Although Steinbeck claimed that he didn’t collect books as a habit, almost every John Steinbeck biography notes the writer’s enduring attachment to books on such subjects as King Arthur. Like King Arthur’s Roundtable, Steinbeck and his circle have become legend; like the author who loved King Arthur, readers who are passionate about John Steinbeck biography will find searching for John Steinbeck books at used book stores adventurous.
Book Stores Are Best for Collecting John Steinbeck Books
In Search of Steinbeck, a privately printed book by the late Anne-Marie Schmitz of Los Altos, California, is a case in point. On a recent shopping trip to Monterey area book stores, I found a copy of her limited-edition work, intact in its slip-case, signed, and priced to sell. Like other John Steinbeck books written by amateur enthusiasts, In Search of Steinbeck represents a labor of love. Using photographs by Richard S. Mayer and drawings by Wayne Garcia, Mrs. Schmitz pursues an aspect of John Steinbeck biography of particular interest to Californians: the houses that Steinbeck owned or occupied in Monterey, Los Gatos, and Pacific Grove—homes where the most memorable John Steinbeck books of the 1930s and early 1940s were written.
Mrs. Schmitz pursues an aspect of John Steinbeck biography of particular interest to Californians: the houses that Steinbeck owned or occupied in Monterey, Los Gatos, and Pacific Grove—homes where the most memorable John Steinbeck books of the 1930s and early 1940s were written.
I recommend In Search of Steinbeck to anyone, anywhere, who is serious about John Steinbeck biography and books. Reasonably-priced copies are available from booksellers online, but book stores are always more fun than Google, in part because you meet people in book stores who know things about John Steinbeck books that a computer can’t tell you. Sometimes personal connections made in book stores last a lifetime—or remind us too late what we missed along the way. Curious about Mrs. Schmitz, for example, I discovered that she was born in 1925, died in 2011, and had a happy marriage with Edwin Schmitz, the owner of the Book Nest in Los Altos, one of several bygone Bay Area book stores that I enjoyed frequenting before they closed.
Sometimes personal connections made in book stores last a lifetime—or remind us too late what we missed along the way.
Like Steinbeck in search of King Arthur, I was preoccupied by a particular quest that prevented me from asking the right question when I stopped in Los Altos to visit the Book Nest. I wasn’t interested in John Steinbeck books at the time; I was looking instead for works by Wallace Stegner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and historian who taught creative writing at Stanford, John Steinbeck’s on-and-off-again alma mater in nearby Palo Alto. Jackson Benson, the author of the most detailed John Steinbeck biography published to date, also wrote a big book about Wallace Stegner; my transition to Steinbeck occurred when I moved from Benson’s life of Stegner to his superb John Steinbeck biography. Regrettably, by then it was too late to meet Mrs. Schmitz.
My transition to Steinbeck occurred when I moved from Benson’s life of Stegner to his superb John Steinbeck biography. Regrettably, by then it was too late to meet Mrs. Schmitz.
Like the path to King Arthur’s Avalon, the little Los Altos book store’s doors closed long ago, and that’s a shame. If I had turned from Stegner to Steinbeck a year or so sooner, I could have asked Edwin Schmitz the right question when I visited the Book Nest: not Did you know Wallace Stegner? (he did), but Do you know anyone who has written creatively about John Steinbeck biography? Hermes Publications, the publisher of Mrs. Schmitz’s book, was no doubt Mr. Schmitz’s enterprise. If so, the result of their collaboration reveals their eye for visual design, paper quality, and packaging and their love of fine books.
Like King Arthur, John Steinbeck Biography Never Ends
In Search of Steinbeck also reminds readers of three truths about John Steinbeck books:
(1) Book stores are better than computers for finding John Steinbeck books worth collecting . . . but hurry—they’re closing fast.
(2) Interesting avenues to John Steinbeck biography, such as the houses where he wrote, remain open for exploration by enthusiasts.
(3) Worthy John Steinbeck books continue to be written by educated amateurs, like Mrs. Schmitz, who fall in love with Steinbeck in unexpected ways.
Anne-Marie Schmitz—reared in France and trained as a social worker—describes the beginning of her affair with John Steinbeck books in her preface to In Search of Steinbeck. The passage is a remarkable reminder of the role played by serendipity when certain people discover John Steinbeck books for the first time:
Next door to us in Los Altos lived Karl and Florence Steinbeck. They had two miniature french poodles that always managed to get lost. One morning in 1962, Karl came near our garden where one of them had wandered. I heard him tell my father that his cousin, John Steinbeck, had just received the Nobel Prize for Literature. . . .
Two years later, a friend came to visit us with her husband. We had known them in England and they had met John Steinbeck in Stockholm during the presentation of the prizes . . . . The Grapes of Wrath had deeply moved them. Soon after they left, I bought a copy of it. It kept me spellbound. It was like a great wave taking me along, away from the selfishness of everyday life, back to the wartimes when the refugees from the north covered the roads of France, when babies were born in barns along the way, and dead folks were buried in ditches. It took me back to the days when pain, poverty, and tragedy were all around us. It renewed an acute awareness of the wrongs of this world and a desire to do something about them.
Engaged from boyhood by Thomas Malory’s King Arthur, John Steinbeck encouraged readers of every age to participate imaginatively in the books he wrote as an adult. Wonderfully prepared by personal experience, Mrs. Schmitz took Steinbeck up on the invitation to enter his world and learn about his life. Thanks to her and her husband’s hard work, John Steinbeck biography gained an elegant emblem in 1978 with the appearance of In Search of Steinbeck, the fruit of careful, loving labor.
Engaged from boyhood by Thomas Malory’s King Arthur, John Steinbeck encouraged readers of every age to participate imaginatively in the books he wrote as an adult.
Take my word for it—In Search of Steinbeck is a jewel of a book worth having whether or not you are possessed by the collecting habit. If book stores in your area have gone the way of King Arthur’s court and the Book Nest, Google the title and treat yourself to one of the copies on sale online for less than the book’s original $35 publication price. Who knows? Perhaps you too will be inspired to open a new path in John Steinbeck biography, as Anne-Marie Schmitz did 35 years ago.
About William Ray
