John Steinbeck was a controversial and award-winning author who was considered to be one of the most significant authors of all time. He wrote many books throughout his lifetime and is known for his sharp, forceful writing style and wry humor. This paper will discuss Steinbeck's childhood and early career as it influenced his writing.
             Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, and was the son of John Ernst Steinbeck and Olive Hamilton. He grew up in Salinas, California where most of his stories and novels take place. He used the surrounding Salinas Valley as an example of a serene and fruitful place in his books (DISCovering Authors 3,4). In school Steinbeck was considered to be a wonderful student by his writing teachers and they often read his essays aloud in class. When Steinbeck graduated high school in 1919 he went to Stanford University to get a degree in English since he liked writing so much. When he got there, Steinbeck ignored Stanford's set curriculum and took whatever courses interested him (Verde 102-103).
             In 1925 Steinbeck gave up the idea of getting a degree and moved to New York City to be an author. At first he went to work on a construction crew for the new Madison Square Garden. He hated that so Steinbeck went to work as a reporter for the New York American. He ended up getting fired because he was more of a storyteller than a reporter. Eventually Steinbeck moved to California where he got a job on Lake Tahoe as a caretaker. While there he worked on his fiction and published his first short story in a magazine called The Smoker's Companion. It was a fantasy story called
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             "The Gifts of Iban." Steinbeck later lost the job and moved to San Francisco. There he wrote and published his first novel, The Cup of Gold. Steinbeck also married a woman named Carol Henning while there. Steinbeck's second novel...