今天早上听了网课“美国经典文学（短篇小说）”，美国老师Candince介绍了大萧条(The Great Depression)。她以John Steinbeck和他的作品Of Mice and Men为载体，让学生讨论大萧条的特征，同时联系了海明威同时期的作品。

独乐乐不如与人乐，于是，我向大家介绍诺贝尔文学奖获得者John Steinbeck.我的介绍分中英文两部分，前面是中文，后面是英文。如果你的英文比较好，希望先看后部分的英文，再看中文；如果你对自己的英文不够自信，那就先看中文，但英文一定要看噢。

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中文介绍：

史坦贝克John Steinbeck(1902-1968)﹐美国作家﹐1902年二月二十七日出生于加州的蒙特利郡Monterey的Salinas镇﹐这是一个离太平洋海岸仅仅二十五英哩的小镇。Salinas镇是加州非常肥沃的地方﹐而Salinas谷更赢得“国家沙拉碗”(The salad bowl of the nation)的荣称。这样的一个农业社会是史坦贝克童年和青少年所熟悉的成长环境。此外便是他的父母亲在蒙特利海湾Monterey Bay湾畔的Pacific Grove镇拥有一间渡假屋﹐那片海洋和海边也是史坦贝克最感亲切的地方之一。他的父亲任职于县政府当财政科科长﹐而母亲则是学校教师。他在家里四个孩子中排行第三。

1919年他在Salinas中学完成了中学教育﹐并在同一年入读于史坦佛大学﹐主修英国文学与海洋生物。他是一边读大学而又一边打工﹐从中学开始到大学 他当过当地的农场工人、糖厂实验室助手、牧场雇佣、销售员、工厂工人等﹐读大学时﹐常常停学去工作﹐过了一阵子又回大学﹐1925年东渡到纽约发展(他从洛杉矶乘货船经巴拿马运河去的)﹐他离开加州也离开了史坦佛大学而没有获得学位。但是﹐他在史坦佛大学求学的那个阶段已把写作所需的本领学全了。读中学时他已对写作深感兴趣﹐在阅读的广泛方面说﹐从小就深获父母亲的鼓励﹐但很显然地在很大程度上受到当教师的母亲的启迪和影响﹐所以他很早就接触到欧洲的经典名著、希腊神话和圣经等著作。虽然他出生于中产阶级的家庭﹐但由于他做过不同的下层工作﹐具体地直接接触到与实际地深深体认到真正的下层社会受薪阶级工农人等的真实生活以及他们的血与泪。所以他的作品的大致风格与方向便是自觉地为那些苦难的下层社会的人们道出他们的困境和他们的心声。

在纽约﹐他希望能当一个自由撰稿人以谋生﹐但是他得到的记者工作的收入却远远不敷支出﹐而必须做不同的劳力工作的散工去帮补家用。两年后他重返加州找到了一个看管一座别墅的工作﹐在那儿他写出了他的第一部小说《金杯》(Cup of Gold)﹐并于1929年出版。1930年发生了对史坦贝克写作具巨大影响的两件事﹕一是在年初他和卡露汉宁Carol Henning结婚﹐另一件事发生在年底﹐他结交了李克兹Edward F. Ricketts(1897-1948),并且成为亲密的朋友。他的第一次的婚姻维持到1941年春天。从1930到1941年是史坦贝克创作的高峰期﹐卡露持家﹐帮忙手稿的打字工作﹐并且常常提出一些自己的看法和鼓励﹐这些都使他能安心和用心写作。而他的好友李克兹则是一个海洋生物学家、业余哲学家、文艺爱好者、人道主义者和热爱探究生态环境问题的人﹐史坦贝克和他的长期亲密的交往﹐显然地彼此相互地影响着对方。但一般都认为李克兹稍长于史坦贝克﹐并且 在哲学上有明确的见解和较倾向于东方哲学禅学老庄一类的思想﹐对史坦贝克的写作和思想产生了一定的影响力。并且﹐我们也不难在史坦贝克的前期很多部小说里 找出像李克兹的影子人物来﹐而他们两位由于对海洋生物这方面的共同兴趣﹐所以也常常一起在可达兹海海域探寻这片海域里的海洋生物﹐并在1941年他和李克兹更合写了《可达兹海》(Sea of Cortez)一书。

三十年代初还没有闯出什么名堂而又新婚的史坦贝克夫妇就是住在他父母留下的海边渡假屋﹐他的大部份早期的小说都是在那儿写出来的。1935年《薄饼坪》 (Tortilla Flat)出版﹐成为畅销书﹐于是巩固了他的职业作家的生涯。1936年的《相持》(In Dubious Battle)和1937年的《人鼠之间》(Of Mice and Men)更使他成为著名作家。直到1939年《愤怒的葡萄》(The Grapes of Wrath)这部不朽的社会小说的出版﹐不单止整个美国文坛为之震动﹐更是举世嘱目。这部以三十年代大旱灾为背景﹐叙述一个远离奥克拉荷马家乡的佃农家庭裘德一家The Joad family老老少少十二人长途跋涉几千里迁徙加州求生存的可歌可泣的社会写实小说﹐不单在翌年春季即为史坦贝克赢得了国家图书奖(National Book Award)和普立兹文学奖(Pulitzer Prize)﹐并且在1962年十月二十五日荣获诺贝尔文学奖。《珍珠》(The Pearl)一书则出版于1947年﹐是一个中篇的寓言故事﹐这部寓言小说跟《人鼠之间》以及《愤怒的葡萄》在美国的中学往往列入必读作品。后期的作品最杰出的应数《伊甸园之东》(East of Eden)﹐这部以旧约圣经故事作底本而为亚当夏娃的长子该隐Cain翻案的小说实令人耳目一新﹗显然地,史坦贝克的作品都存在着一个根本的特点﹐那就是他自觉地要为那些生活在下层社会被压迫的人们发言﹐他深入地写实地呈现出他们的悲哀与梦想以引起人类广泛的同情心和对他们了解与关切。他那悲天悯人的伟大 的人道主义者的关怀与爱心早已赢得了全世界的读者对他的推崇与敬爱﹐更为世界文学树立了一个崇高的典范。

英文介绍：

John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California in 1902, and spent most of his life in Monterey County, the setting of much of his fiction. He attended Stanford University intermittently between 1920 and 1926. Steinbeck did not graduate from Stanford, but instead chose to support himself through manual labor while writing. His experiences among the working classes in California lent authenticity to his depiction of the lives of the workers, who remain the central characters of his most important novels.

Steinbeck's first novel,Cup of Gold, was published in 1929, and was followed by The Pastures of Heavenand, in 1933, To a God Unknown. However, his first three novels were unsuccessful both critically and commercially. Steinbeck had his first success with Tortilla Flat (1935), an affectionate and gently humorous story about Mexican-Americans. Nevertheless, his subsequent novel, In Dubious Battle(1936) was notable for its markedly grim outlook. This novel is a classic account of a strike by agricultural laborers and the pair of Marxist labor organizers who engineer it, and is the first Steinbeck novel to encompass the striking social commentary that characterizes his most notable works. Steinbeck received even greater acclaim for the novella Of Mice and Men (1937), a tragic story about the strange, complex bond between two migrant laborers. His crowning achievement, The Grapes of Wrath, won Steinbeck a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. It was also adapted into a classic film directed by John Ford that was named one of the American Film Institute's one hundred greatest films. The novel describes the migration of a dispossessed family from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California and critiques their subsequent exploitation by a ruthless system of agricultural economics.

After the best-selling success of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck went to Mexico to collect marine life with the freelance biologist Edward F. Ricketts, and the two men collaborated on Sea of Cortez (1941), a study of the fauna of the Gulf of California. During World War II, Steinbeck wrote some effective pieces of government propaganda, among them The Moon Is Down (1942), a novel about Norwegians under the Nazis. He also served as a war correspondent. With the end of World War II and the move from the Great Depression to economic prosperity Steinbeck's work softened somewhat. While still containing the elements of social criticism that marked his earlier work, the three novels Steinbeck published immediately following the war, Cannery Row (1945), The Pearl, and The Bus (both 1947) were more sentimental and relaxed. Steinbeck also contributed to several screenplays. He wrote the original stories for several films, including Lifeboat (1944), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and A Medal for Benny, and wrote the screenplay for Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata!, a biographical film about Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican peasant who rose to the presidency.

Steinbeck married Carol Henning in 1930 and lived with her in Pacific Grove, California. He spent much of his time in Monterey with his friend, Ricketts, at his Cannery Row laboratory, an experience which inspired his popular 1945 novel, Cannery Row. In 1943, Steinbeck married his second wife, Gwyndolyn Conger, with whom he had two children. 1948 was a particularly bad year for Steinbeck: Ricketts died, and Gwyndolyn left him. However, he found happiness in his 1950 marriage to Elaine Scott, with whom he lived in New York City. Two years later, he published the highly controversial East of Eden, the novel he called "the big one," set in the California Salinas Valley.

Steinbeck's later writings were comparatively slight works, but he did make several notable attempts to reassert his stature as a major novelist: Burning Bright (1950), East of Eden (1952), and The Winter of Our Discontent (1961). However, none of these works equaled the critical reputation of his earlier novels. Steinbeck's reputation is dependent primarily on the naturalistic, proletarian-themed novels that he wrote during the Depression. It is in these works that Steinbeck is most effective at building rich, symbolic structures and conveying the archetypal qualities of his characters. Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962, and died in New York City in 1968.