Pace University Library

Celebrates the John Steinbeck Centennial

John Steinbeck was one of the most significant figures in 20^th Century American literature. His work includes sixteen novels, a collection of short stories, four screenplays, many journalistic essays –including four collections, three travel narratives, a translation, and two journals. There are many aspects of his writing that make him unique and significant: a keen sense of the environment and nature, the Salinas Valley and the Monterey Bay of his childhood as a setting, the transformation of his work into motion pictures, and his empathetic treatment of the disenfranchised. However, the quote below from his journal along with his body of work, shows his great genius was as a writer of the people.

"In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.”

John Steinbeck, 1938 Journal Entry

Links to Objects in this exhibit:

Tortilla flat	The Long Valley	The Grapes of Wrath
America and Americans	The Pearl	Letter to FDR
Cannery Row	Travels with Charley	Bibliography

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Tortilla Flat
New York, The Modern Library, 1937
Originally published: New York: Covici Friede, 1935
Collection of the Pace University Library

Tortilla Flat was John Steinbeck’s first novel to achieve popular success. It tells the story of the paisanos of Old Monterey while using the metaphor of King Arthur’s Round Table. In the introduction to this edition Steinbeck states, “I wrote these stories because they were true stories and I liked them. But literary slummers have taken these people up with the vulgarity of duchesses who are amused and sorry for a peasantry. These stories are out, and I cannot recall them. But I shall never again subject to the vulgar touch of the decent these good people of laughter and kindness, of honest lusts and direct eyes, of courtesy beyond politeness.”

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The Long Valley
New York, Compass Books Edition, 1963
Originally published: New York: Viking, 1938
Collection of the Pace University Library

This is John Steinbeck’s only collection of short stories. It contains The Red Pony, a four-part story that chronicles the development of a young boy named Jody Tiflin, from childhood to maturity. Steinbeck used the Salinas Valley as a setting for these stories.

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The Grapes of Wrath
Steinbeck received the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 for this work. It reached the top of the bestseller list within two months and its popularity was reinforced by the 1940 film version, starring Henry Fonda. It tells the story of Joad family, tenant farmers from the Oklahoma dust bowl who are forced from their land and travel to California to work as migrant fruit pickers. Collier’s magazine attacked the book as Communist propaganda and its merits were debated on the floor of Congress. It not only tells a story of the struggles of Depression-era America, but it also contains an underlying philosophical theme of the unity of all life that is defined through the words of the visionary ex-preacher Jim Casey. Casey states, "I figgered about the Holy Sperit and the Jesus road. I figgered, `Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, `maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit - the human sperit - the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of."

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The Grapes of Wrath
New York, The Heritage Press, 1940
Originally published: New York: Viking, 1939
Collection of the Pace University Library

This edition of the Grapes of Wrath contains lithographs by the artist Thomas Hart Benton. In this illustration, a girl picks at garbage in a “Hooverville,” the crudely built camps of the dispossessed and destitute during the Great Depression which were named for President Herbert Hoover.

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The Grapes of Wrath [videorecording]
Los Angeles: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 1996
Originally produced as a motion picture in 1940
Collection of the Pace University Library

John Ford won the Academy Award for Best Director in 1940 and Jane Darwell won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her depiction of Ma Joad in the film version of The Grapes of Wrath.

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America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction
New York: Viking, 2002
Collection of Brian Clay Jennings

This volume was published in commemoration of the Steinbeck centennial. It brings together his last book, America and Americans, with other nonfiction essays, articles, and commentaries.

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The Pearl
New York; Viking, 1947
Collection of the Pace University Library

In this simple parable, Steinbeck shows that the quest for money and riches ultimately leads to disappointment and tragedy. His protaganist, Kino is shown above throwing his pearl back to the ocean in an illustration by José Clemente Orozco.

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Steinbeck letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
June 24, 1940
from Steinbeck: A Life in Letters
New York, Viking, 1975
Collection of the Pace University Library

Steinbeck was a continuous writer of letters throughout his life. This letter to President Roosevelt shows his patriotic concern for America, as well as his sympathy for the international situation of all humans. The United States would not enter World War II for nearly another year and half, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

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Cannery Row
New York: Viking, Compass edition, 1968
Originally published: New York, Viking, 1945
Collection of the Pace University Library

Steinbeck wrote this humorous novel about men “on the row” in Monetery, California, after World War II. The main character is “Doc,” based on the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who became Steinbeck’s closest friend. In the final passage above, Doc recites part of the Sanskrit poem, Black Marigolds.

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Travels with Charley: In Search of America
New York: Viking, 1962
Collection of the Pace University Library

This travel book is the record of Steinbeck’s 1960 trip across America in a camper truck designed to his specifications with his French poodle, Charley. During his travels you learn about the beauty of America and its people, as well as the ugliness, most notably expressed in a scene depicting the discrimination and taunting of African American children attending schools in New Orleans. Above is the map of the journey from the inside cover.

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John Steinbeck: The Centennial Exhibit Bibliography

The Pace University library is proud to exhibit some of the works of the great American writer John Steinbeck in honor of the 100^th anniversary of his birth. We hope that this exhibit will spark an interest among our academic community in the enduring value of his work. We believe that his work contains many important and interesting features, including a unique focus on man’s relationship with nature and a compassion for the disenfranchised, but above all he is a great writer of the American people.

PRINT RESOURCES

· Astro, Richard. “John Steinbeck.” Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume Nine: American Novelists, 1910-1945, Part 3. 1981.

· Shillinglaw, Susan. “Steinbeck, John.” American National Biography. 1999.

WEB RESOURCES

· San Jose State University – Center for Steinbeck Studies: http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/steinbec/srchome.html

· The John Steinbeck Centennial Celebration: http://www.steinbeck100.org/

· National Steinbeck Center: http://www.steinbeck.org/MainFrame.html

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John Steinbeck Bibliography

NOVELS

Cup of Gold: A Life of Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, Robert McBride, 1929.
The Pastures of Heaven, Viking, 1932.
To a God Unknown, Viking, 1933.
Tortilla Flat, Viking, 1935.
In Dubious Battle, Viking, 1936.
Of Mice and Men, Viking, 1937.
The Red Pony, Covici, Friede, 1937.
The Grapes of Wrath, Viking, 1939.
The Forgotten Village, Viking, 1941.
The Moon Is Down, Viking, 1942.
Cannery Row, Viking, 1945.
The Wayward Bus, Viking, 1947.
The Pearl, Viking, 1947.
Burning Bright: A Play in Story Form, Viking, 1950.
East of Eden, Viking, 1952.
Sweet Thursday, Viking, 1954.
The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication, Viking, 1957.
The Winter of Our Discontent, Viking, 1961.

SHORT STORIES

Saint Katy the Virgin, Covici, Friede, 1936.
Nothing So Monstrous, Pynson Printers, 1936.

The Long Valley (contains fourteen short stories, including "The Red Pony," "Saint Katy the Virgin," Johnny Bear, and The Harness ), Viking, 1938.

How Edith McGillicuddy Met R. L. S., Rowfant Club (Cleveland), 1943.

The Crapshooter, Mercury Publications (New York), 1957.

PLAYS

(With George S. Kaufman) Of Mice and Men: A Play in Three Acts (based on novel of same title; first produced on Broadway at The Music Box Theatre, November 23, 1937), Viking, 1937.
The Moon Is Down: Play in Two Parts (based on novel of same title; first produced on Broadway at Martin Beck Theatre, April 7, 1942), Dramatists Play Service, 1942.
Burning Bright: Play in Three Acts (based on novel of same title; first produced on Broadway at Broadhurst Theatre, October 18, 1950), acting edition, Dramatists Play Service, 1951.

SCREENPLAYS

Forgotten Village (based on novel of same title), independently produced, 1939.
Lifeboat, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1944.
A Medal for Benny, Paramount, 1945.
The Pearl (based on novel of same title), RKO, 1948.
The Red Pony (based on novel of same title), Republic, 1949.
Viva Zapata! (produced by Twentieth Century-Fox, 1952), edited by Robert E. Morsberger, Viking, 1975.

OTHER

Their Blood Is Strong (factual story of migratory workers), Simon J. Lubin Society of California, 1938; published as The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath, Heyday, 1988.
A Letter to the Friends of Democracy, Overbrook Press, 1940.
(With Edward F. Ricketts) Sea of Cortez (description of expedition to Gulf of California), Viking, 1941.
Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team (account of life and training in U.S. Army Air Forces), Viking, 1942.
A Russian Journal (description of tour to Russia), photographs by Robert Capa, Viking, 1948.
Once There Was a War (collection of dispatches and anecdotes from World War II), Viking, 1958.
Travels with Charley: In Search of America, Viking, 1962.
Letters to Alicia (collection of newspaper columns written as a correspondent in Vietnam), [Garden City, NJ], 1965.
America and Americans (description of travels in United States), Viking, 1966.
Journal of a Novel: The "East of Eden" Letters, Viking, 1969.
Steinbeck: A Life in Letters (collection of correspondence), edited by wife, Elaine Steinbeck, and Robert Wallsten, Viking, 1975.
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights: From the Winchester Manuscripts of Thomas Malory and Other Sources, edited by Chase Horton, Farrar, Straus, 1976.
The Collected Poems of Amnesia Glasscock (poems published by Steinbeck under pseudonym Amnesia Glasscock in Monterey Beacon, January-February, 1935), Manroot Books (San Francisco), 1976.
Letters to Elizabeth: A Selection of Letters from John Steinbeck to Elizabeth Otis, edited by Florian J. Shasky and Susan F. Kiggs, Book Club of California (San Francisco), 1978.
Working Days: The Journals of the Grapes of Wrath, edited by Robert DeMott, Penguin, 1989.
America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction, Viking, 2002.

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Created by Brian Jennings
Revised 9/16/02