from a d this is biography his mother said john will either be a genius or amount to nothing at all john steinbeck was a genius who wrote about the rough edges of a 20th century america still raw and naive and brutal to those who wanted a part of her steinbeck wrote like edward hopper painted like nighthawks about familiar edgy lonely folks like george gershwin composed a rhapsody sassy swaggering sweetly dissonant music not true art cried many of their critics too common said others but right on the money as far as the public was concerned folks in his hometown condemned steinbeck as a dishonest author who exposed their dirty little secrets steinbeck though considered his writing a mirror accurate and not always flattering i'm john steinbeck i was born on this coast i've always thought of this place as a breeder of stories it sounds a little corny but he absolutely just loved living life john steinbeck listened to the land and wrote books about the people who belonged to it go on george tell about the rabbits and how i get to tandem he loved writing about prostitutes and how wonderful they could be hemingway influenced the way people wrote more than john steinbeck did but what people write about i think john was a much greater influence the humanity and the caring about the underdog wherever there's a cop beating up a guy i'll be there there were a lot of people around not only in the soviet union but in the united states who had it in for john he was a dissident in his own time whose voice resonated through america's soul [Music] wonderfully shy women adored him great to travel with the most entertaining man you want to know but that's not the man who sat writing books and i will never pretend to know that any better than you do [Music] i remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers i remember where a toad may live and what time birds awaken in the summer and what trees and seasons smelled like how people looked and walked and smelled even the memory of odors is very rich at the turn of the century salinas california was a stayed town of 2500 and home to most of the area's agricultural land owners there john steinbeck was born february 27 1902 the only son among three sisters [Music] the boy was molly coddled by a strong-willed mother olive hamilton was the blue stalking daughter of a large irish family who ran their own ranch further down the long valley outside king city at 17 she had gone to work as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse olive was a harsh taskmaster and she must have been to like ride that mule down to big sur and teach those really unruly ranch kids you know and probably and probably didn't treat my father any differently than she did any of her other students olive met john ernst steinbeck at a church social he was the son of german immigrants he had a white-collar job and a stoic demeanor olive was the ambitious one she willed the family onto the social register i always said she was a social climber and one of the gals that i knew says oh no she's not a climber she is society the steinbeck's were victorian right down to their house on a prominent corner in salinas neighborhood children called it the castle it was in this house that john learned about gentility storytelling and books john senior was a failed entrepreneur who had managed to get appointed monterey county treasurer he had the sullen quality of a man unfulfilled mr steinbeck used to bind books in the basement so he must have loved books i mean he he to do that you have to love the physical qualities of a book at school young john was shy and socially awkward his only close friend was his sister mary it was a kind of tom sawyer upbringing but he was very much tom sawyer and not huck finn he was the boy who you know had money and a position in the neighborhood and was expected to go on to law school or become a doctor at the age of nine his aunt molly gave him a present that would forever change his life sir thomas mallory's book of arthurian legends john and mary turned the arroyos of the salinas valley into their own camelot during his freshman year in high school john told his parents he wanted to be a writer they thought he would outgrow it he see something that was of interest he'd make a note of it his dresser drawer was just full of little notes little squares of paper happened to have a piece of paper that he could write on he'd have a pencil with him all the time he'd write it down and stuff it away on the drawer in 1919 steinbeck enrolled at stanford university where he adopted a new rakish persona for himself living in a wood shack and distilling plum wine to his mother's dismay steinbeck had little interest in graduating for six years he dropped in and out of school studying only what he felt he needed to be a better writer he went to the dean of the med school and asked him if he could take a medical school course in cutting up cadavers and the dean said you know you're an english major what in the world do you want to take that course for and he said i want to learn about human beings john regularly took semesters off to live and work in the fields partly for money but more to gather stories from the latinos and roustabouts he met he found out they had wonderful stories and he would really pay the money he would pay them 50 cents a dollar for a story he called himself a shameless magpie which is a lovely phrase i mean he was always listening and he was the writer he was the one who who wrote it down and anything's fair game for a writer in 1925 steinbeck did what other great american writers had done before him he moved to new york to be a reporter but his first job was as a construction worker on madison square garden his uncle joe hamilton finally got him a job at the new york american john was fired within a few months for getting too involved with the people he was writing about crestfallen and starving steinbeck returned to california in the summer of 1926. for the next two years john worked as a caretaker in remote lake tahoe spending the long winter months alone writing his first novel the forgettable cup of gold he would be there all winter and he could just write his heart out and he wouldn't be interrupted and in fact it was really good for him except he ran out of paper and he had to start writing his stories in the margins of magazines and so on because he couldn't get to a store in the summer of 1928 john met a vacationing girl from a prominent san jose family carol henning she was sharp tongued attractive and very funny the two immediately fell in love john had carol typing his manuscript of cup of gold the first week they met so she knew what she was in for at the end of the summer john followed carol to san francisco where he eked out a living and dieted on sardines donuts and coffee for dates he and carol would take the streetcar to ocean beach where they would drink wine and sleep on the sand the following year john and carol eloped to los angeles but didn't have enough money to stay with the depression on they moved to the steinbeck family's vacation cottage in pacific grove just up the road from monterey they fell in with a thriving bohemian culture that included muckraking journalist lincoln stephens and mythologist joseph campbell steinbeck had a wonderful circle of friends and every night they would meet at a different house and talk that was when he really got his education it was in monterey that steinbeck also met the most important man in his life a marine biologist who operated a lab on the wharf his name was ed ricketts john knew darn well that dad could see things in the tide pools that other people couldn't and uh dad admired the way that john could listen to a person understand that personally even drop on a person years later steinbeck would cast his best friend as doc ricketts the central character in his book cannery row when john finished his next book he didn't have the money to send it to his agent he did however have a new subject for his writing the landscape of his youth he was enormously well read but i when you read his writing it doesn't seem influenced by another writer he wrote in his own voice and the air was as golden gauze and the last of the sun the land below them was plotted in squares of green orchard trees and in squares of yellow grain and in squares of violet earth from the sturdy farmhouses set in their gardens the smoke of the evening fires swept upward until the hillbreeze swept it cleanly off cow bells were softly clashing in the valley a dog barked so that far away the sound rose up to the travelers and sharp little whispers it's called las pastures this yellow the driver said there is good vegetables there good berries and fruit earlier here than any place else the name means pastures of heaven i said when scott fitzgerald and ernest hemingway and all those people were traveling in the 20s and 30s why didn't you go and he said i didn't have the price of a ticket and right now i'm very i'm glad i didn't because uh i stayed home and wrote about my own people my own see my own land pastors of heaven failed to sell even a thousand copies but its vision of man and place made it a small masterpiece setting the stage for a lifetime of books to follow by the age of 30 john steinbeck had found his voice as an author and his life as an artist he and his wife carol lived in comfortable poverty struggling as they felt artists should making do with good friends and with each other their families were very victorian very respectable and i think both john and carol wanted to define themselves against that background wanted to be something else and so i think they met as sort of rebellious spirits restless spirits and found one another john's father gave the couple fifty dollars a month which carol supplemented with odd jobs john spent his days writing carol typed and edited his pages at night in early 1933 steinbeck's mother olive suffered a massive stroke john and carol moved back to his family's victorian home to care for her he did all the laundry and kept the house clean and everything the sisters didn't seem to care whether they helped or not the way i understand it in her later years john's mother had become one of his greatest supporters during her illness he spent his days at a small desk outside her room writing a children's story the red pony [Music] olive steinbeck died in february 1934 john's father grew listless and his health also began to decline john's response was to write his most comic novel and his first popular success tortilla flat this is the story of danny and of danny's friends and of danny's house it is the story of how these three became one thing so that in tortilla flat if you speak of danny's house you do not mean a structure of wood flaked with old whitewash overgrown with an ancient untrimmed rose of castile now when you speak of danny's house you are understood to mean a unit of which the parts are men from which came sweetness and joy philanthropy and in the end a mystic sorrow the book was steinbeck's first attempt to retell the arthurian legends that had captivated him in childhood this time with a group of wine drinking paisanos in the monterey hills you know he grew up with mexicans as an adolescent he drove with them in their cars and drank beer with them and they were just people you know race wasn't an issue but class was as john's father grew increasingly sick he told his son that he had never done anything he had wanted to do john senior had always encouraged his son's ambitions as a writer he would not get to see them fulfilled five days before the book was published john ernst steinbeck died tortilla flat was a best seller and pushed steinbeck into the limelight john would have none of it he and carol built a small home in the santa cruz mountains to dissuade visitors they named it arroya del ajo or garlic gulch he was recognized on the streets of san francisco after a picture of him was appeared in the chronicle and he was so nauseated he threw up but he yeah he was shy yeah he was very shy that's why i think his handwriting was so small you see this massive bulk and this sea captain it's like writing little tiny you know it looks like a bunch of m's and some of the best literature ever written in america and you can't make heads or tail of it failure had always been manageable and poverty calming but john was unable to deal with success his main solace was his friendship with marine biologist ed ricketts they would spend late nights in ed's lab drinking wine and thinking deep thoughts ricketts believe that mankind must be examined scientifically as a species not moralistically as individuals i think it's one of the influences rick it had on on steinbeck was getting to see beyond the petri dish that the petri dish was the whole planet in a sense and what was micro was macro and i think style was very much micro macro in that sense what was what was true in this tiniest scale was true on its largest scale at the height of the depression biological issues such as the survival of man were very real as people searched for food for land and for a future while ricketts inspired steinbeck's philosophy carol inspired his politics carol had awakened in him a social conscience once it was awakened it was a slumbering giant and this man had a conscience with a big c salinas california 1936 by the mid-30s violent cotton and lettuce strikes had erupted around salinas the entire country seemed to be going through convulsions steinbeck responded with a brilliant and stark examination in dubious battle his next book was inspired by his days working the fields will stiffs lenny and george looking for a home it was immediately adapted into a hit broadway play and later into a powerful movie of mice and men hey go on george tell how it's gonna be well someday we're gonna get the jack together and we're gonna get a little house and a couple of acres and a cow chickens pigs and rabbits go on george tell about the rabbits in the cages and the rain in the winter in the stove and the cream on the milk so think he can hardly cut it with a knife tell about that george i don't know why you don't do it yourself you know it all oh please it ain't the same if i tell it go on george tell about the rabbits and how i get to tandem a friend of mine worked down there at the same time and he said that lenny was really exactly what john said about him in the book in august 1936 the san francisco news commissioned steinbeck to do a series on migrant labor in california john agreed to survey conditions in the san joaquin valley he bought an old bakery truck he dubbed the pie wagon and headed off for highway 99 what he saw changed his life starting in 1930 a massive drought had turned much of america's rich farmland into a dust bowl hundreds of thousands of poor farmers moved to california hoping to start a new life there were about 3 000 people completely cut off from the world by floods and completely cut off like from contacts with people by poverty living in tents huddled up on beds and literally starving steinbeck traveled to oaky labor camps documenting their stories and listening to their language after months of false starts he finally wrote a book about them in 100 days and he put his whole soul into that book it was all the testing of john steinbeck if i can write this book i am an author if i can't write this book because i have a great idea then i'm not an author the battle hymn of the republic the most patriotic of songs would give him his title the grapes of wrath daryl zaneck bought the rights for 75 000 and turned it into a classic film i'll be all around in the dark i'll be everywhere wherever you can look wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat i'll be there wherever there's a cop beating up a guy i'll be there i'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad i'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready and when the people are eating the stuff they raise and living in the houses they build i'll be there too the human message of the grapes of wrath galvanized the country [Music] the grapes of raspberries i have to put you on the waiting list do you have a copy of grapes of wrath sorry we're all sold out yes the grapes of wrath well send me as many copies as you can the plight of the oakies had not been talked about in the nation's media before farm owners dismissed the book as communist propaganda there's a famous line by w h auden he said poetry makes nothing happen well literature can make things happen once in a while new dealers including eleanor roosevelt praised it the controversy spawned a federal investigation of labor practices it's enough for me if a writer is honest enormously talented tells the truth and has some stuff to say that if people would pay attention to them can affect their society for the better john was one of those but what do you need the grapes of wrath earned steinbeck the pulitzer prize but in his hometown of salinas the book was burned in front of the library the town fathers were livid that a native son had portrayed landowners as callous distressed and unnerved john burned years of his writings he had friends on the santa clara sheriff's department they said you better carry a gun because the associated farmers is out after you and when you go to a hotel or motel you better make sure you have a friend with you otherwise they'll frame you for marijuana or prostitute or something when the grapes of wrath fell off the best seller list after a year and a half john threw a party to celebrate steinbeck then set out to reinvent his fiction his family and his life with the grapes of wrath john steinbeck had become a household name for a private man such publicity was painful fame had also redefined his role as a writer there's a wonderful quote where he said unless i can stand in a room and watch people and listen to people i you know i won't be able to gather material i'll lose my craft i'll lose myself money gave john the type of respectability he had always disdained in his society parents and drove a wedge between him and his wife carol she began to drink heavily she had to work hard and she was kind of pushing john there was no question about that and when the money started rolling in i think it was hard for her to handle hell it was hard for john to handle too although he could not bring himself to write a novel steinbeck was prolific in producing works that reflected his splintering interests filmmaking aviation and marine biology in the spring of 1940 john planned a sea expedition with his best friend ed ricketts to document pacific sea life in the gulf of california my father could put together these things that on the surface looked like totally ridiculous i mean take the sea of cortez expedition who would do it i mean uh but they always worked somehow i mean the nights before they were left they're going out stealing mayonnaise jars out of the garbage to get enough bottles to put specimens in you know the trip had a magical air about it the days were filled with hunting and the nights with drunken revelry steinbeck later took ricketts notebooks and turned them into a log of the trip and dad just marveled awake and he could turn that trashy language of dads into just beautiful pools the boat plunged and shook herself and rivers of swirling water ran down the scuppers blowing the hold packed in jars were thousands of little dead animals but we did not think of them as trophies as things cut off from the tide pools of the gulf but rather as drawings incomplete and imperfect of how it had been there carol had come along at her own insistence and john resented it he treated her as another crew member and let her sleep alone in the wheelhouse upon returning home john reluctantly faced the piles of unopened letters and media requests the studios were vigorously courting steinbeck whose strong stories adapted themselves perfectly to the silver screen john took an active interest in the process of making and discussed it with new hollywood friends including spencer tracy john houston and charlie chaplin who had sought out the writer after reading his books on one of his many trips to hollywood he also made the acquaintance of an aspiring singer named gwyn conger he was 38 she was 20. and she was sexy and he felt deeply in love with her but she was also wily she had a different kind of intelligence and i think carol had she was so young and i was struck by how young and innocent she must have seemed to him he made her almost you know a heroine in his sort of new life both gwyn and carol falsely claimed they were pregnant torn between the determined love of two women john arranged a showdown in some way john got the two of them together in their house in monterey and said i don't know what to do at this point you two women fight it out in the short run carol prevailed but it soon became apparent that the marriage was over john and gwyn moved to the upper east side of manhattan and married in march 1943. with the war on john felt that the world had gone mad but he remained fiercely patriotic and determined to involve himself in the war effort getting his government's permission was another matter j edgar hoover said don't let him go into the services at all because he's a uh well he's a communist and i long to tell john that j edgar hoover off hours for a velvet dress and pearls at president roosevelt's personal behest steinbeck toured bombing training camps and produced a book on the subject next he wrote the script for alfred hitchcock's wartime allegory lifeboat all of these efforts however kept him from the front i think he had to go to war in order to prove himself it was as if he needed to see action in the spring of 1943 at the age of 41 john went to war as a correspondent for the herald tribune for months he traveled with the troops through north africa and italy throughout his life steinbeck loved to think of himself as a journalist although he was more interested in emotional truths than facts my father said once i don't lie i just remember big he had the journalist's eye and so far that he could step back from something but he had something more which was he understood motive when he returned john was gaunt and in a state of semi-shock gwen didn't recognize him when he walked off the boat he came back from the lord very depressed he was really too old to go to war he couldn't take it while away john comforted himself with memories of simple days spent talking and drinking at ed ricketts lab for his next book he tried to recreate those times in his fiction cannery row in monterey in california is a poem a stink a grating noise a quality of light a tone a habit a nostalgia a dream its inhabitants are as the man once said [ __ ] pimps gamblers and sons of [ __ ] by which he meant everybody had the man looked through another people he might have said saints and angels and martyrs and holy men and he would have meant the same thing he loved writing about prostitutes and how wonderful they could be which edmund wilson thought was you know this is sentimentality it was anti-respectability it was what it was you know other east coast critics complained that the book lacked the social protest of earlier works they were suspicious of steinbeck's continuing mass popularity john's favorite term for critics was lice for the rest of his life this rift would only grow for my generation and we certainly not the critics darling i went to columbia where you were forbidden to utter the words john steinbeck american literature stopped with uh william faulkner during the writing of cannery row quinn became pregnant on august 2nd 1944 they had a son tom having children was not one of his favorite things either i mean he just wanted to be a writer and my mother sort of snuck it over on him as women have a way of doing john i'm four months pregnant were waiting to tell me sooner i didn't think you'd like the idea but steinbeck did look forward to returning to a quiet domestic life in the fall he moved his new family back to his native state i was born on this coast i was raised on it we've been here a long time my mother taught school on the coast i've always thought of this place as a breeder of stories following the war john thought returning to monterey would replenish his soul and feed his art instead his homecoming was a disaster the town fathers were less than welcoming to them he was a communist nobody would rent steinbeck an office in which to work and the city refused to turn on his gas main people would cross the street rather than pass him on the sidewalk and old friends with the exception of ed ricketts were no different by this time he was very famous he'd bring a jug of red wine as he did in the old days they'd be muttering to themselves cheapskate and then if he bought a a bottle of chevis regal or something they'd say wow what a snob john wrote to his editor pat kovichi california isn't my country anymore and it won't be until i am dead it makes me very sad dejected the family moved back to new york city john steinbeck never called california home again [Music] the end of world war ii signaled what should have been one of john steinbeck's happiest times cannery row was a best seller and gwen was expecting their second child instead his entire world was slowly falling apart by the time john steinbeck jr was born the tension between his parents had grown thick as much as i loved my mother she could be frightening when it came to um to cutting you off with the knees and my father was a very sensitive man who wasn't going to take that for very long just like his first wife gwyn began drinking heavily finally their marriage reached a breaking point gwen divorced him and told him that she never loved had loved him and that she'd had numerous affairs while they'd been married and that their younger son was not really his much of what gwyn said wasn't true but her words crushed his spirit and in the midst of all this the person john cared for the most was about to be taken from him at twilight on may 7th 1948 ed ricketts got into his old packard and headed to the store he never saw the express train coming in from san francisco as he lay teetering near death in a hospital john struggled to get a plane west saying the greatest man in the world is dying and there is nothing i can do by the time steinbeck arrived his best friend was dead after two divorces john was broke and at a low point to make money jon turned his attention to hollywood in addition to writing viva zapata for director ilya kazan john produced screenplays for other films based on his work such as the pearl and the red pony he also managed to start a light affair with actress paulette goddard john was still trying to find himself when he met a visiting lady at a dinner party and he said what are you good what are you going to do and i said now that i met you i'm going to see steinbeck country and he said i'll show it to you the relationship worked from the start elaine scott was the daughter of a texas oil man and had worked as the stage manager on the original oklahoma [Music] she was also breaking up from her marriage to actor zachary scott gregarious and graceful elaine was the perfect foil for john [Music] they were good they were a good vaudeville act they were just fine elaine outgoing and talking all the time and and keeping john where he should be and do this and do that never what she shouldn't be doing but a great help to him the couple returned to new york's upper east side and were married just before new year's 1951. john went to work on a novel he had been in training to write his entire life east of eden it was written directly from our personal histories inclu including the mother figure including everything it was all right there your son aaron he's everything that's good say hello to your mother say hello to your mother east of eden is both the retelling of steinbeck's family history and an emotional venting of his recent past he's talking about genetics inheritance and he was really depressed because by that time of course he began to hate his second wife and he was so worried his sons would inherit her traits how come you did it did what shot my father because he tried to hold me he tried to tie me down nobody holds me but i was really stunned when it came to the conflict within our own family how close time it came to it as it happened in the wake of the grapes of wrath steinbeck had to take a long break from his fiction in 1955 the steinbeck's bought a house in the small port town of sag harbor long island he said to me when i was a child i fell in love with the pacific ocean now i ought to fall in love with the atlantic i have a little house on the end of long island with a tiny bay and big oak trees and a little pier and a small boat that i can go fishing in under elaine's calming influence john was coming out of his shell they had a large circle of friends and together traveled the world abroad steinbeck was a star and the personification of america in turn john had an abiding respect for foreign cultures frank classic brought back a small stone rock from the forum and john said suppose everybody who went to the farm would bring a rock john usually had a marvelous sense of humor marvelous but do you know that the next time we went john took the stone and put it back in the forum what most captivated steinbeck were the arthurian legends he had loved since childhood he spent most of the late 1950s working on a modern translation of mallory's 15th century book on the round table for most of 1959 john and elaine lived in a small cottage in somerset england where they toured local castles people forget that that along with the social protests and the deep concerns about justice there was also this very fanciful side to john too the steinbeck's returned to find america in the midst of the quiz show scandal everything about the country seemed crass and foreign steinbeck felt that he had lost the pulse of the nation and he knew he had to reconnect although he had been very ill john planned a trip in a camper around the byways of the united states so one day he said to me i have a terrible favor to ask of you i said yes well he said could i take charlie and i said oh what a marvelous idea now the truck is over here and you're sick and charlie can run and get help he said elaine i'm asking for charlie not lassie john painted the name of don quixote's horse rosinante on his truck he put charlie in the front seat and headed west just as he had done as a young man john steinbeck was on a quest to find the soul of america [Music] john steinbeck always loved dogs and in travels with charlie he turned his french poodle into one of the most famous canines in literature what john and charlie discovered on their 1960 trip was a country barely recognizable from what it had been a generation before under the book sweet nostalgic surface was a deep condemnation of modern america and its homogeneity just as our bread mixed and baked packaged and sold without benefit of accident or human frailty is uniformly good and uniformly tasteless so will our speech become one speech i who love words and the endless possibility of words i'm saddened by this inevitability for with local accent will disappear local tempo localness is not gone but it is going [Music] in 1962 on a long family trip around the world with his boys john suffered an attack later diagnosed as a stroke one morning soon after his return john turned on the television to hear that he had been awarded the nobel prize for literature it brought accolades from friends and readers and daggers from critics a new york times editorial reiterated old charges that steinbeck was sentimental simple and out of it hurt him hurt him a lot sort of like getting hit in the back of the head without expecting it john took the criticisms to heart he never wrote another word of fiction again he was proud of what he did but he was modest about it and when they asked him in an interview did you just do you deserve the prize he said frankly no now think of somebody else who would have said that you know frankly no and of course he did in the fall of 1963 at president kennedy's personal request john and elaine traveled to russia as part of a cultural exchange program kgb plants in the crowds questioned how an american dissident such as steinbeck could be so patriotic very simple answer i told the truth about the united states in the 30s because that's the way it was in the 30s and i tell the truth about the united states now because that's the way it is now and the problem is the people who run your country don't want you to know that worlds do change the new president lyndon johnson actively courted steinbeck as a confidant john responded enthusiastically and helped to write the president's speeches the issue on everyone's mind was vietnam over which steinbeck was torn between logic and loyalty to the president by the end of 1966 steinbeck had to see the war for himself it was largely curiosity i've tried to look at nearly every important thing in my time because i think the future of the not only of this part of the world but the whole world depends on pretty much what happens here in the next few years the pictures of steinbeck in green army fatigues help to cement his pro-war image what steinbeck saw however was changing his mind i think my father might have come to understand that this time he sort of backed the wrong horse but who knew everybody was lying to everybody upon his return steinbeck wrote to his agent i know we cannot win this war the public never knew of steinbeck's change of heart he was too sick to tell them john accepted his failing health as another part of nature's cycle john and i were having a drink in this room and out of a clear blue sky john said nobody should be burying alien soil and i said i hear you then i said i'll be buried in alien soil he said but it won't be alien because i'll be there [Music] even when he knew he was dying he was raising a garden and he was raising all these things he knew he'd never see them his seeds and things he had to have his hand in the soil john steinbeck died the evening of december 20th 1968. he was 66 years old elaine placed his ashes next to his mother and father in the hamilton family plot in salinas california [Music] john steinbeck remains the most red american author around the world in his hometown a museum has been erected in his honor john's true legacy is the landscape he brought to life through his words a place which is referred to as steinbeck country [Music] you wouldn't know my charlie that right down there in that little valley i fished for trout with your namesake my uncle charlie and over there see where i'm pointing my mother shot a wild cat straight down there 40 miles away our old family ranch was old starvation ranch can you see that darker place there well that's a tiny canyon with a clear and lovely stream boarded with wild azaleas infringed with big oaks in the spring charlie when the valley is carpeted with blue lupines like a flowery sea there's the smell of heaven up here the smell of heaven [Music] the john steinbeck museum in salinas took 20 years to plan and build and cost more than 10 million dollars it's impossible to know what steinbeck would think of the massive modern structure but he was never fond of awards and honors steinbeck once said this about his hometown if the city should wish to perpetuate my name let it name a bowling alley after me or a dog track or even a medium-priced brothel instead a high-priced museum stands not far from where salinas residents once burned john steinbeck's books [Music] you