John Steinbeck at the Salinas Valley

After have lived for 76 years in Mexico City, one of the  most populated metropolitan regions in the world, I came to settle in Salinas, California, the land of John Steinbeck (1902-1968), one of the 20th century writers that I most admire.  

In this circumstance, the beauty of the Salinas Valley, and the proximity of the Pacific, the "Ocean Home" of Steinbeck, helped me to mitigate my nostalgia.

Because I associate the Pacific Ocean with the author of Cannery Row,  I took for Salinas this name I read once in a newspaper: "Steinbeck-by-the-Sea."

 What a good opportunity I had as soon as I arrived to this city of the Monterey County to visit the house in which lived the Nobel Prize in his first years, as well as the Steinbeck Center. I knew in this place, among others things, the truck called Rocinante with which Steinbeck toured his country, subject of his book Travels with Charley in Search of America.

I also met the High School where he studied, as well as the Sang's Cafe "where Steinbeck ate", as they announce it at the entrance, and even went with my wife to visit his grave in which stands out the surname Hamilton, of his maternal family.

Later, I moved to the city of Soledad, close to the  Salinas River, one of the places mentioned in the novel Of Mice and Men.

While Soledad is a small town, it has some importance in art, because Steinbeck not only takes it into account, but is the town it in the opera La Fanciulla del West, by the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924). 

In the first act of this opera, Minnie, the girl of the West, says:

Laggiù nel Soledad, ero piccina, 

avevo una stanzuccia affumicata 

nella taverna sopra la cucina.

Ci vivevo con babbo e mamma mia. 

Tutto ricordo: vedo le persone 

entrare e uscire a sera.

(There, in Soledad, when I was a small child, I lived in a hovel filled with smoke, over the kitchen of a tavern. I lived with my parents. Ah, I remember everything!)

* * * 

The book John Steinbeck. Writer. A Biography, written by Jackson J. Benson, took me by surprise to surprise. In the first part, entitled The Long Valley, the biographer, who teaches American Literature at San Diego State University, studies Steinbeck's life, from his first years, when he discovered his vocation, to the years of his brilliant maturity, when he founded his own voice.

Many towns of the Salinas Valley  and the California central coast are referred to throughout the work, including King City, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Chualar, Jolon, Watsonville, Castroville and Paso Robles, among others.

But let us back to Steinbeck.  We know that even though he never attained a degree at Stanford University, he studied Latin and Spanish, as well as basic Greek, and he had always a passion for the language

The biographer details thoroughly the diverse activities of  Steinbeck and the contact and  empathy he had with the immigrant agricultural workers, and his effort to speak to the Philippines in Tagalog, as well as in Spanish to the Mexicans. By the way, Mexican workers did the  more difficult and dirty tasks, according to Benson.

The importance of Steinbeck legacy is accurately captured by the author of this book which is essential for those who love the work of the great American writer.

Let me end this brief essay commenting the occasion in which the young writer challenged a preacher talking about  "spiritual hunger." Steinbeck interrupted him in a loud voice: "Feed the body, and the soul will take care of itself."  That young writer would defend years later the homeless in  The Grapes of Wrath, the novel that shocked the "good consciences" of his time.