Novels and Stories 1932-1937: The Pastures of Heaven, To a God Unknown, Tortilla Flat, In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men (Library of America)

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Overview

"Deep down it's mine, right to the center of the world," says a Salinas Valley farmer about his land in John Steinbeck's To a God Unknown, and Steinbeck the writer could have said the same. From the very start of his career he evoked the landscapes and people of central California with lyrical intensity and unflinching frankness. Through his intimate rendering of that place and those people, he expressed his abiding concerns: community, social justice, and the elemental connection between nature and human society. Here for the first time in one volume are Steinbeck's early California writings. In prose that blends the vernacular and the incantatory, the local and the mythic, these five works chart Steinbeck's evolution into one of the greatest and most enduringly popular of American novelists. The Pastures of Heaven (1932), a collection of interrelated stories, delineates the troubled inner lives and sometimes disastrous fates of families living in a seemingly tranquil California valley. The surface realism of Steinbeck's first mature work is enriched by hints of uncanny forces at work beneath. A sense of primeval magic dominates To a God Unknown (1933), as a California farmer reverts to pagan nature worship and begins a tortuous journey toward catastrophe and ultimate understanding. Steinbeck's sympathetic depiction of the raffish paisanos of Tortilla Flat (1935), a ramshackle district above Monterey, first won him popular attention. The Flat's tenderhearted, resourceful, mildly corrupt, ever-optimistic characters are a triumph of life-affirming humor. In Dubious Battle (1936) plunges into the political struggle of the 1930s, painting a vigorous fresco of a migrant fruit-picker's strike. Anticipating the collective portraiture of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck poignantly traces the surges and shifts of group behavior. With Of Mice and Men (1937), Steinbeck secured his status as one of the most influential American writers. Lenny and George, itinerant farmhands

Here for the first time in one volume are John Steinbeck's early California writings, including Tortilla Flat, his first popular success, and the extraordinarily powerful Of Mice and Men. Featuring many other great works written by Steinbeck from 1932-37, this volume is the first in a projected multi-volume set.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781883011017
Publisher: Library of America
Publication date: 9/28/1994
Pages: 912
Sales rank: 248,316
Age range: 18 years
Series: Library of America Series , #72
Product dimensions: 5.11 (w) x 8.09 (h) x 1.18 (d)

Meet the Author

John Steinbeck

Chronicling American dreams destroyed by either injustice or the simple difficulty of the world, John Steinbeck left lasting testaments to the struggles of working people in The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row. His refusal to water down his realistic work got some of his books banned – and earned him a Nobel Prize.

Biography

John Ernst Steinbeck, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner, was born in Salinas, California February 27, 1902. His father, John Steinbeck, served as Monterey County Treasurer for many years. His mother, Olive Hamilton, was a former schoolteacher who developed in him a love of literature. Young Steinbeck came to know the Salinas Valley well, working as a hired hand on nearby ranches in Monterey County. In 1919, he graduated from Salinas High School as president of his class and entered Stanford University majoring in English. Stanford did not claim his undivided attention. During this time he attended only sporadically while working at a variety jobs including on with the Big Sur highway project, and one at Spreckels Sugar Company near Salinas.

Steinbeck left Stanford permanently in 1925 to pursue a career in writing in New York City. He was unsuccessful and returned, disappointed, to California the following year. Though his first novel, Cup of Gold, was published in 1929, it attracted little literary attention. Two subsequent novels, The Pastures of Heaven and To A God Unknown, met the same fate.

After moving to the Monterey Peninsula in 1930, Steinbeck and his new wife, Carol Henning, made their home in Pacific Grove. Here, not far from famed Cannery Row, heart of the California sardine industry, Steinbeck found material he would later use for two more works, Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row.

With Tortilla Flat (1935), Steinbeck's career took a decidedly positive turn, receiving the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal. He felt encouraged to continue writing, relying on extensive research and personal observation of the human drama for his stories. In 1937, Of Mice and Men was published. Two years later, the novel was produced on Broadway and made into a movie. In 1940, Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Grapes of Wrath, bringing to public attention the plight of dispossessed farmers.

After Steinbeck and Henning divorced in 1942, he married Gwyndolyn Conger. The couple moved to New York City and had two sons, Thomas and two years later, John. During the war years, Steinbeck served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. Some of his dispatches reappeared in Once There Was A War. In 1945, Steinbeck published Cannery Row and continued to write prolifically, producing plays, short stories and film scripts. In 1950, he married Elaine Anderson Scott and they remained together until his death.

Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 "...for his realistic as well as imaginative writings, distinguished by a sympathetic humor and keen social perception.." In his acceptance speech, Steinbeck summarized what he sought to achieve through his works:

"...Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species...Further more, the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity of greatness of heart and spirit—gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and emulation. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature..."

Steinbeck remained a private person, shunning publicity and moving frequently in his search for privacy. He died on December 20, 1968 in New York City, where he and his family made a home. But his final resting place was the valley he had written about with such passion. At his request, his ashes were interred in the Garden of Memories cemetery in Salinas. He is survived by his son, Thomas.

Author biography courtesy of the National Steinbeck Center.

1. Also Known As:
  
  Amnesia Glasscock
  John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (full name); Amnesia Glasscock
1. Date of Birth:
  
  February 27, 1902
2. Place of Birth:
  
  Salinas, California
1. Date of Death:
  
  December 20, 1968
2. Place of Death:
  
  New York, New York

	The Pastures of Heaven	1
	To a God Unknown	171
	Tortilla Flat	369
	In Dubious Battle	529
	Of Mice and Men	795
	Chronology	881
	Notes on the Texts	901
	Notes	904

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Novels and Stories 1932-1937: The Pastures of Heaven, To a God Unknown, Tortilla Flat, In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men (Library of America)

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