We should only write about what we love. The love of John Steinbeck for his homeland explains why the stories collected in the book The Long Valley are so intense and moving
"We do not love our land by large and powerful, by small and weak, by their snow and white nights or by its solar flood. We love our land, simply, because it is ours", says the Guatemalan poet and essayist Luis Cardoza y Aragón (1901-1992).
Whatever it was, the truth is that Steinbeck not only loved the fertile Salinas Valley and immortalized it in his literature to the extent of making it a symbol of humanity, but he also loved the Pacific, which he called "my home ocean", as well as any sea. In his book Travels with Charley in Search of America, he says that he decided to live in Sag Harbor (in the state of New York) to be opposite to the sea. In another part of this book he affirms that he liked so much Montana, that if it had sea, he would go away to live in this state.
The name of Steinbeck has been linked inseparably to the Salinas Valley. Those of us who live here and love the work of Our Nobel Prize are very pleased because of this opportunity, and imagine what this man committed by the social causes would be writing in these days.
Luis Cardoza y Aragón
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