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Steinbeck John 1902 - 1968 (66)

When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people.”


QUOTES

The grapes

of Wrath

TO THE RED COUNTRY and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated...

John Ernst Steinbeck was an American writer who remarkably described, among other things, the hard struggle of immigrants and workers during the recession in America. He was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California, a small rural town. His father was German and his mother had Irish roots and a passion for reading. In the summers, John worked at nearby farms and drew many experiences from the lives of immigrants and farmers. In 1919 he finished school and went at Stanford University but he never finished it as he dream was to become a writer. He went to New York for this purpose, wrote novels and did various works to survive, eventually he failed to publish one of his novels and returned to California. In 1929 his first novel was published without much success. In 1930 he married his first wife and his father gave him a house and some money so he could write intact.

After a few books of no great value, in 1935 he made his first success with the novel, “the Tortilla Plain”. In the following years he wrote his most important works: "People and Mice" (1937) and "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939). He became rich and famous and bought a big farm. In 1940 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and in 1943 he worked as a war correspondent in Europe and got married to his second wife; they had two children and divorced in the 1950s. The same day of his divorce he married his third wife with whom he stayed until his death. In 1952 he wrote “East of Eden” which he considered as his best work. Many of his works were adapted for the theater or the cinema some of them with his collaboration. He wrote more than 25 books and in 1962 he received the Nobel Prize. He died in 1968 of heart failure; as it was discovered at the autopsy, his coronary arteries were completely clogged.