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Jay Parini
- Jay Parini, 1994, Steinbeck biographer. “Finally, we have the story of Gwen, also known as Gwyn, John Steinbecks’s second wife and mother of his two sons. Her story is the missing piece of the jigsaw that was John Steinbeck, a flawed genius.
mylifewithjohnsteinbeck.comMy Life With John Steinbeck - Gwen Gonger - The Forgotten Wife
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Sep 7, 2018 · Jay Parini, who wrote a biography of Steinbeck in 1994, describes the memoir in a foreword as “a genuinely significant literary discovery”. “I found it impossible to get a good take on Gwyn ...
- Sian Cain
Gwyn Conger Steinbeck was the second wife of John Steinbeck, master story-teller and Nobel Prize winner. She was born 25th October 1916. She met Steinbeck in late 1938 or early 1939, when she was just 22.
Sep 6, 2018 · My Life with John Steinbeck is a very interesting biography that reads like a novel. Of course, it is written from one person’s perspective, but the intimacy of Gwyn and John’s life brings depth to the story like no one else could.
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- Gwyn Conger Steinbeck
- $17.73
- Gwyn Conger Steinbeck, Douglas Brown
- Hatred
- Revenge
- Envy
- Partying
- Passion, Womanising and Consequences
- The Truth According to Steinbeck
- Boorishness and Insensitivity
- Pigheadedness
- Love of Food, Drink and Travel
- Love of Animals
John Steinbeck could hate with a vengeance. Gwyn’s memoir relates how when she finally left him he was stunned – and he never forgave her. Steinbeck’s resolute and unfair attack on his second wife through his lawyers in the New York Family Court in 1962, with his third wife Elaine alongside him, reeked of hatred. Gwyn had custody of their sons who ...
As a writer, he had a unique way of getting back at her – demonising her as the Cathy Ames/Kate Trask character in his blockbuster East of Eden. He says of her “her life is one of revenge on other people...” Setting some record for female villainy, Cathy sleeps, at fourteen, with her teacher who commits suicide on an altar, incinerates her parents,...
Steinbeck was envious of Ernest Hemingway, who had more wives (four to John’s three), and received his Nobel Prize in 1954, eight years earlier than Steinbeck. It may just be possible that Hemingway’s death in 1961, triggered a belated Nobel award in 1962 to John Steinbeck. This is perhaps unfair since Steinbeck’s canon of work far exceeded Hemingw...
The couple had a wild time partying in New York snowstorms (1947) and in Big Apple spots such as Club 21. Much partying took place at Ricketts’s lab in Monterey, albeit Gwyn confirmed their relationship was “a little crowded”, as she shared her husband with Ricketts, Steinbeck’s soulmate until Ricketts’s death in a car/train smash in 1948. Their 19...
Steinbeck was a bear of a man. He made love without protection, saying it made him impotent. Her Svengali, for several years passion outweighed the downside of their relationship. If Steinbeck ever thought Gwyn had entrapped him by having children he was a contributor by choice. Gwyn describes two abortions in her memoir and Steinbeck wanted her to...
John Steinbeck was an iconic storyteller – a genius and wordsmith. His novels encouraged millions of ordinary Americans to read about understandable subjects, farm and family life, small towns, landscape and the environment. He wooed Gwyn, often describing her as a redhead, with two dozen poems soon after they met, but at home his word was the trut...
Gwyn reveals she had two difficult Caesarean deliveries and Steinbeck is shown to be insensitive on both occasions. Once, immediately after the birth, he amazingly said that they would soon be back in bed together - unbelievably crass. He also said when their second son John Jnr was dying and had screamed all night long, “I wish to Christ he would ...
Steinbeck had a personal stamp, Pigasus, with its own motto, Ad astra per alia porci, (to the stars on the wings of a pig). This proved apt on occasion, as when he inadvertently set fire to their New York home, putting still burning ashes, into a cardboard box. The house caught fire and the alarm was raised by Gwyn’s mother’s dog Lassie. John was l...
John Steinbeck loved to explore and the couple had good times in the wild country between California and central Mexico. They loved looking at ruins, historic buildings and Mexican art. They enjoyed Mexican food, especially chilli.
Steinbeck also had a great love of dogs, one of whom he immortalised in his book Travels with Charley. Charley Dog was a tall and gregarious French poodle, and his sole companion on an extensive American road trip taken to ‘rediscover America’ made in 1962. He also kept a rat called Burgess, named after veteran actor Burgess Meredith, for years, an...
Jan 9, 2019 · John Steinbeck (1902-1968) was, with Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald, among the small handful of American literary giants of the twentieth century; the author of such classic novels as Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row and East of...
Sep 6, 2018 · My Life with John Steinbeck is a very interesting biography that reads like a novel. Of course, it is written from one person’s perspective, but the intimacy of Gwyn and John’s life brings depth to the story like no one else could. It is entertaining and enlightening.
Dec 5, 2019 · Gwyn Conger, John Steinbeck's second wife, died in 1975. Douglas Brown, the journalist she hired and fired to ghost-write her memoir, died in 1997. Brown's unpublished manuscript of the interrupted project, left to a relative in England, eventually came to the attention of a businessman named Bruce Lawson, who has chosen to resurrect the abortive effort as a self-published book using Gwyn's ...
