This book aims to both describe and analyze the way Steinbeck learned the writing craft. It
begins with his immersion in the short story some years after he stopped attending Stanford
University. Aside from a weak first novel his professional writing career began with the
publication in 1932 of The Pastures of Heaven stories set in the Salinas Valley and dedicated
to his parents. From that book he wrote truly commanding stories such as The Red Pony.
Intermixed with Steinbeck's journalism about California's labor difficulties his writing skill
led to his 1930 masterpieces Of Mice and Men In Dubious Battle and The Grapes of Wrath. The
latter novel winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1940 led eventually to his being
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. He continued producing such wide-ranging works
as The Pearl East of Eden The Winter of Our Discontent and Travels with Charley up to just a
few months before his death in 1968.
