Hometown that once shunned John Steinbeck now honors him

SALINAS, Calif. -- Mist shrouds the hills that hem in Monterey Bay, and cattle still graze the valley where farm workers pluck romaine and red leaf from the soil. But little else remains the same in this fertile spread where John Steinbeck set many of his stories.

Neighbors in his hometown once called him "no-good Johnny Steinbeck." Now, they're leading the country in a yearlong celebration of the author's 100th birthday that includes art shows, film festivals and a gala tribute March 19 at New York's Lincoln Center.

"He stung at the time," says Jim Gattis, who came to Salinas from Arkansas with his parents during the Dust Bowl years. "But you get a few generations away and you see that he was writing the truth."

In the 1930s, when Steinbeck called Salinas home, it was a dusty town of about 5,000 people. Wealthy landowners knew their place. So did their workers, until the migrants were joined by "Okies" -- white Midwestern farm families who fled drought and came West in search of a better life. They hoped to find it in the lettuce fields of Salinas Valley.

Steinbeck not only captured the region's beauty in such novels as "East of Eden," "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Cannery Row," he uncovered its seamy side as well. He wrote about the exploitation of farm workers, prostitution and social injustice, issues that resonate today.

700,000 copies a year

Every time the economy tanks, "Steinbeck sales climb through the roof," says his son, writer Thom Steinbeck. The more a "heartless corporation" abuses people, "and the moment people feel they've lost their free will, Steinbeck goes off the bookshelves."

He died Dec. 20, 1968, but Steinbeck's books still sell more than 700,000 copies worldwide each year.

"When you read Hemingway, when you read Fitzgerald, when you read Steinbeck, you know you're in the hands of somebody who knows how to tell a story," biographer Jay Parini once said. "'Of Mice and Men' is still read by kids across the country. Steinbeck may be the last writer some people actually read."

His first two novels did not do well commercially. But then "Tortilla Flat," published in 1935 and set near Monterey, was an instant hit.

But it was "The Grapes of Wrath" that drew attention to the exploitation of farm workers and made Steinbeck an international name.

With "The Grapes of Wrath," Steinbeck did more than just break one town's code of silence. Coming on the heels of the Russian revolution and the Depression, he fed a fear that his writings would radicalize the nation.

The response was swift.

No one would rent him office space. When he walked down the street, people crossed to the other side.

The sheriff warned him that his life was in danger, Thom Steinbeck said. "He said, 'John, don't go into a hotel room without a friend, sit with your back to the wall in the restaurants and always carry a gun."'

When the book fell off the best seller list after a year and a half, Steinbeck threw a party.

"The people who had the power thought my father had betrayed his class," Thom Steinbeck said. "Now he's perceived as a hero."