Biografia

According to his biographer Jay Parini and the New York Times, Steinbeck in the mid-1990s was the most popular deceased American writer, with 750,00 copies of his works selling annually. His popularity has not diminished over the years but has rather increased, particularly after Oprah Winfrey made his "East of Eden" the first selection of her revived book club in 2003. The book immediately became the #2 bestseller on amazon.com, and Steinbeck's publisher, Penguin Group USA, printed 600,000 new copies. Normally, the book sells fewer than 50,000 copies annually. It is a remarkable phenomenon considering that the book originally was a #1 best seller when it was published in 1952!.

Steinbeck, one of the seminal American authors of the 20th century, was humiliated when the N.Y. Times excoriated the Swedish Academy for naming him the winner of the Nobel Prize Literature for 1962, saying there were more deserving writers to honor. Humble and blunt, when asked whether he deserved it at his press conference after receiving the news of the prize, he answered, "No." The criticism that he was undeserving of literature's greatest prize was soon picked up by the American literati, further compounding the wound. While Steinbeck had been enormously popular in his home country, penning four #1 best sellers, his critical reputation had sagged since the mid-1940s. However, he had remained a highly respected author outside the U.S., particularly among those who enjoyed his harsh critique of American materialism, although he was bewildered by foreign fans who still believed that the U.S. was the Depression-era America he had described in the 1930s. He was particularly beloved by Scandinavians for his WWII novella "The Moon is Down," a 1942 propaganda piece about the Norwegian resistance. In fact, so high was his esteem, he was singled out for extra-special treatment during the Stockholm ceremonies. Though that pleased him, he remained bitter about the criticism his fellow Americans had put him through until the end of his life.

One of the few Nobel laureates for literature to be nominated for an Academy Award for writing. Steinbeck was nominated three times for Um Barco e Nove Destinos (1944), A Morte de uma Ilusão (1945) (with Jack Wagner) and Viva Zapata! (1952). Other Oscar-nominated Nobel laureates include George Bernard Shaw, who won an Oscar for Pigmalião (1938), as well as Jean-Paul Sartre and Harold Pinter.

Steinbeck, a noted liberal whom the government suspected was a member of the Communist Party, was outraged by what he regarded as director Alfred Hitchcock's racism as manifested in his condescension towards the George 'Joe' Spencer character played by Canada Lee in Um Barco e Nove Destinos (1944).

Through his ancestors John Rolfe and Mary Sculliard is a seventh cousin twice removed of Barack Obama.

A man on a horse is spiritually, as well as physically, bigger than a man on foot.

Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, and then steps in it.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.

I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why then do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid stable business.