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Of Men and Their Making
Paperback. Pub Date :2003-07-03 448 English Penguin Classics Steinbecks writing was fuelled by a need to observe things firsthand. whether as a journalist or novelist. The huge success of THE GRAPES OF WRATH enabled him to travel the world. ceaselessly writing about the great events of each decade. This collection brings together the greatest of those dispatches - from countries as diverse as Vietnam. Britain. Morocco and Italy. In addition. it reproduces America and the Americans. a gripping account of the US in the 1960s based on Steinbecks observations on racism. moral decline & the environment.The extremely enjoyable book makes an important point about Steinbecks oeuvre. showing just how important journalism was to his career as a writer.
- GenresNonfiction
448 pages, Paperback
Published July 3, 2003
155 people want to read
About the author
John Steinbeck
1,053 books26.9k followersJohn Ernst Steinbeck was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception". He has been called "a giant of American letters."
During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward F. Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. By the 75th anniversary of its publishing date, it had sold 14 million copies.
Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists.
During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward F. Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. By the 75th anniversary of its publishing date, it had sold 14 million copies.
Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 3, 2022
Steinbeck is best known as a chronicler of the 1930s. In this book, the day-to-day reality of those times (and others) is recorded even more sharply than in his fiction. Vivid, searching, often surprising, this collection of articles is a worthy complement to the Steinbeck canon.
Steinbeck recalls the 1930s not with bitterness but with nostalgia. The simplicity of the life he lived came to seem right and good. He learned to live comfortably and contentedly on less than fifty dollars a month; when larger sums finally came his way, his first reaction was terror. He shunned cities (‘closed and shuttered industrial cemeteries’), preferring to settle close to the sea and live off its bounty. A large part of his daily protein food came from the sea, and he raised vegetables all year round - kale, lettuce, chard, turnips and carrots. He never peeled a potato without planting the skins. Keeping clean, however, was an enduring difficulty. For a time he used a soap made of pork fat, wood ashes and salt. It took the future Nobel Prize winner ‘much sunning’ to get the stench out of his sheets.
The stand-out pieces are ‘Dubious Battle in California’, ‘The Harvest Gypsies’ and ‘Starvation Under the Orange Trees’ - and I will not do Steinbeck the disservice of quoting them. These are the seeds from which The Grapes of Wrath sprung, and rival that great novel's punching power. Duller pieces follow, mostly about writing, adaptations of his books and who starred in them. Thankfully we shift to his dispatches from World War 2. Denied entrance to the US army, Steinbeck's value as a reporter was quickly recognised. His reportage plays to his lifelong strength of seeing big events through the ‘little’ people’s eyes. When posted in England he notes the success of the Dig for Victory campaign with pride. He observes the girls ‘who have shot enemies out of the sky and gone back to mending socks.’ In Dover, he observes the British quality that will lead them to triumph over Fascism - ‘they are incorrigibly, incorruptibly unimpressed.’
His later reports on the Vietnam War outraged even dedicated fans. What they could not understand was how someone who hated the bullies at home also hated the bullies overseas. If you think the Vietnam War was wrong, you may agree that Steinbeck at least was sincerely wrong in supporting it. A lifelong Democrat who idolised FDR and the New Deal, he hated the very notion of Communism. Other writers (such as John Updike) perhaps made more nuanced cases for the war. But few writers troubled to fly there, don fatigues, and live among the troops - which included two of Steinbeck’s grown sons.
Journalism floors jingoism early on. Big battles, he notes, are like a bullfight, with lines established and clear. But Vietnam was a war with no fronts and no rear. It was everywhere, like ‘a thin, ever-present gas.’ Any person, any place, may erupt without warning into Armageddon. Steinbeck did not demonise the enemy but didn't avert his eyes when they placed machine guns inside peasant houses next to the captured children.
If Steinbeck lacks the finished edge of an Ernest Hemingway, he has far more heart, and heart may, in the end, offer greater riches. This book is full of them.
Steinbeck recalls the 1930s not with bitterness but with nostalgia. The simplicity of the life he lived came to seem right and good. He learned to live comfortably and contentedly on less than fifty dollars a month; when larger sums finally came his way, his first reaction was terror. He shunned cities (‘closed and shuttered industrial cemeteries’), preferring to settle close to the sea and live off its bounty. A large part of his daily protein food came from the sea, and he raised vegetables all year round - kale, lettuce, chard, turnips and carrots. He never peeled a potato without planting the skins. Keeping clean, however, was an enduring difficulty. For a time he used a soap made of pork fat, wood ashes and salt. It took the future Nobel Prize winner ‘much sunning’ to get the stench out of his sheets.
The stand-out pieces are ‘Dubious Battle in California’, ‘The Harvest Gypsies’ and ‘Starvation Under the Orange Trees’ - and I will not do Steinbeck the disservice of quoting them. These are the seeds from which The Grapes of Wrath sprung, and rival that great novel's punching power. Duller pieces follow, mostly about writing, adaptations of his books and who starred in them. Thankfully we shift to his dispatches from World War 2. Denied entrance to the US army, Steinbeck's value as a reporter was quickly recognised. His reportage plays to his lifelong strength of seeing big events through the ‘little’ people’s eyes. When posted in England he notes the success of the Dig for Victory campaign with pride. He observes the girls ‘who have shot enemies out of the sky and gone back to mending socks.’ In Dover, he observes the British quality that will lead them to triumph over Fascism - ‘they are incorrigibly, incorruptibly unimpressed.’
His later reports on the Vietnam War outraged even dedicated fans. What they could not understand was how someone who hated the bullies at home also hated the bullies overseas. If you think the Vietnam War was wrong, you may agree that Steinbeck at least was sincerely wrong in supporting it. A lifelong Democrat who idolised FDR and the New Deal, he hated the very notion of Communism. Other writers (such as John Updike) perhaps made more nuanced cases for the war. But few writers troubled to fly there, don fatigues, and live among the troops - which included two of Steinbeck’s grown sons.
Journalism floors jingoism early on. Big battles, he notes, are like a bullfight, with lines established and clear. But Vietnam was a war with no fronts and no rear. It was everywhere, like ‘a thin, ever-present gas.’ Any person, any place, may erupt without warning into Armageddon. Steinbeck did not demonise the enemy but didn't avert his eyes when they placed machine guns inside peasant houses next to the captured children.
If Steinbeck lacks the finished edge of an Ernest Hemingway, he has far more heart, and heart may, in the end, offer greater riches. This book is full of them.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews