“Poison Cup of Gold”—the October 1, 2020 Wall Street Journal review of William Souder’s new life of John Steinbeck, by Sam Sacks—further escalated pre-publication enthusiasm for Mad at the World, the first full-length life of John Steinbeck since the biography by Jay Parini 25 years ago. Like other reviews of Souder’s book, Sacks’s Wall Street Journal essay heaps praise on its readable style, copious research, and psychological insight into a born writer at war with himself. “Some writers are content to write nothing until they have something they need to say,” says Sacks, who writes with wit in both senses of the term: “Steinbeck was the opposite.” Unlike other large-circulation reviews, Sacks’s extraordinarily perceptive account of Steinbeck’s career and Souder’s treatment draws on the work of literary scholars like Susan Shillinglaw and Jackson Benson. “Mr. Benson’s monumental 1984 biography, written across 15 years and nearing 1,200 pages, hangs over Mr. Souder’s endeavor,” notes Sacks, who also describes Steinbeck as “a world-class listener” and Travels with Charley as “a collection of stories masquerading as fiction.” The entire essay is worth reading, but a sample must suffice:

It’s common enough to read about authors whose lives are at odds with their work, but has there ever been one so profoundly in conflict with his own personality? Steinbeck is one of America’s few bona fide literary celebrities—perhaps only Twain and Hemingway enjoyed more international renown—yet he was horrified by public exposure and detested his fame, taking every opportunity to undermine it. Two clashing impulses provide the tension in Mr. Souder’s book: Steinbeck’s deep-seated distrust of success and the unyielding creative passion that brought his success about.

Sam Sacks is a literary critic and editor in New York. His literary criticism has appeared in Harper’s, London Review of Books, New Republic, Commentary, Weekly Standard, Prospect, Music and Literature, and The New Yorker. He has written the Fiction Chronicle column for the Wall Street Journal since 2010.

Illustration by Greg Newbold courtesy of the Wall Street Journal.

Mad at the World, the new life of John Steinbeck by biographer William Souder, continues to attract pre-publication praise, most recently in an October 1 Washington Post review by Alexander J. Kafka, senior editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Describing Souder’s work as “painstakingly researched, psychologically nuanced, unshowy, lucid,” and perfectly fitted in style to its psychologically challenged subject, Kafka speculates that, while “Ernest Hemingway loomed large as a figure of comparison” with John Steinbeck when both writers were alive, “Steinbeck might be considered a more American-centered version of Hemingway” today, almost six decades later. Noting that Steinbeck’s “charming and bogus” 1962 travel book Travels with Charley “masqueraded as reporting but was mostly another reach of [Steinbeck’s] imagination,” the Washington Post review concludes that “Souder, in his own humble style, has brought a deeply human Steinbeck forth in all his flawed, melancholy, brilliant complication.”

Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck will be released by W.W. Norton and Company on October 13. Steinbeck Review subscribers are invited to register for an October 19 reading and conversation with William Souder led by Nicholas Taylor (left), professor of creative writing and director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University.