William Souder. (2020). Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck. W. W. Norton & Company.

William Souder. 2020. Mad At the World: A Life of John Steinbeck. W. W. Norton & Company.

William Souder, Mad At the World: A Life of John Steinbeck. W. W. Norton & Company, 2020.

William Souder. Mad At the World: A Life of John Steinbeck. W. W. Norton & Company, 2020.

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1. • value: Dust Bowl
2. • value: Biography
3. • value: Great Depression
4. • value: novelist
5. • value: America
6. • value: novels
7. • value: California
8. • value: 20th Century
9. • value: author
10. • value: Grapes of Wrath
11. • value: writer
12. • value: twentieth century
13. • value: cannery row
14. • value: salinas valley
15. • value: of mice and men
16. • value: East of Eden
17. • value: red pony

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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Souder, William
   • bioText: William Souder's books include biographies of John Steinbeck, Rachel Carson (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year) and John James Audubon (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize). He lives in Grant, Minnesota.
   • name: William Souder

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Mad at the World

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Winner of the 2021 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2020 in Nonfiction

A resonant biography of America's most celebrated novelist of the Great Depression.

The first full-length biography of the Nobel laureate to appear in a quarter century, Mad at the World illuminates what has made the work of John Steinbeck an enduring part of the literary canon: his capacity for empathy. Pulitzer Prize finalist William Souder explores Steinbeck's long apprenticeship as a writer struggling through the depths of the Great Depression, and his rise to greatness with masterpieces such as The Red Pony, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath. Angered by the plight of the Dust Bowl migrants who were starving even as they toiled to harvest California's limitless bounty, fascinated by the guileless decency of the downtrodden denizens of Cannery Row, and appalled by the country's refusal to recognize the humanity common to all of its citizens, Steinbeck took a stand against social injustice—paradoxically given his inherent misanthropy—setting him apart from the writers of the so-called "lost generation."

A man by turns quick-tempered, compassionate, and ultimately brilliant, Steinbeck could be a difficult person to like. Obsessed with privacy, he was mistrustful of people. Next to writing, his favorite things were drinking and womanizing and getting married, which he did three times. And while he claimed indifference about success, his mid-career books and movie deals made him a lot of money—which passed through his hands as quickly as it came in. And yet Steinbeck also took aim at the corrosiveness of power, the perils of income inequality, and the urgency of ecological collapse, all of which drive public debate to this day.

Steinbeck remains our great social realist novelist, the writer who gave the dispossessed and the disenfranchised a voice in American life and letters. Eloquent, nuanced, and deeply researched, Mad at the World captures the full measure of the man and his work.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Alexander C. Kafka;Washington Post
   • content: Painstakingly researched, psychologically nuanced, unshowy, lucid.... Souder, in his own humble style, has brought a deeply human Steinbeck forth in all his flawed, melancholy, brilliant complication.
2. • premium: False
   • source: Brenda Wineapple;New York Times Book Review
   • content: Souder's sympathy for Steinbeck ... is most effective and eloquent in his depiction of the California landscape or of the sea, which he describes as swimming with small pelagic crabs 'like a crimson carpet spread across an ocean the color of lapis lazuli.'
3. • premium: False
   • source: Joumana Khatib;New York Times
   • content: A comprehensive new biography of America's best-known novelist of the Great Depression arrives at a timely moment.
4. • premium: False
   • source: Wendy Smith;Boston Globe
   • content: Vividly evokes the landscape 'between the mountains and by the sea' that nurtured [Steinbeck's] love of nature.... [An] appreciative yet clear-eyed assessment.
5. • premium: False
   • source: Gavin Jones;California History
   • content: Forges a powerful and courageous path through the life, times, and works of John Steinbeck.... with discernment, energy, and grace.
6. • premium: False
   • source: William Ray;Steinbeck Review
   • content: Souder's genial style has qualities of simplicity, immediacy, and grace that attract readers to Steinbeck's writing.... Style and subject are perfect match.... Souder's elegant and engrossing biography of Steinbeck adds substantially to our understanding and appreciation of an author whose feeling for wronged humanity, like Faulkner's sense of Southern history, is never out of date.
7. • premium: False
   • source: Donald Coers;Steinbeck Now
   • content: A brisk and engaging account by a highly-regarded biographer whose estimation of Steinbeck's importance a half-century after his death is itself testimony to his durability as a writer of fiction and critic of our world.
8. • premium: False
   • source: Phillip Lopate;Times Literary Supplement
   • content: [Souder] knows his subject well and writes with a storyteller's clean momentum.
9. • premium: False
   • source: Douglas Brinkley, Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and professor of history, Rice University, and author of Rightful Heritage
   • content: William Souder's Mad at the World is a stupendous biography of John Steinbeck. By connecting California's fog, farms, forests and fisheries to Steinbeck's growth as an artist Souder has elevated the great Nobel Prize–winning novelist to relevancy in today's depression-stuck America. The backstories on how Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath and his relationship with marine biologist Ed Ricketts are extraordinary. Throughout the narrative Souder provides first-rate literary analysis and gorgeous prose-styling. This is a book for the ages. Highly recommended!
10. • premium: False
    • source: Jack E. Davis, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea
    • content: Brilliance follows brilliance in this illuminating biography of John Steinbeck. William Souder reveals his with a vibrant narrative and prose worthy of the master himself. Every page comes alive with the force of history, the wonder of place, and the friends, strangers, and dogs that shaped the sensibilities of the man who became the conscience of modern America.
11. • premium: False
    • source: Henry L. Carrigan Jr.;BookPage
    • content: Bracing.... Steinbeck remains widely read and relevant today, as vibrantly illuminated by Mad at the World.
12. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from June 1, 2020
      Journalist Souder (On a Farther Shore) presents a comprehensive, eloquent exploration of the life and career of John Steinbeck (1902–1968). Souder begins with Steinbeck’s childhood, frequently miserable college years at Stanford (he was known to fire a gun at the wall when frustrated with his writing), and time living in a cabin on Lake Tahoe, where he toiled tirelessly on his first book, Cup of Gold, and met his first wife, Carol Henning. The novel’s unsuccessful 1929 publication was quickly followed by the stock market crash, and five years later, by his mother’s death after a protracted illness. However, out of the ashes of this difficult time came his tremendously successful novel Tortilla Flat, in 1935, and then in 1937, Of Mice and Men. Meanwhile, Steinbeck started interviewing impoverished farmers from the Dust Bowl, research that went into the arduous writing of The Grapes of Wrath. In the years that followed, Steinbeck struggled with newfound celebrity, left Carol for his second wife, Gwyn Conger, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Souder neither deifies nor condemns his subject, remarking candidly on Steinbeck’s misogyny and propensity for mythmaking, while making clear the author’s ardent devotion to his craft. Steinbeck fans could not ask for a more nuanced account of this troubled giant of American literature.

13. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      July 1, 2020
      An authoritative and sympathetic account of the life of the Nobel laureate. While John Steinbeck (1902-1968) still enjoys a good reputation in high school and undergraduate classrooms, the critical consensus is less generous, treating him as a sentimental writer undeserving of his Nobel. When asked if he deserved the prize, Steinbeck answered, "Frankly, no." This is typical of Steinbeck as we encounter him in this book, the first major biography of him in 25 years. Souder, previously the biographer of Rachel Carson and John James Audubon, presents his subject as always somewhat ill-suited to his moment. Unlike his prominent contemporaries Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Steinbeck underwent a "long apprenticeship" due to his "failure to see that what he should write about was already inside him." When he did find success--in dramatic fashion with Tortilla Flat, In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath--much of it was due to significant contributions from his first wife, Carol. Steinbeck's preoccupation with death kept him busy at his desk but with little attention to the quality of his work. By Souder's account, the vague and indiscriminate grudge Steinbeck carried most of his life may have enabled what would prove to be his enduring attribute as a writer: his understanding and compassion for the downtrodden. "This was the part of the human condition," writes the author, "he could never abide: the abuse and oppression of anyone by someone more powerful." Strikingly, however, his empathy didn't always extend to his intimates. He could be cruel, especially to his first two wives and his sons (both with his second wife, Gwyn). The affable narrator of Travels With Charley, then, isn't whom we should call to mind when we think of Steinbeck. Souder's version is much more persuasive. A lively and perceptive portrait of the artist as a complicated guy.

      COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

14. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      October 1, 2020
      Best known for The Grapes of Wrath, the epic novel of migrant farm workers during the Great Depression, Steinbeck (1902-1968) earned a deserved reputation for giving voice to the voiceless. He produced several popular novels and nonfiction works among his 20-odd books, cashed lucrative checks from Hollywood, and pocketed a Nobel Prize. But, as with more than a few of his literary contemporaries, his life was a mess. Insecure as a writer, sex-driven, drink-damaged?you get the picture. Souder, biographer of John James Audubon and Rachel Carson, draws a solid, straightforward, and mostly empathetic portrait of Steinbeck's bootstrap-rise from rural California to cultural fame and complicated fortune. But Steinbeck was uncomfortable with and perturbed by almost all of it, including the obligation to perform for his admirers. His books often wavered between human poignancy and philosophical gibberish, and his critical reception was forever mixed. Souder highlights Steinbeck's little-appreciated environmental consciousness on land and sea. But then there's this: Steinbeck engineered one of the more outrageous wife-versus-mistress moments readers will ever encounter. The mistress won, becoming the second of his three wives.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

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Winner of the 2021 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2020 in Nonfiction

A resonant biography of America's most celebrated novelist of the Great Depression.

The first full-length biography of the Nobel laureate to appear in a quarter century, Mad at the World illuminates what has made the work of John Steinbeck an enduring part of the literary canon: his capacity for empathy. Pulitzer Prize finalist William Souder explores Steinbeck's long apprenticeship as a writer struggling through the depths of the Great Depression, and his rise to greatness with masterpieces such as The Red Pony, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath. Angered by the plight of the Dust Bowl migrants who were starving even as they toiled to harvest California's limitless bounty, fascinated by the guileless decency of the downtrodden denizens of Cannery Row, and appalled by the country's refusal to recognize the humanity...

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