Tribute to John Steinbeck

Studs Terkel: The More Things ChangeIt’s Steinbeck’s prophetic touch, that touch of clairvoyance, which makes his book so pertinent today. In 1989 I found myself on a farm in… More

Peter Matthiessen: Story Lines

John Steinbeck’s admirable early work was an important part of my own formative reading: the grit of his descriptions, his deceptive simplicity, so free of the intrusive style that… More

Studs Terkel: The More Things Change

PEN American Center 4: Fact/FictionThis talk was presented, in slightly different form, at a PEN Twentieth-Century Masters Tribute.Dorothy Allison reminds me of a woman I know in Chicago named… More

A Suffering Conscience

A good writer helps to create other writers, and I can recall the first time, in the ’30s, when I read John Steinbeck’s early books, and his stories. To… More

Lonesome Animals

And Mr. Steinbeck wanted to do this interview, but before we got started on it, he died. He did speak of a diary that he kept when he was… More

Michele Serros: Small-Town Tales

"Small-Town Tales," by Michele Serros, appears in PEN America 4: Fact/Fiction. This talk was presented, in slightly different form, at a PEN Twentieth-Century Masters Tribute to John Steinbeck.Small-Town TalesAfter my… More

Open Destiny of Life

Let me put it this way: I went to school to poetry—that was where I learned how to write. People learn to write by doing various things. I suppose… More