Steinbeck in Vietnam: Dispatches from the War Its influence was such that the place that inspired it, Ocean View Avenue in Monterey, Calif., was renamed Cannery Row in honor of the book in 1958.Ħ.
Despite the humor throughout, Steinbeck shows his trademark sympathy to his characters, regardless of their shortcomings. It’s under this influence that those derelicts, intending to throw a party for the marine biologist, completely trash his home and lab. Its sundry cast of characters includes a marine biologist, a grocery owner, and a band of derelicts that spend a good portion of their lives drunk as a band of skunks. But Cannery belongs on this list because it’s one of Steinbeck’s few comedies. Beyond its elucidation of themes and sympathies that remain the author’s life and work, the book has been adapted to theater, TV, and cinema, making it a must-read.Ī body of work can be sliced up in numerous ways: into epochs, archetypes, and even series. Steinbeck is, as always, rooting for the little man. It’s sympathetic to its luckless characters and tender with their hopeful outlook, despite the fact that all the cards stacked against them. Published in 1937, the story follows George Milton and Lennie Small, two out-of-work drifters during the Great Depression looking for work in the agriculturally rich area of Central California. While the author published 33 books over his life, many, including Mice, were in novella form, which falls in length somewhere between a long short story and a short novel. Or maybe you’re a longtime Steinbeck fan and know his bibliography inside and out. Maybe you were scared off after measuring the thickness of Grapes of Wrath. Trust us: Time spent with Steinbeck is worth it. Our list spans the range of his work, from the longest novels to the most hard-boiled reporting and the most whimsical allegories.
Regardless of the place you start, he will, most importantly, encourage compassion and the opening of one’s eyes for those often overlooked. If you lack direction, he will inspire if you’re bored, he’ll spur adventure.
He never grew jaded, and his last works still championed the overlooked, even if they were far from their country.įor these reasons, John Steinbeck is a writer with which every man should be familiar. But little of that seemed to affect his outlook. He also drew plenty of criticism for his politics, as well as his distrustful view of governmental institutions, including the CIA, over his lifetime. Sure, Steinbeck sold a hell of a lot of books, and he was recognized in his lifetime by the glittery institutions of the age - the National Book Award, the Pulitzer, and the Nobel Prize for Literature, to name a few. Other great writers may have passed through, but he froze its culture in amber, defining its unique community for many before it changed forever. Whether one looks to his magnum opus, East of Eden his numerous novels and novellas or his broad number of nonfiction accounts, the author never failed to chronicle the plight of the poor, thereby changing refined society’s perception of what may have only been a caricature.īorn in Salinas, Calif., around the turn of the 20th century, much of Steinbeck’s work was based in that area as it went through rapid change. Few writers have championed the poor and downtrodden with the passion and commitment as John Steinbeck.