SOURCE: A review of John Steinbeck, in Antioch Review, Vol. 54, No. 2, Spring, 1996, p. 245.

In the following review, Allison offers a favorable assessment of John Steinbeck.

[In John Steinbeck] Parini does not ignore the popular question among academics, referred to by Donald R. Noble as “the Steinbeck question”—“Why,” Noble asked, “has Steinbeck not received the intense academic scrutiny awarded his peers?” In other words, why is Steinbeck not considered a great American writer like Hemingway and Faulkner? Parini addresses this question, but his main focus is how Steinbeck’s creative powers endured despite the odds against him. This more dramatic theme makes Parini’s biography compelling.

As a writer and a man, Steinbeck did have strikes against him. He never graduated from college. He suffered through two failed marriages before finding bliss with his third wife, Elaine. Furthermore, he never achieved critical acclaim after his early work, despite...