading both from the literary and ethnographic points of view.
Bibliography
John Steinbeck has a number of great works that have become literary classics and recognized by the world's best-sellers in a wide variety of genres.
The most famous are:
Novels:
The Golden Cup;
Tortilla Flat Quarter;
"Lost Bus";
"East of Paradise";
"The Grapes of Wrath";
"Canning row";
Stories:
“About mice and people”;
"Pearl".
Documentary prose:
Storybooks:
"The Long Valley";
"Paradise pastures";
"Chrysanthemums."
In addition to literary works, John Steinbeck wrote 2 screenplays:
“Viva Zapata”;
"An abandoned village."
The most famous quotes
Since Steinbeck's works are very popular all over the world, it is not surprising that some of the phrases from his books became famous quotes, the most famous of which are given below and will probably seem familiar.
From the novel East of Paradise:
"A loving woman is almost indestructible."
“When a person says that he doesn’t want to remember something, it usually means that he only thinks of one thing.”
“We must always remember death and try to live so that our death does not bring joy to anyone.”
"Pure truth sometimes causes sharp pain, but the pain goes away, while a wound caused by a lie festers and does not heal."
From the novel “Winter of Our Trouble”:
“I wake up with a wistful feeling that I have a soul ulcer.”
“And why are you upset that, they say, people think badly of you? Yes, they don’t think about you at all. ”
“The best way to hide your true motives is to tell the truth.”
"To live is to be scarred."
From the novel “Bunches of Wrath”:
“If you have trouble, if you are in need, if you have been wronged, go to the poor.” Only they will help, no one else. ”
From the novel “The Lost Bus":
From the novel Tortilla-Flat Quarter:
Screen adaptation of books
Steinbeck's several literary creations were such a resounding success that they caught the attention of the film industry and were filmed by Hollywood. Some films were re-filmed and reworked for the theater.
“On Mice and Humans” - the first film adaptation in 1939 and again in 1992;
“Bunches of Wrath” - in 1940;
“Tortilla-Flat Quarter” - in 1942;
"Pearl" - in 1947;
"East of Paradise" - in 1955;
“Lost Bus" - in 1957;
"Canning Row" - a film adaptation in 1982, a theatrical production - in 1995.
Awards
Steinbeck during his literary career was nominated several times for the most prominent awards in the field of writing.
In 1940, the author received the Pulitzer Prize for his most famous novel, The Bunches of Wrath, which narrates the life of workers engaged in seasonal work .
In 1962, he was awarded the Nobel Committee and became a laureate of the same name with the following comment: "For a realistic and poetic gift, for a successful combination of humor and with a serious social outlook on the world."
Personal life and children
John Steinbeck, whose personal life was quite active, was married several times in his life.
Having already started to publish a little, he first married at the age of 28 years old to Carol Hanning, whom he met during the period of his work as a watchman at a fish factory. The marriage lasted 11 years, and despite the fact that Carol always supported and accompanied her husband on his travels, their relationship gradually began to deteriorate and they divorced in 1941. It was rumored that the absence of children was the reason for the collapse of their marriage.
Steinbeck's second wife was singer and actress Gwendolyn Conger, to whom he proposed on the 5th day of acquaintance in 1943. This marriage did not last long, only 5 years, but from this union they had two sons - Thomas Miles, who was born in 1944, and John in 1946.
A meeting with actress and theater director Elaine Scott in mid-1949 ended with Steinbeck's third marriage in December 1950. Despite the fact that they did not have common children in the marriage, Elaine remained the wife of the writer until his death in 1968. She herself died in 2003. Elaine and John Steinbeck (family, photo of which is presented below) are buried together in the writer's homeland, in Salinas.
Son Thomas Miles Steinbeck followed in the footsteps of the famous father and became a journalist, screenwriter and writer. Until 2008, he and his daughter Blake Smile, the granddaughter of John Steinbeck, were deprived of their legal rights to the works of his father and grandfather. He currently lives in California with his wife.
Little is known about son John IV (Fourth). John Steinbeck served in the US Army in Vietnam. He died in 1991.