Carol and John Steinbeck
Portrait of a Marriage
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- $47.99
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- $47.99
Publisher Description
Carol Henning Steinbeck, writer John Steinbeck’s first wife, was his creative anchor, the inspiration for his great work of the 1930s, culminating in The Grapes of Wrath. Meeting at Lake Tahoe in 1928, their attachment was immediate, their personalities meshing in creative synergy. Carol was unconventional, artistic, and compelling. In the formative years of Steinbeck’s career, living in San Francisco, Pacific Grove, Los Gatos, and Monterey, their Modernist circle included Ed Ricketts, Joseph Campbell, and Lincoln Steffens. In many ways Carol’s story is all too familiar: a creative and intelligent woman subsumes her own life and work into that of her husband. Together, they brought forth one of the enduring novels of the 20th century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As portrayed by San Jose State University English professor and Steinbeck expert Shillinglaw (A Journey into Steinbeck's California), John Steinbeck's first wife, Carol Henning Steinbeck, was witty, gifted, and fiercely practical. In addition, she loved the limelight and was adept at grand gesture. Her husband, though driven, tended to be moody and self-absorbed. Carol, according to this impressive biography, was also the driving force behind John's political conscience, and assisted him with The Grapes of Wrath ("To Carol who willed it," the dedication reads in part). But the wealth and fame brought by the novel's success also brought disappointment, estrangement, and divorce. "In another era," Shillinglaw writes with eloquence and grace, " might have run a small company, shaped something larger than John into a force for good but she could not or would not imagine great things for herself." In later life, Carol Steinbeck took offence at comparisons to Zelda Fitzgerald, but like Zelda, she has been blessed with a terrific biographer.
