John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck (1966)

John Ernst Steinbeck (born February 27, 1902 in Salinas , California , † December 20, 1968 in New York City ) was one of the most widely read American writers of the 20th century. He wrote numerous novels , short stories , short stories and screenplays , worked for a time as a journalist and in 1943 was a war correspondent in the Second World War . In 1940 he received the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Fruits of Wrath and in 1962 the Nobel Prize in Literature .

biography

Origin and youth

132 Central Avenue, Salinas, this is where Steinbeck spent his childhood

Three of John Steinbeck's four grandparents were immigrants from Europe. His paternal grandfather was the carpenter Johann Adolph Großsteinbeck, who was supposed to shorten his name to Steinbeck in America. He came from Heiligenhaus near Düsseldorf , where a Grossensteinbeck estate still exists today. In 1852, on a trip to Palestine, he met his future wife, the American missionary daughter Almira Dickson. With her he moved first to Massachusetts , later to Florida and - after deserting from the Confederate Army during the Civil War - to California . There he settled as a dairy farmer. The adventurous and unsteady life of Johann Adolph later inspired his grandson to play the character of Adam Trask in “Jenseits von Eden”.

In this novel, he also set a literary monument to his maternal grandparents: Samuel Hamilton from Ballykelly in Northern Ireland and his wife Elizabeth Fagen. The two ran a farm near King City . Like most of his novels and stories, “Beyond Eden” takes place in the area around Salinas and Monterey , now known as “Steinbeck Country” , around 150 kilometers south of San Francisco . John Steinbeck and his sisters Elizabeth, Esther and Mary grew up in Salinas.

Her parents were John Ernst Steinbeck and the teacher Olive Hamilton. The father had initially run a mill, which went bankrupt in 1910, which caused the family to run into financial difficulties. As an accountant at a sugar factory and finally as treasurer of Monterey County , John Ernst Steinbeck came back to modest prosperity and took a respectable position in Salinas.

John Steinbeck showed a keen interest in literature as a schoolboy and began to write stories himself. In 1919 he successfully applied to study at the prestigious Stanford University , where he took courses in English literature , classical literature and ancient history , journalism and other subjects that appeared useful to him for a career as a writer. This included one on short story writing , which can be considered one of the first creative writing courses in American universities. Admission to a private elite university, which seemed to guarantee social advancement, initially raised high expectations for him and his parents. Soon, however, Steinbeck was disappointed in academic life, and in some cases probably overwhelmed, and delved into extensive reading on his own. During the semester break he worked for longer and longer periods on farms, construction sites, factories and other industries. In 1924 he left Stanford for good without a degree. The studies were far less formative for him and his work than the odd jobs with which he had financed it. Because in these he got to know the milieu of the people who would later be at the center of many of his works.

Literary beginnings

In 1925 Steinbeck went to New York as a journalist and freelance writer, but was not well received there. Therefore, he soon returned to California, where he lived from casual work as in his student days. In 1929 he published his first novel: Cup of Gold (Eng. A handful of gold ), a biography of the English privateer Henry Morgan . But this as well as the next two works went almost unnoticed by the critics. Steinbeck and his first wife, Carol Henning, whom he married in 1930, lived in financially difficult circumstances alternately in San Francisco , in Eagle Rock near Los Angeles and in his parents' holiday home in Pacific Grove near Monterey .

Steinbeck experienced his first success in 1935 with the "episodic novel" Tortilla Flat , in which he describes the life of a clique of poor but fun-loving Hispanic Americans based on the example of King Arthur's mythical round table .

The author of the New Deal

After the publication of his novel In Dubious Battle (Eng. Stormy Harvest ), which has a farm workers' strike as the subject, Steinbeck accepted in 1936 the order of the newspaper San Francisco News , a series of articles about uprooted migrant workers from the " Dust Bowl ", the drought areas of the middle West of the US to write. Throngs of " Okies ", completely impoverished former farmers from Oklahoma , moved to California looking for jobs. The experience Steinbeck in the research on this topic gathered, went to his two works one to impress the critics and the public most today: the novella Of Mice and Men 1937 (dt. Of Mice and Men ) and the socially critical novel The Grapes of Wrath from 1939 (German fruits of anger ).

This novel, made into a film by John Ford shortly afterwards (see below), was initially rejected many times as being class warfare and was even temporarily banned in California. Steinbeck never saw himself as a socialist in the dogmatic sense , although he had strong sympathy for the political left and had visited the Soviet Union for the first time in 1937 . He was a staunch supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's “ New Deal ” policy , who invited Steinbeck to the White House twice over the next few years . Despite all hostility, the fruits of anger brought its author the renowned Pulitzer Prize in 1940 . Due to its realistic portrayal of the misery of migrant workers, the book is still considered not only a great literary work, but also a first-rate historical source. In its effect on politics and legislation, it can be compared with Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and with Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (see also Great Depression ). In 1939 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

In World War II

At the latest after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and America's entry into the war, Steinbeck felt obliged to support the fight against National Socialist Germany in his own way. So he willingly accepted an invitation from the newly founded "Foreign Information Service" (FIS) in Washington, DC (which was supposed to coordinate the propaganda and had already won the writers Thornton Wilder and Robert E. Sherwood to collaborate), a project suitable for propaganda purposes to develop - from which then in 1942 the play The Moon Is Down (Eng. The moon went down ) became, a striking propaganda piece . Processed into a novel, the work was published in Switzerland in 1943. Translations printed and distributed underground in many of the National Socialist-occupied European countries did not fail to have an impact.

At the same time there was a marital crisis in Steinbeck's private life. In 1941 he met the twenty-year-old singer Gwendolyn "Gwyn" Conger in Hollywood, where he worked on the film adaptation of The Fruits of Anger , and began an affair with her that eventually led to the separation from Carol. He moved to New York with Gwyn in early 1943, and they married in March. Soon there was a first crisis between the two, whereupon Steinbeck was hired as a war reporter at the New York Herald Tribune to be sent to Europe. First, however, he still wrote a screenplay for a film about the training of American bomber pilots (Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team) as well as Alfred Hitchcock the first draft of the script to the war drama Lifeboat (dt. The lifeboat ) that the 20th Century Fox then Released in 1944 in a version heavily criticized by Steinbeck. From June to October 1943 Steinbeck worked as a war correspondent in World War II . He witnessed the landing of the Allies in Italy and wrote reports about it as well as his diary notes under the title Once there was a War (Eng. At the gates of hell ). Just as sensitively as the working class milieus before, Steinbeck now described the everyday life of the soldiers - not as a heroic story, but as a desperate attempt to survive in constant danger.

After the war

Ed Ricketts' laboratory on Cannery Row , Monterey

In 1944 Steinbeck moved back to Monterey with his wife and their first son Thomas - the second, John, was born in 1946. As early as 1930 he made friends there with the marine biologist Ed Ricketts , who showed him the ecological interrelationships of life and was very important for his view of the world. With the figure of Doc Steinbeck in 1945 put him in the novel Cannery Row (dt. Cannery Row ) and 1947 in its sequel Sweet Thursday (dt. Blissful Thursday ) a literary monument. A third time appears Doc in the report on their joint trip to Baja California in Mexico, The Log from the Sea of Cortez (dt. Logbook of life ). After 1945, Steinbeck found it increasingly difficult to build on the successes of the pre-war period. Many critics wanted to see just variations on the theme of Tortilla Flat in Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday .

Steinbeck followed the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals before the International Military Tribunal in 1945 from the press box. In 1947 he traveled with his wife through Scandinavia and France . After another visit to the Soviet Union in 1947, this time with the photographer Robert Capa , the travelogue was A Russian Journal (dt. Russian Diary ). The death of his longtime friend Ed Ricketts in May 1948 was followed by the separation from Gwyn in August and the divorce that same year. In 1949 Steinbeck met the self-confident Texan Elaine Anderson Scott, who became known as a theater director on Broadway and then went to Hollywood . In 1950 he married her and moved to New York again with her and her daughter.

This was followed by restless years with long journeys through North Africa, Southern and Western Europe until John Steinbeck in 1952 once again made a major literary litter: The epic novel East of Eden (dt. East of Eden ) tells the story of the families Trask and Hamilton from the Civil War until the First World War . In the same year the film Viva Zapata! finished, for which Steinbeck had written the script: a film about the Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata , directed by Elia Kazan with Marlon Brando in the title role. The same director then filmed Beyond Eden three years later with the young James Dean .

The last few years

In 1954, John Steinbeck received the US President's Medal of Freedom . In the same year, he suffered his first minor stroke while on a trip to Europe . In the late 1950s he lived and Elaine temporarily in English Somerset , where he worked on a modern version of the Arthurian legend worked, The Acts of King Arthur and his noble Knights (dt. King Arthur ), which remained unfinished.

Steinbeck spent the last years of his life - weather permitting - on his remote and well-hidden small fishing estate in Sag Harbor on Long Island . From there, in the fall of 1960, he set off on a tour of the United States in a van converted into a motorhome. His report on this trip, on which he was only accompanied by his poodle Charley, he published in 1961 as a series of articles and in 1962 as a book under the title Travels with Charley: In Search of America (Eng. Die Reise mit Charley: Auf der Suche nach Amerika ). In it, Steinbeck takes a critical look at American society - similar to 1966 in America and Americans (dt. America and the Americans ). In Sag Harbor in 1962 he received the news of the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he received as the sixth American.

In the sixties he supported President Lyndon B. Johnson for his project of a socially just " Great Society ". The legal abolition of racial segregation and improved social legislation were demands that Steinbeck had advocated since the 1930s. However, his personal friendship with Johnson meant that he was one of the few intellectuals of the time who advocated the Vietnam War . This led to a falling out with his son John, who as a war correspondent in Vietnam had become a staunch pacifist .

Steinbeck's grave in Salinas

In 1967 Steinbeck took a trip to Vietnam himself, but returned a sick man and was no longer able to write. On December 20, 1968, he died of heart failure in New York. His ashes were buried in the cemetery in his hometown of Salinas.

To Steinbeck's work

John Steinbeck is one of the most widely read American authors of the 20th century both inside and outside the United States. In 1962 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature “for his unique realistic and imaginative storytelling, characterized by compassionate humor and social acumen” . His books, The Fruits of Wrath and Of Mice and Men , have been removed from public libraries several times due to their style and choice of words, and the American Library Association includes them on its list of the classics most banned in North America.

Style and themes

Steinbeck cultivated a naturalistic and realistic style, which did not shy away from echoes of the fantastic. His characters are often people on the fringes of society, whom he always portrays with empathy and sympathy from their own point of view. Steinbeck describes the staff at Cannery Row as follows:

“Whores, sons of whores, matchmakers, streamers and gamblers, in one word: people. One could just as well say: saints, angels, believers, martyrs - it only depends on the point of view. "

In his early works in particular, Steinbeck campaigned vehemently for the poor and the disenfranchised, for agricultural workers and small farmers. For example, Stormy Harvest , anticipating the fruits of anger , is the haunting portrayal of a strike by poor farm workers for higher wages. Although Steinbeck was anything but a dogmatic left, he was considered a "radical" in conservative circles in the 1930s and 1940s. Some critics later accused him of portraying the poor too idealistically and poverty too romantic. This is by no means true of his first great novel.

Grapes of Wrath

In 1938 Steinbeck accepted a newspaper assignment to write a series of articles about the uprooted peasants and farm workers who were moving in large numbers from Oklahoma to California at the time . This then became his most important novel in 1939: The Grapes of Wrath (Eng. Fruits of Wrath ). It describes the fate of the Joad family, who lost their farm to a bank after a drought of several years in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl and set off for California with their last belongings to work as migrant workers on orchards. But the dream of building a new existence is shattered by the exploitation, xenophobia and lack of solidarity that the Joads encounter everywhere. Farmers become beggars. Nonetheless, the Joads desperately try to preserve a remnant of human dignity even in misery. The book was filmed a year later, in 1940, by John Ford with Henry Fonda in the lead role.

Beyond Eden

While the Fruits of Wrath is Steinbeck's most important novel, the family saga Beyond Eden is his most popular. Not social injustice but the abysses of the human soul itself appear here as the source of all evil. The main character of the epic work is Adam Trask, who settles as a rich farmer in California towards the end of the 19th century, but is left there by his wife Cathy and has to raise his sons alone. The Old Testament story of Cain and Abel seems almost inevitable to repeat itself in the opposing twin brothers Caleb and Aron . But the message of the novel is that there is no predetermined fate and everyone has the freedom to choose whether to behave morally or immorally, good or bad. On a second narrative level, which is about the Hamiltons, Steinbeck processed the story of his own family on his mother's side. - Elia Kazan's film adaptation of Beyond Eden , with James Dean in the role of Caleb, focuses exclusively on the second half of the book and instead of Adam Trask focuses on the story of his two sons.

Of mice and humans

In addition to the monumental novels, the novella Von Mäusen und Menschen from 1937 is particularly popular. It tells the story of two migrant workers, the strong, mentally retarded but good-natured Lennie and his friend George, who protects him. Her dream of a better life tragically fails due to reality and the incomprehension of those around her. The novella was adapted for a stage performance on Broadway in its year of publication and later filmed several times, most recently in 1992 with Gary Sinise and John Malkovich in the roles of George and Lennie. In 1970 the composer Carlisle Floyd turned the material into an opera.

The sardine road and a happy Thursday

The sardine road , published in 1945, is one of Steinbeck's happiest and most optimistic works. It isdedicated tohis friend Ed Ricketts , the role model for Doc, the main character in the novel. Steinbeck describes the little world around the street of the sardine factories, the Cannery Row , of Monterey in California and the increasingly insane attempts of a group of lovable drifter, scroungers and bon vivants to give their friend and patron Doc a party. In 1982 the novel was filmed with Nick Nolte in the leading role. Parts of the plot of the following novel Happy Thursday were alsoincluded. While Cannery Row is set in the 1930s at the time of the Great Depression, Sweet Thursday is set immediately after the end of World War II. Mack and the boys, the protagonists of Cannery Row, are now doing everything possible to set Doc up with a young woman named Suzy.

The trip with Charley

Steinbeck's vehicle “ Rocinante ”, exhibited in the National Steinbeck Center, Salinas

The book Die Reise mit Charley , published in 1962, occupies a special position in Steinbeck's work. With its subtitle In Search of America, it is not only a travel book, but also a reflection on Steinbeck's relationship to America. After suffering another stroke in 1959, this time slightly more serious than the one in 1954, in the summer of 1960 he felt an urgent need to rediscover his own country. So he had a small truck converted into a practical mobile home and at the end of September, accompanied only by his ten-year-old poodle Charley, set out on a nearly three-month trip around the United States: from Long Island up to the northern tip of Maine , then along the Canadian border to Seattle , down the Pacific coast to his old home Salinas and Monterey, then through the southern United States back to New York.

The encounters and conversations with the people he met en route are portrayed so vividly that they often result in downright short stories , alternating with reflections on landscape and history, literature and politics that are repeatedly shown. Steinbeck's “Search for America” does not lead to a positive result, towards the end even his growing concern about the observed political and social tendencies outweighs it, but despite or perhaps because of its road movie structure, the book conveys a multifaceted picture of the USA at the beginning of the 1960s . Exactly 50 years later, the Dutch author Geert Mak traveled on Steinbeck's route through the USA to record how the country had changed since that time.

Steinbeck as an ecologist and a forerunner of “green” thinking

Even as a teenager, Steinbeck had a pronounced feeling for nature and the environment as determining forces in people's lives. As a student, he took a summer course in marine biology in 1923, which taught him the basic idea of ecology , according to which all parts of nature, including humans, are organically linked. In the years after graduation, he often wandered alone for months through the isolated forests and mountains around Lake Tahoe in Northern California, where he tended a house. In Monterey in 1930 he met the marine biologist Ed Ricketts , who became his best friend and greatest teacher in questions of ecology, and whom he immortalized as "Doc" in Cannery Row (German: The Sardine Street ). After a joint research trip with Ricketts to Baja California in Mexico , Steinbeck wrote the travel diary Sea of ​​Cortez (Eng. The Log of Life ). In it he sets out the basic principle of the organic unity of all life and applies it to the behavior of individuals and groups in society. According to Steinbeck's deepest conviction, man is not master of nature, but a part of it, alongside animals, plants, minerals, etc. In his work, he often depicts man as a driven being, caught up in his biological physicality, who does not succeed in to rise heroically or spiritually above nature. He did not see him as a self-determined individual, but as a member of an ecological whole. This is probably one of the reasons why leading literary critics in the USA have until recently treated him with reserve or even openly disapproval. Steinbeck's view of man also differed from that of most intellectuals of his time, such as that of Ernest Hemingway , who was a few years his senior . Steinbeck is not, as is sometimes said, something like his younger brother, but downright his spiritual antipode .

This is particularly evident in Steinbeck's late book Die Reise mit Charley . His most impressive descriptions include natural phenomena such as the Sequoia Forests in Northern California or the Mojave Desert . In the chapter about the desert he tells, among other things, how he once in the midday heat, sitting in the shade of his mobile home, aimed his new precision hunting rifle at two coyotes, looked at them for a long time through the telescopic sight, imagined their death and then put the rifle down to give them two cans of dog food instead. In the end, after describing living beings that can still exist even in the most hostile environment, he comes to the following conclusion:

“The desert, an inhospitable region, could very well be life's last nest of resistance against non-life. Because in the rich and humid and warm regions of the world, life speculates with ever greater commitment against itself and in its confusion has finally allied itself with the enemy non-life. And what the burning, scorching, freezing and poisoning weapons of non-life have not yet achieved, the perverted survival tactics will perhaps drive to final destruction and annihilation. If the most adaptable form of life, man, continues to struggle for survival as it has so far, it can wipe out not only itself but all other life as well. And if that were to become apparent, inhospitable areas like the desert could become the strict mother of repopulation. Because the desert inhabitants are well trained and well equipped against desertification. Even our own misguided species could emerge from the desert. The lonely man and his sun-tanned wife, huddled in the shadows in a barren, inhospitable place, could train all of them with their brothers in arms - the coyote, the jackrabbit , the iguana, the rattlesnake, and an army of armored insects - and tried fragments of life could very well be life's last hope against non-life. The desert has already produced other miracles. "

Works

Novels and short stories

• Cup of Gold: A Life of Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, With Occasional Reference to History , 1932 ( A handful of gold , translated by Hans B. Wagenseil, 1953)
• The Pastures of Heaven , 1932 (German: The Valley of Heaven , translated by Hans-Ulrich Staub, 1954)
• To A God Unknown , 1933 (German: The Stranger God , translated by Hans B. Wagenseil, 1954)
• Tortilla Flat , 1935 (German Tortilla Flat , translated by Elisabeth Rotten , 1943)
• In Dubious Battle , 1936 (German stormy harvest , translated by Alfred Kuoni, 1955)
• Of Mice and Men , 1937 (German: Von Mäusen und Menschen , translated by Elisabeth Rotten, 1940; newly translated by Mirjam Pressler , 2002)
• The Long Valley , 1938 (Ger. The red pony and other stories , translated by Rudolf Frank, 1945)
• The Grapes of Wrath , 1939 (German-language first edition Frucht des Zorns , translated by Klaus Lambrecht, Humanitas Verlag Zurich 1940).
• The Moon Is Down , 1942 (German The moon went down , translated by Anna Katharina Rehmann-Salten , 1943)
• Cannery Row , 1945 (German: The Sardine Street , translated by Rudolf Frank, 1946)
• The Wayward Bus , Roman, 1947 (German bus on side roads , translated by Rose Richter, 1948)
• The Pearl , 1947 (German: Die Perle , translated by Felix Horst, 1949 Diana Verlag Zurich)
• Burning Bright , Novelle, 1950 (German: The wild flame , translated by Ilse Krämer , 1952)
• East of Eden , 1952 (German Beyond Eden , translated by Harry Kahn , 1953)
• Sweet Thursday , 1954 (German Happy Thursday , translated by Harry Kahn, 1956)
• The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication , 1957 (German-language EA Let's Play King , translated by Harry Kahn, Diana Verlag Zurich 1958)
• The Winter of Our Discontent , Roman, 1961 (German EA money brings money , translated by Harry Kahn, 1962; new edition Der Winter Our Displeasure , translated by Bernhard Robben , Manesse, Munich 2018)
• The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, From the Winchester Manuscripts of Malory and Others , 1976 (German King Arthur and the heroic deeds of the knights of his round table , translated by Christian Spiel, 1987)

Journalistic and essayistic writings

• The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath (Reportagen, 1936), 1988, ISBN 978-0-8095-4963-4 (German Harvest Gypsies: On the way to the fruits of anger , translated by Wolfgang Astelbauer, 1997 )
• Sea of ​​Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research , with Ed Ricketts , 1941
• Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team , 1942
• A Russian Journal , 1948 with Robert Capa
  • German: Russian trip , trans. v. Susann Urban, Edition Büchergilde, Frankfurt am Main / Vienna / Zurich 2011 ISBN 978-3-7632-6398-1
• The Log from the Sea of ​​Cortez , 1951 (German logbook of life , translated by Rudolf Frank, 1963; newly translated by Henning Ahrens , Mare Verlag, Hamburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-86648-259-3 )
• Once There Was A War , 1958 ( At the gates of hell , translated by Hans Jürgen Jacobs, 1989)
• Travels With Charley: In Search of America , 1962 (German: My journey with Charley , translated by Iris and Rolf Hellmut Foerster , 1962; newly translated udT Die Reise mit Charley: Auf der Suche nach Amerika , from English and with an afterword by Burkhart Kroeber , 2002; dtv 2007)
• America and Americans , 1966 (German America and the Americans , translated by Liselotte Moser and Roswitha Plancherel-Walter, 1966)
• Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters , 1969 (German diary of a novel , translated by Fritz Güttinger, 1970)
• Working Days: The Journal of "The Grapes of Wrath" (1938–41) , 1988

Scripts

• 1941 - The Forgotten Village (documentary)
• 1943 - Lifeboat (Eng. The lifeboat ) - Director: Alfred Hitchcock
• 1947 - The Pearl (German Mexican Romance ) - directed by Emilio Fernández
• 1949 - The Red Pony (Eng. Gabilan, my best friend ) - Director: Lewis Milestone
• 1952 - Viva Zapata! (German as well) - Director: Elia Kazan
• 1952 - O'Henry's Full House (German four pearls )

Film adaptations

• 1939 - Of Mice and Men (dt. Of Mice and Men ) - Director: Lewis Milestone
• 1940 - The Grapes of Wrath (Eng. Fruits of Wrath ) - Director: John Ford
• 1955 - East of Eden (dt. East of Eden ) - Director: Elia Kazan
• 1957 - The Wayward Bus (eng. Where all roads end ) - Director: Victor Vicas
• 1973 - The Red Pony (Ger. Tilby has the last word ) - Director: Robert Totten
• 1981 - Cannery Row - Director: David S. Ward
• 1981 East of Eden (Six Part TV Series) - Director: Harvey Hart
• 1992 - Of Mice and Men (dt. Of Mice and Men ) - Director: Gary Sinise
• 2012 - Best Laid Plans , a free adaptation of Of Mice and Men - Director: David Blair
• 2016 - In Dubious Battle (German Stormy Harvest) - Director: James Franco

Oscar nominations

Steinbeck was nominated three times for an Oscar for his work as a screenwriter , two of them in the category Best Original Story and once for Best Original Screenplay :

• Academy Awards 1945 : The Lifeboat
• Academy Awards 1946 : A Medal for Benny , together with Jack Wagner
• Academy Awards 1953 : Viva Zapata!

Secondary literature

• Jackson J. Benson: The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer. Viking Press, New York 1984; Penguin Books 1990, ISBN 0-14-014417-X .
• Jay Parini: John Steinbeck. A biography. Minerva, London 1994, Holt, New York 1995. ISBN 0-8050-1673-2
• Annette Pehnt: John Steinbeck. dtv, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-423-31010-3 , (= dtv 31010 - dtv portrait ).
• Evelyn Runge: John Steinbeck, Dorothea Lange and the Great Depression. Social criticism in literature and photography. M-Press, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-89975-579-0 (also diploma thesis at the University of Munich 2006).

documentary

• The great literary tour. John Steinbecks USA. Documentary, Germany, 2016, 59 min., Book: Hartmut Kasper , director: Jascha Hannover, André Schäfer, production: Florianfilm, MDR , RB , rbb , SWR , WDR , arte , series: Die große Literatour , first broadcast: April 5th 2017 at arte, summary of arte with short videos.

Web links

Commons : John Steinbeck  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: John Steinbeck  - Quotes

• Literature by and about John Steinbeck in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about John Steinbeck  in the German Digital Library
• John Steinbeck in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Information from the Nobel Foundation on the awarding of the 1962 award to John Steinbeck (English)
• Critical Resources: John Steinbeck (English)
• National Steinbeck Center (English)
• Steinbeck Estate in Pacific Grove (English)
• Information about John Steinbeck especially for schools on the education server SwissEduc (English)
• Oleg Jurjew : Juryev 's classic. Everything is so calm here. In: Der Tagesspiegel . August 13, 2011

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jay Parini: John Steinbeck. A biography. New York 1995, pp. 16-19.
2. ↑ Jay Parini: John Steinbeck. A biography. New York 1995, p. 13 f.
3. ↑ Jay Parini: John Steinbeck. A biography. New York 1995, p. 21 f.
4. ↑ Jay Parini: John Steinbeck. A biography. New York 1995, p. 34.
5. ^ Members: John E. Steinbeck. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 27, 2019 . 
6. ↑ Barbara Schneider: War, Pogrom, Murder in the Dock. In: Nordbayerischer Kurier . November 20, 2015, p. 4, beginning of article.
7. ↑ Steinbeck: A Life in Letters. Penguin Books, 1976, ISBN 0-14-004288-1 , pp. 311-319.
8. ↑ Alexander Randa (ed.): Handbuch der Weltgeschichte. Olten u. Freiburg 1962, col. 2343.
9. ^ Banned and / or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. In: American Library Association (ALA), Office for Intellectual Freedom , 2017, giving reasons for removal from schools and libraries.
10. ^ Banned & Challenged Classics. In: Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association , 2017.
11. ↑ Geert Mak : America. In search of the land of opportunity. Siedler Verlag, Munich 2012.
12. ↑ More details on this in: Jackson J. Benson: John Steinbeck, Writer. A biography. Penguin 1990, p. 63 ff .; see. also the anthology Steinbeck and the Environment , ed. Susan Shillinglaw et al., University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa 1997.
13. ↑ https://www.bonaventura.blog/2018/john-steinbeck-der-winter-unseres-missvergnuegens/ discussion 'The winter of our displeasure' at Bonaventura, accessed June 21, 2020.

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on August 17, 2006 .