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10 Things You Might Not Know About John Steinbeck — Simply Charly
1. The actual family name of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author (1902–1968) was “Grossteinbeck,” which his paternal grandfather shortened to “Steinbeck” when he first came to the United States from Germany.
2. According to his biographer Jay Parini, the Steinbeck family home in Salinas, CA was a large Victorian house with maids and servants. Yet, he always identified with social causes and hardships experienced by the working class and migrant workers. These are the most common themes in his novels, including The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row.
3. Illness and accidents plagued Steinbeck from an early age. He suffered from pleural pneumonia, kidney infection, detached retina, shattered knee cup, stroke, and back injury.
4. Before becoming an established writer, Steinbeck held a number of jobs, both in his native California and in New York, where he moved in the mid-1920s. He worked as a farmhand, painter’s apprentice, and construction worker.
5. Steinbeck’s first novels went unnoticed. It was his fourth work, Tortilla Flat (1935) that propelled him into the public’s eye.
6. Steinbeck preferred to write by hand than on a typewriter. It is said he used 300 pencils to write East of Eden.
