Steinbeck Read Free

Spectator.
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    1925 Left Stanford. Went to New York City. Wrote short stories but could find no publisher.
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    1926 Returned to California and continued to write, supporting himself with a variety of jobs.
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    1929 First novel published, Cup of Gold.
    1930 Married Carol Henning and moved to the family cottage in Pacific Grove.
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    1931 Began permanent association with McIntosh and Otis, his literary agents.
    When John Steinbeck was twenty-four and broke, he found a way to support himself while working at what mattered most to him—becoming a writer.
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    â€œI had a job as caretaker on a large estate at Lake Tahoe [in his native California],” he wrote later. “It required that I be snowed in for eight months every year. My nearest neighbor was four miles away.”
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    Here he wrote, and several times rewrote, his first novel, Cup of Gold; and it was from here that he wrote to Monterey to Webster F. Street (“Toby”), who had been a collegemate at Stanford University.

To Webster F. Street
    Lake Tahoe
Winter 1926
Monday
    Dear Toby:
    Do you know, one of the things that made me come here, was, as you guessed, that I am frightfully afraid of being alone. The fear of the dark is only part of it. I wanted to break that fear in the middle, because I am afraid much of my existence is going to be more or less alone, and I might as well go into training for it. It comes on me at night mostly, in little waves of panic, that constrict something in my stomach. But don’t you think it is good to fight these things? Last night, some quite large animal came and sniffed under the door. I presume it was a coyote, though I do not know. The moon had not come up, and when I ran outside there was nothing to be seen. But the main thing was that I was frightened, even though I knew it could be nothing but a coyote. Don’t tell any one I am afraid. I do not like to be suspected of being afraid.
    As soon as you can, get to work on the Little Lady [A Green Lady, a play Street was writing]. Keep your eye on cost of production, small and inexpensive scenes, few in the cast and lots of wise cracks, as racy as you think the populace will stand. Always crowd the limit. And also if you have time, try your hand on a melo drahmar, something wild, and mysterious and unexpected with characters turning out to be other people and some of them turning out to be nobody at all.
    And if you can find a small but complete dictionary lying about anywhere send it to me. I have none, and apparently the Brighams [his employers] are so perfect in their mother tongue that they do not need one.
    I shall send you some mss pretty soon if you wish. I have been working slowly but deliciously on one thing. There is something so nice about being able to put down a sentence and then look it over and then change it, sometimes taking half an hour over two lines. And it is possible here because there seems to be no reason for rush.
    If, on going through Salinas, you have the time, you might look in on my folks and tell them there is little possibility of my either starving or freezing. Be as honest as you can, but picture me in a land flowing with ham and eggs, and one wherein woolen underdrawers grow on the fir trees. Tell them that I am living on the inside of a fiery furnace, or something.
    It’s time for me to go to the post office now, I will cease without the usual candle-like spluttering. Write to me when and as often as you get a chance. I shall depend on the mail quite a lot.
    love
John
    Depending on the mail had already become a habit. Midway in his life, in a letter, he recalled his youth in Salinas:
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    â€œWe were poor people with a hell of a lot of land which made us think we were rich people, even when we couldn’t buy food and were patched. Caballeros—lords of the land, you know, and really low church mice but proud.”
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    After graduation from Salinas High School, he entered the freshman class at