John Steinbeck, the Good Companion

John Steinbeck, the Good Companion PDF Author: Carlton Sheffield
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780887393501
Category : Novelists, American
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Chronicles the life of the American novelist through the eyes of a longtime friend and drinking companion, discussing Steinbeck's education, jobs, writing, and personality.

Readings on John Steinbeck

Readings on John Steinbeck PDF Author: Clarice Swisher
Publisher: Greenhaven Press, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
An anthology of critical essays that provide literary analysis and criticism of John Steinbeck's works along with a biography of the literary figure.

Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck

Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck PDF Author: William Souder
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393292274
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 435

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Book Description
Winner of the 2021 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2020 in Nonfiction A resonant biography of America’s most celebrated novelist of the Great Depression. The first full-length biography of the Nobel laureate to appear in a quarter century, Mad at the World illuminates what has made the work of John Steinbeck an enduring part of the literary canon: his capacity for empathy. Pulitzer Prize finalist William Souder explores Steinbeck’s long apprenticeship as a writer struggling through the depths of the Great Depression, and his rise to greatness with masterpieces such as The Red Pony, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath. Angered by the plight of the Dust Bowl migrants who were starving even as they toiled to harvest California’s limitless bounty, fascinated by the guileless decency of the downtrodden denizens of Cannery Row, and appalled by the country’s refusal to recognize the humanity common to all of its citizens, Steinbeck took a stand against social injustice—paradoxically given his inherent misanthropy—setting him apart from the writers of the so-called "lost generation." A man by turns quick-tempered, compassionate, and ultimately brilliant, Steinbeck could be a difficult person to like. Obsessed with privacy, he was mistrustful of people. Next to writing, his favorite things were drinking and womanizing and getting married, which he did three times. And while he claimed indifference about success, his mid-career books and movie deals made him a lot of money—which passed through his hands as quickly as it came in. And yet Steinbeck also took aim at the corrosiveness of power, the perils of income inequality, and the urgency of ecological collapse, all of which drive public debate to this day. Steinbeck remains our great social realist novelist, the writer who gave the dispossessed and the disenfranchised a voice in American life and letters. Eloquent, nuanced, and deeply researched, Mad at the World captures the full measure of the man and his work.

Critical Companion to John Steinbeck

Critical Companion to John Steinbeck PDF Author: Jeffrey D. Schultz
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1438108508
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Celebrates the American writer who in his works confronted and explored the social fabric of the United States in the early 20th century. More than 500 entries include synopses of his novels, short stories, and nonfiction; descriptions of his characters, details about family, friends, and associates.

Travels with Charley in Search of America

Travels with Charley in Search of America PDF Author: John Steinbeck
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780140187410
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers A Penguin Classic In September 1960, John Steinbeck embarked on a journey across America. He felt that he might have lost touch with the country, with its speech, the smell of its grass and trees, its color and quality of light, the pulse of its people. To reassure himself, he set out on a voyage of rediscovery of the American identity, accompanied by a distinguished French poodle named Charley; and riding in a three-quarter-ton pickup truck named Rocinante. His course took him through almost forty states: northward from Long Island to Maine; through the Midwest to Chicago; onward by way of Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana (with which he fell in love), and Idaho to Seattle, south to San Francisco and his birthplace, Salinas; eastward through the Mojave, New Mexico, Arizona, to the vast hospitality of Texas, to New Orleans and a shocking drama of desegregation; finally, on the last leg, through Alabama, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey to New York. Travels with Charley in Search of America is an intimate look at one of America's most beloved writers in the later years of his life—a self-portrait of a man who never wrote an explicit autobiography. Written during a time of upheaval and racial tension in the South—which Steinbeck witnessed firsthand—Travels with Charley is a stunning evocation of America on the eve of a tumultuous decade. This Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction by Jay Parini. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Oxford Literature Companions: Of Mice and Men

Oxford Literature Companions: Of Mice and Men PDF Author: Carmel Waldron
Publisher: Oxford University Press - Children
ISBN: 019836895X
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
Easy to use in the classroom or as a tool for revision, the Oxford Literature Companions provide student-friendly analysis of a range of popular set texts. Each book offers a lively, engaging approach to the text, covering characters, themes, language and contexts, whilst also providing a range of varied and in-depth activities to deepen understanding and encourage close work with the text. Each book also includes a comprehensive Skills and Practice section, which provides detailed advice on assessment and a bank of exam-style questions and annotated sample student answers. This guide covers 'Of Mice and Men' by John Steinbeck.

A Journey into Steinbeck's California

A Journey into Steinbeck's California PDF Author: Susan Shillinglaw
Publisher: Roaring Forties Press
ISBN: 0984625461
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
This part art book, part biography, and part travel guide offers insight into how landscapes and townscapes influenced John Steinbeck's creative process and how, in turn, his legacy has influenced modern California. Various types of readers will appreciate the information in this guide—literary pilgrims will learn more about the state featured so prominently in Steinbeck's work, tourists can visit the same buildings that he lived in and wrote about, and historians will appreciate the engrossing perspective on daily life in early and mid 20th-century California. Offering an entirely new perspective on Steinbeck and the people and places that he brought to life in his writing, this edition includes a wonderful variety of photographs, sketches, and paintings, including some from private, rarely seen collections. With a new preface from the author, updated details on featured websites, a new discussion on Steinbeck’s ecological interests and activities, and an extended exploration of his many travels to Mexico, readers will find delight in this depiction of the symbiotic relationship between an author and his favorite places.

Olympus, Texas

Olympus, Texas PDF Author: Stacey Swann
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 1984897403
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick! • A bighearted novel with technicolor characters, plenty of Texas swagger, and a powder keg of a plot in which marriages struggle, rivalries flare, and secrets explode, all with a clever wink toward classical mythology. For fans of Madeline Miller's Circe: "The Iliad meets Friday Night Lights in this muscular, captivating debut" (Oprah Daily). The Briscoe family is once again the talk of their small town when March returns to East Texas two years after he was caught having an affair with his brother's wife. His mother, June, hardly welcomes him back with open arms. Her husband's own past affairs have made her tired of being the long-suffering spouse. Is it, perhaps, time for a change? Within days of March's arrival, someone is dead, marriages are upended, and even the strongest of alliances are shattered. In the end, the ties that hold them together might be exactly what drag them all down. An expansive tour de force, Olympus, Texas cleverly weaves elements of classical mythology into a thoroughly modern family saga, rich in drama and psychological complexity. After all, at some point, don't we all wonder: What good is this destructive force we call love?

John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts

John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts PDF Author: Richard Astro
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780972197403
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Edward F. Ricketts, a marine biologist who lived on the Monterey waterfront in California, was a close friend of John Steinbeck, the novelist. As Professor Astro makes clear, no analysis of Steinbeck?s writing can proceed without a careful study of the life, work, and ideas of Ricketts, who was Steinbeck?s closest personal and intellectual companion for nearly two decades.Ricketts went to California from Chicago in 1923, and from that time until his death in 1948 he operated a biological supply house at Pacific Grove. Steinbeck and Ricketts met in 1930 and struck an immediate friendship. Together they planned a handbook on the marine invertebrates of the San Francisco Bay region. Although this project was never carried out, it paved the way for another venture, a collecting expedition to the Gulf of California which resulted in their collaboration on Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research, the published record of that trip. As Professor Astro points out, Ricketts served, in varying degrees, as the source of characters in six of Steinbeck?s novels and novelettes and one short story. Perhaps more importantly, the author shows that many of Steinbeck?s central thematic tenets were provided by Ricketts? passion for holistic and ecological thinking, his associational beliefs about the behavior of men and animals in groups, and his disdain for the acquisition of material wealth. But, he warns, ?to say that all of Steinbeck?s concern with science in general and with marine biology in particular came directly from Ricketts is to distort the facts.?By analyzing the range and depth of Ricketts? impact on Steinbeck?s fiction, this book places a major writer in fresh perspective.Richard Astro is an associate professor of English at Oregon State University.

The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer

The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer PDF Author: Jackson J. Benson
Publisher: New York : Viking Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1196

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Book Description
Reveals the dimensions of the man and the events of his life as he pursued his artistic vocation.

A Political Companion to John Steinbeck

A Political Companion to John Steinbeck PDF Author: Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813142032
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Though he was a recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature, American novelist John Steinbeck (1902--1968) has frequently been censored. Even in the twenty-first century, nearly ninety years after his work first appeared in print, Steinbeck's novels, stories, and plays still generate controversy: his 1937 book Of Mice and Men was banned in some Mississippi schools in 2002, and as recently as 2009, he made the American Library Association's annual list of most frequently challenged authors. A Political Companion to John Steinbeck examines the most contentious political aspects of the author's body of work, from his early exploration of social justice and political authority during the Great Depression to his later positions regarding domestic and international threats to American policies. Featuring contemporaneous and present-day interpretations of his novels and essays by historians, literary scholars, and political theorists, this book covers the spectrum of Steinbeck's writing, exploring everything from his place in American political culture to his seeming betrayal of his leftist principles in later years.