biography
| name: |
Steinbeck, John (Ernst)
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pseudonym Amnesia Glasscock
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pronunciation:
[stiynbek]
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1902–68)
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| biography:
| Writer, born in Salinas, California, USA. He studied sporadically at Stanford (1919–25) before working in New York City as a reporter and bricklayer. He returned to California and worked at a variety of jobs until he could support himself as a writer. His fourth novel, Tortilla Flat (1935), was the first to gain him any critical or financial recognition. It was followed by In Dubious Battle (1936), an account of a California strike, and his well-known moral fable, Of Mice and Men (1937), which was adapted for a successful stage play and film. He lived and worked with Oklahoma migrants who were heading for California (1937–9), and from that experience he forged what is considered his masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). The novel revealed, once again, his love of the land, sympathy for the human condition, and his intolerance of the corruption and exploitation of the weak by powerful commercial interests. He worked as a foreign correspondent during World War 2 and during the Vietnam War (1966–7). His critical reputation declined in his later years despite such popular works as the novel East of Eden (1952) and a travel/memoir, Travels with Charley (1962), but he had written a number of modern classics and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. |
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