I picked this up of course because it's about Steinbeck. Ya da ya da ya da. I need to find a Steinbeck scholar somewhere so we can be BFF's.
I also like the maps of Steinbeckian locales even if they do descend into serious fan trivia ("This is where Kate from East of Eden did her banking.")
Steinbeck was born in Salinas, the county seat of Monterey County, in 1902. His father was a businessman who suffered various ups and downs and his mother was a former school teacher. He spent the summers on the nearby Monterey Coast. If you are planning a visit to Salinas, you should basically read or re-read East of Eden.
Salinas was known as the "salad bowl of the world." Although he was wildly unpopular in his hometown during the Grapes of Wrath era, they started coming around in the 1950's. They offered to name a high school after him but he declined, saying a bowling alley or dog track would be more fitting. In 1959, they offered to name a reading room in the new library after him which he very much liked, "if my name would not drive people out." The year following his death, the library board voted to name the library after him. The vote wasn't unanimous as an Assembly of God pastor voted against it due to his "lifestyle." I'm baffled why Mr. Assembly of God was on the library board anyways. I can't imagine he's liking the book learnin.
Steinbeck attended Stanford off and on for six years. It was free to attend (!) during those years. He eventually left, traveled on a boat to NYC and lived there from 1925-1926. His experience on the boat gave him the material for his first novel, Cup of Gold. From there, he moved to Lake Tahoe where he worked as a winter caretaker and met his first wife, Carol.
I have to note here Carol was so good to him and he ended up treating her kind of shitty (in one of his worst moments, he brought his girlfriend and incipient second wife Gwyn to his home in Pacific Grove and told the two of them to decide who wanted him more and left.) She understood the writing came first. She sheltered him from the outside world. She typed his manuscript for Cup of Gold not long after meeting him. She also gave him the idea for the title of The Grapes of Wrath.
In his Monterey trilogy (Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row, and Sweet Thursday), he makes several mentions of the Hotel Del Monte. This was a famous luxury hotel in Monterey that operated between 1880 and 1942. When it first opened, every room had a telephone which was a real rarity. It had the first glass-enclosed swimming pool. It's now the site of the US Postgraduate School. The costumer party in Sweet Thursday was possibly inspired by a famous party thrown at the Del Monte in 1941 by-get ready for it-Salvador Dali.
Not only were many characters in East of Eden inspired by real people (including those in Steinbeck's family) but Pilon in Tortilla Flat was an actually guy who lived in Spanish Monterey and sometimes slept in a tub. The Pirate and his dogs were also based on fact. Steinbeck had such love for Spanish Monterey. It really sucks he was accused of mocking them.
During the 1930's, Steinbeck and Carol lived in a cottage in Pacific Grove, a town formed as a clean-living Methodist retreat. The cottage is still around today. You can take a Steinbeck walking tour there. The house is still around but it's a private residence. There are pictures of the interior in the book. He wrote Grapes and Of Mice and Men here. I swoon.
He was really into gardening and dogs. In his letters, he mentions the varieties of flowers he has planted in his garden and the lives of his dogs. One died of distemper and apparently broke Carol's heart. Another one ate part of the manuscript of Mice which caused Steinbeck to fly into such a rage "he had to be locked up." Not sure how literal that is but I own a dog so I definitely understand. A few days later, he had calmed down and wrote this letter "My setter pup, left alone one night, made confetti of about half my ms. Two months work to do over again... There was no other draft. I was pretty mad but the poor little fellow may have been acting critically. I didn't want to ruin a good dog for a ms."
Awww, I love this man.
The butterfly festival in Pacific Grove and the town's fondness for the game of Roque (similar to Croquet but more complicated) as documented in Sweet Thursday are both factual although there was no "Roque War" of course.
In his later years, he enjoyed fishing and said in a letter to a friend, "I consider it the last of the truly civilized pursuits. Surely I find it a most restful thing. And if you don't bait the hook, even fish will not disturb you."
I've read some about the life of Steinbeck's friend Ed Ricketts. I get such voyeuristic joy from it and yet it's so painful to read about too, given Ricketts untimely death and the effect it had on so many people including Steinbeck himself. I want to reproduce the book's paragraph on it:
On April 24, 1948, Steinbeck wrote in his journal that he felt close to "some kind of release of the spirit. I don't know how this is going to happen. I just know it is so. Maybe through the book maybe through sorrow or pain or something. Anyways it is near and I must be ready for it." On May 5, he wrote, "No word from Ed. I have a feeling that something is wrong with him." three days later, ed Ricketts was struck by a train as he drove across the tracks at Drake Avenue and Cannery Row (now marked by a bust of Ed Ricketts.) Having eerily anticipated the loss, Steinbeck was numb. After Ricketts's funeral, he wrote to Ritch and Tal Lovejoy, "Wouldn't it be interesting if Ed was us and that now there wasn't any such thing or that he created out of his own mind something that went away with him. I've wondered a lot about that. How much was Ed and how much was me and which was which."
I think the book he is referring to is East of Eden (which he called "The Salinas Valley" at the time.)
In 1959, the city of Monterey asked him about naming a local theatre the Steinbeck Theatre (high schools, libraries, theatres. At least he lived to somewhat see the worm turn.) He replied in a letter:
Your suggestion... is of course flattering. I can only warn you that my own success in the theater has not been all rosy. You may be taking on a jinx....Would it be out of order in view of our long association, and because he was one of the greatest humans I ever knew, that Ed Ricketts's name be substituted for mine, or if because his name is not yet as widely known as it deserves, that our names be used together?....If your projected theater could be named the Ricketts and Steinbeck, any reservations of mine, self-conscious or sentimental, would instantly disappear, and a name that deserves remembering could be at least proposed. Thank you for the compliment.
And, according to the authors, Joe Elegant in Sweet Thursday was a poke at Joseph Campbell (who spent some time with Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts around 1932 before a flirtation between Campbell and Carol soured the group dynamic):
...a writer who explains to brothel owner Fauna "the myth and the symbol" of his book and the "reality below reality." She isn't impressed: "Listen, Joe, whyn't you write a story about something real?"
Even though they had been divorced for many years and she had remarried, his first wife Carol still evidently harbored rancor towards John. Carol Brown, the sister in-law of Carol Steinbeck Brown, (they were married to brothers) created a bust of Steinbeck for Cannery Row that was erected in 1973. Carol Steinbeck Brown wished to collaborate with her, bringing in family pictures and letters, etc. Although she was still angry with him, she wanted the likeness to do him justice. Unfortunately, she became obsessed with the head telling the sculptor it wasn't big enough. The first bust collapsed because the head was so big. She also would come to the studio and swear at the now giant head of her ex-husband, all of which unnerved Carol Brown a bit.When it was completed, CSB wanted credit but only Carol Brown's name is on the plaque. Brown speculated it was like Carol's life with John all over, not getting credit for her artistic contributions.
Curious about the bust? Here it is.
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