Steinbeck's Discontent
On this day in 1961, John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent was published. Steinbeck was fond of reading Shakespeare -- he and his family would play quotation games with the sonnets -- and he approached the publication of this book with the hope that it might very well make "glorious summer" of his various discontents. His previous book, a treatment of Arthurian legend, had bogged down -- for good, it turned out. He suffered a stroke during the writing of this book, in 1959. His estrangement from his sons continued, and his battles with his ex-wife worsened, to the point of going to court. Perhaps worst of all was his mental health, a despair that "I come toward the ending of my life with the same ache for perfection that I had as a child," and a belief that his fame or friends had led him astray, so that "true things gradually disappeared and shiny easy things took their place." |
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