No one wanted to give it to Graves while Ezra Pound was still alive, because Ezra Pound was thought to be a superior poet (but one with poisonous political views). He was up against Robert Graves and Lawrence Durrell (so much for the lack of choice!), as well as French dramatist Jean Anouilh and Danish author Karen Blixen. The opening of the archives 50 years after the event revealed that judge Henry Olsson thought, “There aren’t any obvious candidates for the Nobel prize and the prize committee is in an unenviable situation.” It also emerged that Steinbeck was a “compromise choice”. In 2013, we found out that the judges themselves more or less felt the same. When Steinbeck himself was asked if he thought he deserved the award, he said “frankly no”. They also noted, acidly, that Steinbeck’s “limited talent is, in his best books, watered down by tenth-rate philosophising”.

The New York Times complained that it was “interesting” that it had not gone to someone who had made “a more profound impression on the literature of our age”.

But surprisingly, Steinbeck’s elevation was viewed as an odd choice when the Nobel committee granted the award. So the fact that he won the Nobel prize in 1962 feels uncontroversial. Almost half a century after Steinbeck’s death, his reputation seems as solid and secure as any writer of his era. Here in the UK, Of Mice and Men is a staple of school exams, while The Grapes of Wrath remains a favourite around the world. I hardly need add that Steinbeck remains a popular author. I can’t reflect the charm, the humor, the pathos, the wit and wisdom and warm humanity which illuminate every one of Mr Steinbeck’s pages.Ĭannery Row, meanwhile, was greeted by the often stern US critic Edmund Wilson with a simple expression of pleasure: “I believe that it is the one I have most enjoyed reading.” The best you can do is to indicate it – faintly, in the sketch book manner, at best leaving out all the intangibles that really give it its quality.

The problem with a book like this is that you can’t describe it. When it came out in 1935, Tortilla Flat’s reviewer in the San Francisco Chronicle was so delighted that he was lost for words: Not least because both novels have their own special kind of glow and warmth. Two readers nominated both books, while Steinbeck himself was a popular choice as an author to help us celebrate the human spirit, winning many nominations for other books, such as The Grapes of Wrath.

Tortilla flat steinbeck