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In New York City, his brother-in-law found him a job pushing wheelbarrows for the construction of the original Madison Square Garden while continuing his pursuit as a writer (Lisca 32). After giving free-lance writing a try, he returned to California in 1926 (Fontenrose 3). For the next three years, periods of temporary employment alternated with periods devoted entirely to writing; and he moved from place to place, to San Francisco, Monterey, Salinas, Lake Tahoe, writing novels and stories that no publisher would buy (Fontenrose 4).
On January 14, 1930, Steinbeck married his first wife, Carol Henning (Fontenrose 4). As a gift, his father gave him a house in Pacific Grove, California. Later that year, Steinbeck met Edward Ricketts, owner and operator of a small commercial biological laboratory on the waterfront of Monterey. Steinbeck's association with Ricketts stimulated "the best period of his career" (Fontenrose 4). Steinbeck's second marriage began on March 29, 1943, when he married Gwyndolen Conger. Soon after, he became a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. In 1944, his first son, Tom, was born. His second son, John IV, followed two years later. In December of 1948, Steinbeck was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. .
On December 28, 1950, Steinbeck married his third wife, Elaine Anderson Scott. On October 25, 1962, Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. On September 14, 1964, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His support of the Vietnam War in his final years came as a shock to some (Bloom 14). Throughout his life, John Steinbeck remained a private person who shunned publicity (Bloom 15). In 1968 he suffered several heart attacks while summering in Sag Harbor. He died on December 20, 1968 of arteriosclerosis in New York City. His ashes were placed in the Garden of Memories Cemetery in Salinas (Bloom 15).
John Steinbeck has published eight volumes of fiction, each as different from the others as all are different from the writings of most novelists.
