John Steinbeck (1902–1968)

John Steinbeck grew up in the Salinas Valley of California. He picked fruit as a young man. He knew what it felt like to be hungry and tired in a country that called itself rich.

He became famous for The Grapes of Wrath, about a family driven west by drought. But "The Chrysanthemums" stays at home. One December afternoon on a ranch. A woman cutting down last year's flower stalks. A stranger at the fence with a wagon and a story.

Steinbeck's sentences are stark. They do not ask for your pity. They show you the fog sitting on the valley like a lid. They show you a woman's gloves, her scissors, her fence. They never tell you what she feels. You find out anyway.

He received the Nobel Prize in 1962. He said: "A writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature."

He gave no Nobel Lecture, but he came to the banquet (1962) and opened his speech in Swedish: "Min vackra fru" — my beautiful wife. Read it, or watch him give it, at NobelPrize.org.