John Stienbeck
...Gold was published in 1929, but wasn't very good and attracted little attention. His next two novels The Pastures of Heaven and To a God Unknown were also poorly received by the literary world and were unsuccessful. Steinbeck married his first wife Carol Henning in 1930. And they lived in Pacific Grove where much of the material and thoughts for Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row was gathered. Beginning in the 1930s he forged a significant place in American letters and American culture as a writer that liked to express place with regular workers and ordinary people, and with the political and social human dramas that confronted him. Of all twentieth-century writers, he remained engaged in America’s struggles. Tortilla Flat, which came out in 1935 marked the turning point in Steinbeck's literary career. The book received the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal for the best novel by a California author. Steinbeck continued his writing relying upon extensive research and his personal outlook of the human condition for his stories. His next book The Grapes of Wrath won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939. During the World War II, Steinbeck was a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. Some of his calls as a correspondent were later collected and made into a book called Once There Was a War. John Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 “...for his realistic as well as imaginative writings, distinguished by a sympathetic humor and a keen social perception”, as said by the awarders.Throughout his life John Steinbeck remained a private person, he wasn't a very public person. He died December 20, 1968 in New York City and has a son from his third wife, Elaine Scott Steinbeck who's name is Thomas. John's ashes were placed in the Garden of Memories Cemetery in Salinas, California. And a National Steinbeck Center was made. In the tradition of John Steinbeck, the National Stei...