John Steinbeck

  b. 1902; d. 1968 | American author

At The Bottom

— 1925

After being evicted from the building, Steinbeck shut himself off from the world.

Struggling and shouting furiously, a 23-year old aspiring writer named John Steinbeck was dragged from the building and shoved back on to the street by security guards.  A trail of typed pages fluttered behind him, littering the hallway and lobby of Robert McBride and Company, the publishing firm that had just rejected Steinbeck’s collection of short stories.  A native of Salinas, California, Steinbeck had ventured to New York City the previous year, hoping to make his way as a writer.  While sending his stories around town and waiting for his break, Steinbeck took a series of ill-fated jobs.  For a while, he worked at the construction site where Madison Square Garden was being erected; he quit after a co-worker fell from a high scaffold and died.  Steinbeck also tried his hand as a reporter, but he regularly got lost while trying to cover the news.  Before long, he was fired.  At last, he received word that an editor at McBride was interested in his work.  Overjoyed by the prospect of publishing a book, he immediately threw himself into his stories, writing at a mad pace to complete a collection of short fiction.  When he brought his completed manuscript to the office, however, the editor who liked them was no longer employed there — and no one else at the company was interested in publishing the stories.  Enraged, Steinbeck began screaming and cursing.  After being evicted from the building, Steinbeck shut himself off from the world.  “My friend loaned me a dollar,” he explained later, “and I bought two loaves of bread and a bag of dried herrings . . . .  I was afraid to go out on the street — actually afraid of traffic — the noise.”  He soon returned to California.