John Steinbeck is a master storyteller. From the haunting desperation of the dustbowl to the ragged brutality of Cannery Row, he captured the raw struggle of ordinary lives with a rare dignity.  Of course, they were ordinary American lives, captured in a particular time and a particular place, but through the pen of Steinbeck, they roared universal truths. There was nothing colloquial about John Steinbeck.  While the novels The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row were largely responsible for propelling him to the Nobel podium in 1963, the travelogue published the year before, Travels with Charley In Search of America,…

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