John Steinbeck’s “realistic and imaginative writing, combining as it does sympathetic humor and keen social perception” earns the Salinas native the 1962 Nobel Prize for Literature, awarded on October 25.
The author of 27 books, including The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Cannery Row, Tortilla Flat and Of Mice and Men is a compromise choice by the Nobel Committee.
Steinbeck often uses Monterey and Salinas as settings for his novels but he’s also a war correspondent and pens a travelogue of a 1960 cross-country journey with his poodle, Charley.
In his Nobel acceptance speech, Steinbeck says that writers are “delegated to declare and to celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit – for gallantry in defeat – for courage, compassion and love. A writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man, has no dedication nor any membership in literature.” He was 66 when he died in 1968.