John Steinbeck Canonized Research Paper English Literature Essay

John Steinbeck was born February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California. He grew up with 4 sisters. John in his adolescent year studied literature due to the fact that his mother was a teacher. John enjoyed literature from an early age on. His mother read him the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Robert Louis Stevenson, and the stories of King Arthur. John attended Salinas High School, an experience he generally disliked, but one bright spot in his high school career was his ninth grade English teacher, Miss Cupp. She admired the compositions he wrote and encouraged him to continue with his writing. Throughout high school, John spent most of his free time writing short stories and poems in his bedroom. Upon graduating high school he attended Stanford to please his parents in 1919. He attended Stanford but dropped out of the university, sometimes to work closely with migrants and bindle stiffs on California ranches. Those relationships, coupled with an early sympathy for the weak and defenseless, deepened his empathy for workers, the disenfranchised, the lonely and dislocated, an empathy that is characteristic in his work. (Susan Shillinglaw)

I choose to back John Steinbeck as an author to be held as one of Today’s Literary Cannons for several reasons. John Steinbeck should be included to keep this honor because he has been one of the top writers of the 20th century in a the world of fiction, Mr. Steinbeck has received numerous awards, including the most prestigious award The Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. He has also received Commonwealth Club of California Gold Medal for Best Book by a Californian, The Novel of 9136 Prize, New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, Member National Institute of Arts and Letters American Booksellers’ Award, Pulitzer Prize Fiction Award, King Haakon Liberty Cross, Member American Academy of Arts and Letters, Honorary Consultant in American Literature to the Library of Congress, United States Medal Of Freedom Trustee of John F. Kennedy Memorial Library, Annual Paperback of the Year Award Press Medal of Freedom, Member National Arts Council, U.S. Postal Service Issued a John Steinbeck Commemorative Stamp, American Arts Gold Medallion. His works have made numerous bestseller lists including the New York Times and also the New York Times top ten best sellers of all time, One book In 2003, Opra Winfrey picked the book to re-launch her book club, and the novel hit #1 on the New York Times Best Seller List for Trade Paperbacks, 50 years after it was first published. ( New York Times) He also has 2 books in the Top-selling 100 for 2011 from Bookscan, (Bookscan) Washington Post, Borders, LA Times, Amazon and Walmart.

John Steinbeck has over 27 novels published worldwide and in multiple languages and formats, including four series in large print, palm pilot, e-book, and hardcover. () Ms. Feehan’s works are as follows: Cup of Gold (1927), The Pastures of Heaven (1932), The Red Pony (1933), To a God Unknown (1933), Tortilla Flat (1935), In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), The Long Valley (1938), The Grapes of Wrath (1939), The Forgotten Village (1941), Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research (1941), The moon Is Down (1942), Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team (1942), Cannery Row (1947), The Wayward Bus (1947), The Pearl (1947), A Russian Journal (1948), Burning Bright (1950), The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951), East of Eden (1952), Sweet Thursday (1954), The Short Reib of Pippin IV: A fabrication (1957), Once There Was A War (1958), The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Travels with Charley: In Search of America (1962), America and Americans (1966), Journal of a Novel: The east of Eden (1969),

Locating John Steinbeck’s position among his literary peers is not easy; how can one judge the worth or influence of one writer over another? Perhaps one of the surest methods is to ask other writers-novelists, playwrights, poets-about Steinbeck and to listen to their estimate of his place within American literature. Pulitzer Prize winning dramatist Arthur Miller, most famous for his 1949 play Death of a Salesman, argues that no other American writer “so deeply penetrated the political life of the country” as Steinbeck did with The Grapes of Wrath in 1939 (56). American novelist Harper Lee, most famous for her classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, notes that Steinbeck had “a profound influence on American writing and culture,” and she wishes that many contemporary writers acknowledged that “their debt to John is enormous” (54). Novelist and poet Jay Parini, editor of The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature, predicts “that Steinbeck will continue to fascinate readers throughout the coming century,” particularly with “his natural gift for shaping the raw materials of life into fiction.”

John Steinbeck was one of the most accomplished and widely read authors of the twentieth century. Today his books continue to sell millions of copies every year, both in and outside the United States. His themes cover a broad range of issues-social, political, cultural, moral, global, and environmental…. Contrary to the prediction of many influential critics that his popularity would decline after his death,…in the centenary of his birth, there were almost two hundred events in thirty-eight states honoring Steinbeck.

In 1939 John Steinbeck works like Grapes of Wrath which work was canonized had a lot of controversy because it outraged some who considered the book un-American in its refutation of the American Dream that anyone can become a success. You have to look at the time this book was published in order to understand. Remember this is the 1930’s and migrants were looked upon as not even human. in its criticism of cutthroat capitalism, the banks, the agribusiness of the Associated Farmers, the venality of used car dealers and buyers of household goods from the desperate. There were also protests about some of the coarse dialogue and details in the novel, which Congressman Lyle Boren of Oklahoma denounced before the House of Representatives as “a lie, a black, infernal creation of a twisted, distorted mind.”

Today he is still the number one book under attack by censors with his works Of Mice and Men. The argument is that he uses foul language, but Steinbeck never uses the F— word and the few profanities that he uses in his works are less that you can hear on any night on prime-time television, and in PG movies. The reason is mostly political. For this reason I believe that he should have been canonized.

As I stated in the beginning, John Steinbeck deserved to be recognized as one of Today’s Literary Cannon for many reasons. Mr. Steinbeck works deserve to be recognized for canonization because as an author that has a captivating writing style and once a reader has opened one of his books they will find it hard to put down even at the end. John Steinbeck’s books all include good vs. evil and life as it was in some of the hardest times in American history. His story’s portrays the struggles of minorities of that era and this just adds to reasons for canonization, His stories still hit home to the struggles that migrant workers had during the duts bowl era. He is an exceptional author in western literature as if they are part of the world that he creates. He is a best-selling author that has received numerous awards and international recognition for hir work. The canonization was warranted.