Synopses & Reviews
Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. Over the next year, his many works published as black-spine Penguin Classics for the first time and will feature eye-catching, newly commissioned art.
The Grapes of Wrath is a landmark of American literature. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath is also the story of one Oklahoma family, the Joads, who are driven off their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity.
First published in 1939, The Grapes of Wrath summed up its era in the way that Uncle Tom’s Cabin summed up the years of slavery before the Civil War. Sensitive to fascist and communist criticism, Steinbeck insisted that “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” be printed in its entirety in the first edition of the book—which takes its title from the first verse: “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s fictional chronicle of the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s is perhaps the most American of American Classics.
Review
“Steinbeck is a poet. . . . Everything is real, everything perfect.”
—Upton Sinclair, Common Sense
“I think, and with earnest and honest consideration . . . that The Grapes of Wrath is the greatest American novel I have ever read." — Dorothy Parker
“It seems to me as great a book as has yet come out of America.” —Alexander Woollcott
Review
“Steinbeck has compounded a bitter and uproariously funny commentary on the futility of human aspiration and the barrenness of existence . . . an extraordinary mixture of wild laughter and searing pain.”
The New York Herald Tribune “It’s one of the most thoroughly enjoyable and delicious books you’ll ever have the fortune to read.” Chicago Sun Times
“Everything is always somehow overlaid with laughter, the special kind of laughter and contentment with one’s lot, however humble, that only John Steinbeck can put into words. . . . John Steinbeck sees his characters with deep compassion as well as amusement.” Chicago Sunday Tribune
Review
"Steinbeck embellishes Malory's spare language with a richness of detail that transforms the vision, makes it no one's but Steinbeck's."
-John Gardner, The New York Times Book Review
Review
“[
The Pearl] has the distinction and sincerity that are evident in everything he writes.”
The New Yorker “Form is the most important thing about him. It is at its best in this work.” Commonweal
“[Steinbeck has] long trained his prose style for such a task as this: that supple unstrained, muscular power, responsive to the slightest pull of the reins.” Chicago Sunday Times
Review
"If you have forgotten what the war was like, Steinbeck will refresh your memory. Age can never dull this kind of writing."
-Chicago Tribune
Review
"A feast of good reading." —
Jay Parini,
Los Angeles Times
"Captures Steinbeck's fierce and unrelenting moral vision, while providing an intriguing glimpse of the writer's life and work." —Chicago Tribune
Synopsis
A selection of essential writings by one of the greatest writers in American history
It would be impossible to overstate John Steinbeck's enduring influence on American letters. Profuse with a richness of language, sly humor, and empathy for even his most flawed characters, Steinbeck's books are still widely read and deeply relevant today. The Portable Steinbeck is a grand sampling of his most important and popular works. Here are the complete novels Of Mice and Men and The Red Pony, together with self-contained excerpts from several longer novels, the text of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, a fascinating introduction by Pascal Covici, Jr., son of Steinbeck's longtime editor, and brand new introduction from leading Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw that puts Steinbeck in the context of the 21st century.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Synopsis
Steinbeck's tough yet charming portrait of people on the margins of society, dependant on one another for both physical and emotional survival Unburdened by the material necessities of the more fortunate, the denizens of Cannery Row discover rewards unknown in more traditional society. Henry the painter sorts through junk lots for pieces of wood to incorporate into the boat he is building, while the girls from Dora Floods bordello venture out now and then to enjoy a bit of sunshine. Lee Chong stocks his grocery with almost anything a man could want, and Doc, a young marine biologist who ministers to sick puppies and unhappy souls, unexpectedly finds true love. Cannery Row is just a few blocks long, but the story it harbors is suffused with warmth, understanding, and a great fund of human values.
First published in 1945, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it isboth the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. John Steinbeck draws on his memories of the real inhabitants of Monterey, California, and interweaves their stories in this world where only the fittest survivecreating what is at once one of his most humorous and poignant works. In Cannery Row, John Steinbeck returns to the setting of Tortilla Flat to create another evocative portrait of life as it is lived by those who unabashedly put the highest value on the intangibleshuman warmth, camaraderie, and love.
This Steinbeck Centennial Edition features French flaps and deckled pages.
For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Synopsis
He wrote about poor people struggling to survive and about dispossessed people grappling for a piece of land they could call their own. He wrote about inarticulate men groping to express truths “locked in wordlessness.” He wrote about America—the land and the people—as though it were one living organism, and he did so more eloquently than anyone since Walt Whitman. In an extraordinarily prolific career that lasted from 1929 to the 1960s, John Steinbeck created stories and characters that, in the words of Pascal Covici, Jr., this volume’s editor, combine “the gusto of Homer … along with the thoughtfulness of Emerson.”
The Portable Steinbeck is a grand sampling of this writer’s most important works. Here are the complete novels Of Mice and Men and The Red Pony together with self-contained excerpts from The Long Valley, Tortilla Flat, In Dubious Battle (celebrated as “America’s best strike novel”), The Grapes of Wrath, his epic of the Okie migration of the Great Depression, Cannery Row, East of Eden, Travels with Charley and other books; two previously uncollected short stories; and the 1962 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech. The result is a collection that overflows with Steinbeck’s prodigal richness of language, humor that is by turns broad and deadpan sly, and empathy for even the most flawed and suffering of his characters.
Synopsis
Steinbeck's theatrical adaptations of two of his most powerful short novels, now together in one volume A unique treat for Steinbeck fans, this volume includes two extraordinary plays from a master of American literature. Of Mice and Men is the dramatic adaptation of one of Steinbeck's most widely read and beloved works. Originally published at the height of Nazi Germany's power, The Moon Is Down is a masterful play that uncovers profound, often unsettling truths about war and human nature. It tells the story of a peaceable town taken by enemy troops, and had an extraordinary impact as Allied propaganda in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Synopsis
Steinbeck's only work of fantasy literature-in an illustrated deluxe edition John Steinbeck's retelling of Malory's beloved Arthurian stories will capture the attention and imagination of legions of Steinbeck fans, including those who love Arthurian romances, as well as countless readers of science fiction and fantasy literature. Featuring the icons of Arthurian legend-including King Arthur, Merlin, Morgan le Fay, the incomparable Queen Guinevere, and Arthur's purest knight, Sir Lancelot of the Lake-these enduring tales of loyalty and betrayal in the time of Camelot flicker with the wonder and magic of an era past but not forgotten.
Synopsis
A magnificent volume of short novels and an essential World War II report from one of America?s great twentieth-century writersOn the heels of the enormous success of his masterwork The Grapes of Wrath?and at the height of the American war effort?John Steinbeck, one of the most prolific and influential literary figures of his generation, wrote Bombs Away, a nonfiction account of his experiences with U.S. Army Air Force bomber crews during World War II. Now, for the first time since its original publication in 1942, Penguin Classics presents this exclusive edition of Steinbeck?s introduction to the then-nascent U.S. Army Air Force and its bomber crew?the essential core unit behind American air power that Steinbeck described as ?the greatest team in the world.?
Synopsis
From the mid-1650s through the 1660s, Henry Morgan, a pirate and outlaw of legendary viciousness, ruled the Spanish Main. He ravaged the coasts of Cuba and America, striking terror wherever he went. Morgan was obsessive. He had two driving ambitions: to possess the beautiful woman called La Santa Roja and to conquer Panama, the cup of gold.” Steinbecks first novel and sole work of historical fiction, Cup of Gold is a lush, lyrical swashbuckling pirate fantasy, and sure to add new dimensions to readers perceptions of this all-American writer. This edition features an introduction by Susan F. Beegel.
Synopsis
In Monterey, on the California coast, Sweet Thursday is what they call the day after Lousy Wednesday, which is one of those days that are just naturally bad. Returning to the scene of
Cannery Row?the weedy lots and junk heaps and flophouses of Monterey, John Steinbeck once more brings to life the denizens of a netherworld of laughter and tears?from Fauna, new headmistress of the local brothel, to Hazel, a bum whose mother must have wanted a daughter.
Synopsis
From a swashbuckling pirate fantasy to a meditation on American moralitytwo classic Steinbeck novels make their black spine debuts
In awarding John Steinbeck the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Nobel committee stated that with The Winter of Our Discontent, he had "resumed his position as an independent expounder of the truth, with an unbiased instinct for what is genuinely American.
Ethan Allen Hawley, the novel's protagonist, works as a clerk in a grocery store that his prominent family once owned. Without status in the town, his wife is restless, and his teenage children are hungry for the tantalizing material comforts he cannot provide. Then one day, in a moment of moral crisis, Ethan decides to take a holiday from his own scrupulous standards. In The Winter of Our Discontent, John Steinbeck, perhaps the master writer of the American working class, explores the cultural malaise of the 1960s and its far-ranging implications: social, familial, and personal.
Synopsis
Make this your next book club selection and everyone saves. Get 15% off when you order 5 or more of this title for your book club.
Simply enter the coupon code STEINBECKPEARL at checkout.
This offer does not apply to eBook purchases. This offer applies to only one downloadable audio per purchase.
In this short book illuminated by a deep understanding and love of humanity, John Steinbeck retells an old Mexican folk tale: the story of the great pearl, how it was found, and how it was lost. For the diver Kino, finding a magnificent pearl means the promise of a better life for his impoverished family. His dream blinds him to the greed and suspicions the pearl arouses in him and his neighbors, and even his loving wife cannot temper his obsession or stem the events leading to the tragedy.
For Steinbeck, Kino and his wife illustrate the fall from innocence of people who believe that wealth erases all problems. Originally published in 1947, The Pearl shows why Steinbeck’s style has made him one of the most beloved American writers: it is a simple story of simple people, recounted with the warmth and sincerity and unrivaled craftsmanship Steinbeck brings to his writing. It is tragedy in the great tradition, beautifully conveying not despair but hope for mankind.
The Great Books Foundation Discussion Guide for The Pearl is available at www.greatbooks.org.
Synopsis
Nobel laureate John Steinbeck's bracing from-the-frontlines account of World War II-now with a new cover and introduction In 1943 John Steinbeck was on assignment for The New York Herald Tribune, writing from Italy and North Africa, and from England in the midst of the London blitz. In his dispatches he focuses on the human-scale effect of the war, portraying everyone from the guys in a bomber crew to Bob Hope on his USO tour and even fighting alongside soldiers behind enemy lines. Taken together, these writings create an indelible portrait of life in wartime.
Synopsis
More than four decades after his death, John Steinbeck remains one of the nation's most beloved authors. Yet few know of his career as a journalist who covered world events from the Great Depression to Vietnam. Now, this distinctive collection offers a portrait of the artist as citizen, deeply engaged in the world around him. In addition to the complete text of Steinbeck's last published book, America and Americans, this volume brings together for the first time more than fifty of Steinbeck's finest essays and journalistic pieces on Salinas, Sag Harbor, Arthur Miller, Woody Guthrie, the Vietnam War and more. This edition is edited by Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw and Steinbeck biographer Jackson J. Benson.
Synopsis
It would be impossible to overstate John Steinbeck's enduring influence on American letters. Profuse with a richness of language, sly humor, and empathy for even his most flawed characters, Steinbeck's books are still widely read and deeply relevant today.
The Portable Steinbeck is a grand sampling of his most important and popular works. Here are the complete novels Of Mice and Men and The Red Pony, together with self-contained excerpts from several longer novels, the text of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, a fascinating introduction by Pascal Covici, Jr., son of Steinbeck's longtime editor, and a new introduction from leading Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw that puts Steinbeck in the context of the 21st century
Synopsis
Nobel laureate John Steinbeck's bracing from-the-frontlines account of World War II-now with a new cover and introduction In 1943 John Steinbeck was on assignment for The New York Herald Tribune, writing from Italy and North Africa, and from England in the midst of the London blitz. In his dispatches he focuses on the human-scale effect of the war, portraying everyone from the guys in a bomber crew to Bob Hope on his USO tour and even fighting alongside soldiers behind enemy lines. Taken together, these writings create an indelible portrait of life in wartime.
Synopsis
Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. Over the next year, his many works published as black-spine Penguin Classics for the first time and will feature eye-catching, newly commissioned art.
The Grapes of Wrath is a landmark of American literature. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath is also the story of one Oklahoma family, the Joads, who are driven off their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity.
First published in 1939, The Grapes of Wrath summed up its era in the way that Uncle Tom’s Cabin summed up the years of slavery before the Civil War. Sensitive to fascist and communist criticism, Steinbeck insisted that “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” be printed in its entirety in the first edition of the book—which takes its title from the first verse: “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s fictional chronicle of the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s is perhaps the most American of American Classics.
Synopsis
Steinbeck's only work of fantasy literature-in an illustrated deluxe edition John Steinbeck's retelling of Malory's beloved Arthurian stories will capture the attention and imagination of legions of Steinbeck fans, including those who love Arthurian romances, as well as countless readers of science fiction and fantasy literature. Featuring the icons of Arthurian legend-including King Arthur, Merlin, Morgan le Fay, the incomparable Queen Guinevere, and Arthur's purest knight, Sir Lancelot of the Lake-these enduring tales of loyalty and betrayal in the time of Camelot flicker with the wonder and magic of an era past but not forgotten.
Synopsis
Steinbecks two plays, dramatic adaptations of his most powerful short novels, Of Mice and Men and The Moon Is Down, features a foreword by award-winning actor James Earl Jones. Celebrating its 75th anniversary, John Steinbecks Of Mice and Men received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play in 1937-1938 and has featured a number of actors who have played the iconic roles of George and Lennie on stage and film, including James Earl Jones, John Malkovich and Gary Sinise.
Of Mice and Men also represents an experiment in form, as Steinbeck described his work, a kind of playable novel, written in novel form but so scened and set that it can be played as it stands.” A rarity in American letters, it achieved remarkable success as a novel, a Broadway play, and three acclaimed films.
The Moon Is Down is Steinbecks masterful play that uncovers profound, often unsettling truths about war and human nature. It tells the story of a peaceable town taken by enemy troops, and had an extraordinary impact as Allied propaganda in Nazi-occupied Europe. This Penguin Classics edition of the theatrical adaptations of Steinbecks two classic short novels are essential to actors, playwrights, filmmakers and directors studying the dramatic work of the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden.
Synopsis
In Monterey, on the California coast, Sweet Thursday is what they call the day after Lousy Wednesday, which is one of those days that are just naturally bad. Returning to the scene of
Cannery Rowthe weedy lots and junk heaps and flophouses of Monterey, John Steinbeck once more brings to life the denizens of a netherworld of laughter and tearsfrom Fauna, new headmistress of the local brothel, to Hazel, a bum whose mother must have wanted a daughter.
Synopsis
The final novel of one of Americas most beloved writersa tale of degeneration, corruption, and spiritual crisis
In awarding John Steinbeck the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Nobel committee stated that with The Winter of Our Discontent, he had resumed his position as an independent expounder of the truth, with an unbiased instinct for what is genuinely American.” Ethan Allen Hawley, the protagonist of Steinbecks last novel, works as a clerk in a grocery store that his family once owned. With Ethan no longer a member of Long Islands aristocratic class, his wife is restless, and his teenage children are hungry for the tantalizing material comforts he cannot provide. Then one day, in a moment of moral crisis, Ethan decides to take a holiday from his own scrupulous standards. Set in Steinbecks contemporary 1960 America, the novel explores the tenuous line between private and public honesty, and today ranks alongside his most acclaimed works of penetrating insight into the American condition. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction and notes by leading Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw.
For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
About the Author
John Steinbeck, born in Salinas, California, in 1902, grew up in a fertile agricultural valley, about twenty-five miles from the Pacific Coast. Both the valley and the coast would serve as settings for some of his best fiction. In 1919 he went to Stanford University, where he intermittently enrolled in literature and writing courses until he left in 1925 without taking a degree. During the next five years he supported himself as a laborer and journalist in New York City, all the time working on his first novel,
Cup of Gold (1929).
After marriage and a move to Pacific Grove, he published two California books, The Pastures of Heaven (1932) and To a God Unknown (1933), and worked on short stories later collected in The Long Valley (1938). Popular success and financial security came only with Tortilla Flat (1935), stories about Monterey’s paisanos. A ceaseless experimenter throughout his career, Steinbeck changed courses regularly. Three powerful novels of the late 1930s focused on the California laboring class: In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and the book considered by many his finest, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). The Grapes of Wrath won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1939.
Early in the 1940s, Steinbeck became a filmmaker with The Forgotten Village (1941) and a serious student of marine biology with Sea of Cortez (1941). He devoted his services to the war, writing Bombs Away (1942) and the controversial play-novelette The Moon is Down (1942). Cannery Row (1945), The Wayward Bus (1948), another experimental drama, Burning Bright (1950), and The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951) preceded publication of the monumental East of Eden (1952), an ambitious saga of the Salinas Valley and his own family’s history.
The last decades of his life were spent in New York City and Sag Harbor with his third wife, with whom he traveled widely. Later books include Sweet Thursday (1954), The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication (1957), Once There Was a War (1958), The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962), America and Americans (1966), and the posthumously published Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters (1969), Viva Zapata! (1975), The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976), and Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath (1989).
Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962, and, in 1964, he was presented with the United States Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Steinbeck died in New York in 1968. Today, more than thirty years after his death, he remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures.
Pascal Covici, Jr., son of John Steinbeck's long-time editor and friend at The Viking Press, received his Ph.D. from Harvard and taught at Southern Methodist University.
Susan Shillinglaw is director of the Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University.
Table of Contents
Introduction
I
Places of the Heart 1
Always Something to Do in Salinas 4
The Golden Handcuff 13
A Primer on the '30s 17
Making of a New Yorker 32
My War with the Ospreys 41
Conversation at Sag Harbor 50
II
Engaged Artist 65
Dubious Battle in California 71
The Harvest Gypsies: Squatters' Camps 78
Starvation Under the Orange Trees 83
From Writers Take Sides 88
I Am a Revolutionary 89
Duel Without Pistols 91
The Trial of Arthur Miller 101
Atque Vale 105
Dear Adlai 108
G.O.P. Delegates Have Bigger, Better Badges 110
L'Envoi 112
III
Occasional Pieces 117
Then My Arm Glassed Up 125
On Fishing 132
Circus 136
Random Thoughts on Random Dogs 139
... like captured fireflies 142
The Joan in All of Us 144
A Model T Named "It" 147
IV
On Writing 151
The Play-Novelette 155
My Short Novels 158
Rationale 161
Critics-from a Writer's Viewpoint 163
Some Random and Randy Thoughts on Books 167
Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech 172
V
Friends 175
From About Ed Ricketts 179
Ernie Pyle 213
Tom Collins 215
Robert Capa 217
Adlai Stevenson 219
Henry Fonda 223
Woody Guthrie 225
VI
Journalist Abroad 227
The Soul and Guts of France 233
One American in Paris (fourth piece) 246
One American in Paris (thirteenth piece) 248
Positano 251
Florence: The Explosion of the Chariot 259
I Go Back to Ireland 262
The Ghost of Anthony Daly 270
VII
War Correspondent 275
Troopship 282
Waiting 285
Stories of the Blitz 288
Lilli Marlene 291
Bob Hope 293
Vietnam War: No Front, No Rear 296
Action in the Delta 299
Terrorism 304
Puff, the Magic Dragon 307
An Open Letter to Poet Yevtushenko 311
VIII
America and Americans 313
Foreword 317
E Pluribus Unum 319
Paradox and Dream 330
Government of the People 339
Created Equal 346
Genus Americanus 354
The Pursuit of Happiness 369
Americans and the Land 377
Americans and the World 383
Americans and the Future 392
Afterword 403
Works Cited 405
Selected Bibliography of Steinbeck's Nonfiction 407
Index 417