SOURCE: “Laureate of the Underdog,” in Washington Post Book World, February 12, 1995, pp. 4-5.

In the following review, Shechner discusses Steinbeck's literary career and Parini's biography of Steinbeck.

The first clause of any brief on John Steinbeck’s behalf is that he was the quintessence of Main Street, Huck Finn with a typewriter, who put no stock in Europe or its cultural exports. Painfully shy and short on social graces, self-educated (a wayward student at Stanford, he never graduated), ignorant of art or music until he discovered jazz late in life, innocent of abstract ideas except about biological interdependence, and a true-blue binge drinker—he was the guy from Salinas. He did not chase after the Lost Generation, decamping to Europe, declaiming against Prohibition or American Philistinism. He stayed put, drank home brew, and studied native ground, the agricultural valleys of central California.

His writer’s strengths—his populism...