Read Steinbeck for Free Online Page B

parts of it when you were out here. I am over at the Sheffields’ house using their typewriter because Carol is plugging away on mine.
    jawn

To Amasa Miller
    [Eagle Rock]
August 6 [1930]
    Dear Ted:
    I have received Farrar’s rejection of my manuscript. It is terse and to the point. The man makes no bones about his rejection and I like that. But now that I have it, I do not know what to do next. I know nothing whatever about the market.
    Aren’t you getting sick of trundling this white elephant around? It is discouraging, isn’t it? Nobody seems to want my work. That doesn’t injure me but it must be having a definite effect on you that you are handling a dud. Let me know what you think about it.
    Our house here has been sold over our heads and we are going back north to the Grove. In many ways we are glad to leave the south although we are very fond of this house. It is pretty hot down here now and my mind seems more sluggish than it usually is.
    affectionately
john
    According to Carlton Sheffield John and Carol Steinbeck had done “such a beautiful job of rebuilding the Eagle Rock shack that the owner evicted them and gave it to his daughter as a wedding present.”
    Â 
    They moved north to live rent free in the family three-room summer cottage in Pacific Grove on the Monterey Peninsula. This was the “home” to which Steinbeck kept returning throughout his life. His father gave them a monthly allowance of twenty-five dollars and Carol contributed her earnings from various jobs.

To Amasa Miller
    [147-11th Street]
[Pacific Grove]
[Summer 1930]
    Dear Ted:
    Your letter and Harper’s rejection came this morning. From what you say, I hope the book can get a berth with Little Brown, but I have very small hope of its ever finding a home. On the other hand, the very fear publishers have of it might make it go. Sometimes something of that nature happens.
    I started to write to you yesterday and then went to the county fair instead to see the polo ponies and jumpers. That is one advantage to Pacific Grove and Monterey and Del Monte that should pull at you. Carol is secretary to the Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce of Monterey so I will ask her to send you bushels of literature on the peninsula. As a matter of fact I think it is a grand place. But in the way of business, the place is growing all the time. There are thirteen fish canneries here, and within a couple of years the new breakwater is going in which will bring a greatly increased population because it will become a deep water port and hundreds of big ships will stop here. Look over the literature and tell your wife that it is the most wonderful place in the world. This sounds like a prospectus. As a matter of fact, I am very much emotionally tied up with the whole place. It has a soul which is lacking in the east.
    As you know, or do you, I finished a ms. labelled Dissonant Symphony. I sent it to this here now Scribner’s contest and have received not the slightest word from it. If I had a name, some firm might bring it out as a little book because it is a nice piece of work. It won’t get by Scribner because this contest will doubtless attract the best technicians in the country among which I am by no means numbered.
    I’m working on another novel [untitled—later destroyed] which will get some spleen out of my system. Bile that has been sickening me for years.
    Now I’m going out to the county fair again to see a polo game. Gawd, I wish you could be here to go with me. The horses are perfectly lovely. The insides of my legs itch for the saddle. I have not ridden for two years.
    Affectionately
john
    Â 
    Â 
    Shortly afterwards, he added about Carol:
    Â 
    â€œShe grows visibly in understanding, in culture, in kindness and in erudition. She understands many things more quickly and more thoroughly than I do. And the old defiance, which came from young wounds and disappointments, is wearing off. She is