The City of Salinas is home to one of the Central Coast’s most important literary figures. It’s the birthplace of John Steinbeck and the setting for some of his most famous novels like "East of Eden" and "Of Mice and Men."
More than 50 years after his death, a group of local organizations is working together to keep the author’s legacy alive in Salinas.
That legacy is front and center inside the National Steinbeck Center, where photographs and quotations line the walls. The old camper truck Steinbeck drove across the country in his memoir "Travels with Charley" sits in a corner of the museum.
Many of his books were set in the Salinas Valley and Monterey Bay — an area sometimes referred to as “Steinbeck Country.” He wrote lovingly about the area, once saying, “Not everyone has the good fortune to be born in Salinas.”
But he also expressed mixed feelings about his surroundings — like in the opening line of his 1945 novel "Cannery Row": “Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.”
“As far as opening lines go, it’s one of my favorites,” said archivist Lisa Josephs. “It’s pretty dramatic.”
On a tour through the museum, Josephs shows off a wall with a map of Steinbeck Country bearing the words “Valley of the World.”
It was Steinbeck’s goal to write about this area in a way that everyone could relate to — even if it focused very specifically on Central Coast farmworkers, or the Okies who migrated here during the Great Depression, or the area’s natural environment.
“Steinbeck wanted to create stories that took the Salinas Valley and universalized them, so that it would be the valley of the world — that this would be a place that everybody could relate to because the stories were just so universal and so compelling,” she said.
Josephs thinks it worked. “People come from all around the world to see this place to see the Salinas Valley, Monterey and all the places he wrote about because they feel that connection and they feel that connection long before they ever come here,” she said.
The Steinbeck Center is just one stop people make on Steinbeck pilgrimages. There’s a whole array of spots in Monterey County for people to visit. But one of the most important is just a few blocks from the museum – Steinbeck’s childhood house, which is now a museum and restaurant.
Robin Kunysz is a docent at the Steinbeck House. Walking through the dining room as people eat lunch, she points to a large glass window where the author would sit as a child.
“He would look out at this beautiful scenery, and we think that that's one reason why he has this exquisite way of describing the landscape. Because as a young child, he was immersed in it all the time,” Kunysz said.
Before she became a docent, Kunysz taught literature at a local middle school. One of her assignments was to read Steinbeck’s book "The Red Pony," which was set in the Salinas Valley.
“Every once in a while I would bring my students here for lunch,” she said. “They were quite impressed with it.”
Steinbeck wasn’t always popular locally. Novels like "Grapes of Wrath" and "East of Eden" focused heavily on how wealthy residents exploited migrants and farmworkers. There’s even an account of a mob burning copies of "Grapes of Wrath" in downtown Salinas in 1939.
But today, Steinbeck is now a major source of pride for locals. “It’s part of our persona [now] — the city persona, maybe,” Kunysz said.
That persona is also a draw for tourists. Kunysz said people come from all over the world to see Steinbeck Country — and often, just to see this house.
“That really makes us feel great… it's something so special, and it makes us feel special in what we do,” she said.
Back at the museum, Lisa Josephs said the Steinbeck Center and House aren’t the only organizations working to preserve the author’s legacy. They’re part of a network of Steinbeck preservationists that also includes groups like Salinas Public Library and the local Railroad Museum.
“[The goal is] to really present a united front, because it's going to help all of us. I think we all benefit from more people being engaged in the history here, because there's fascinating little pieces wherever you look,” she said.
In his acceptance speech for the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, Steinbeck said: “Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed.”
The author went on to say that the job of the writer is to expose our faults and failures, but also “to celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit, for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love.”
Steinbeck did both for this community — exposed its faults and failures along with the greatness of its heart and spirit. Maybe that’s why he’s still so relevant today.
