Steinbeck1

	John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968 )
	John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968) came from – much-traveled forebears: His mother was the daughter of an Irish immigrant to the United States, and his father had moved from Florida to California. As a young man Steinbeck worked at a wide variety of jobs and wrote books that were barely noticed. His career changed drastically in 1939 when he wrote the novel "The Grapes of Wrath", which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. The heroes of this novel are migrant laborers, Oklahoma farmers displaced by drought and by the Great Depression, who set off across the country for the promised land of California. Steinbeck sought fame, but when it arrived, he tended to flee into anonymity--on the road or in Mexico. In 1962 he received the Nobel Prize, the highest award possible for a writer. Asked by a Life magazine reporter if he deserved it, Steinbeck said he was always afraid of the award because people never seemed to write anymore after they won it. "I wouldn't have accepted it", he said, "if I hadn't thought I could beat the rap." He didn't beat the rap. He died six years later, having published nothing more.
Open "Elements of Literature, Fourth Course" to Page 81 and read "from Travels With Charley"