Prodigious Introspection

Steinbeck, A Life in Letters Edited by Elaine Steinbeck and Robert Wallsten Viking, 906 pp., $15 John Steinbeck once observed to a friend, “There is a difference between writing letters and answering them.” Nothing could illuminate the nicety of that distinction more clearly than this massive volume of Steinbeck’s own letters: 861 of them, culled from a selection of more than 5,000, and covering 45 of the 66 years of his life.

Elaine Steinbeck, his widow, and Robert Wallsten, a long-time close friend of both Steinbecks, are the editors. The subtitle they have appended to the collection, A Life in Letters, suggests both their intention and their method. On first inspection Steinbeck seems a daunting, overpowering behemoth of a book, conveying by its very bulk the sort of exaggerated sense of self-importance Steinbeck scorned in himself and others. Gingerly but gamely, the reader steps in, perhaps believing that, as is usually the case with such collections, abrief skimming of each section will impart all one could possibly wish to know of Steinbeck’s correspondence.

RB

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Rene Kuhn Bryant

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Steinbeck, A Life in Letters Edited by Elaine Steinbeck and Robert Wallsten Viking, 906 pp., $15 John Steinbeck once observed to a friend, “There is a difference between writing letters and answering them.” Nothing could illuminate the nicety of that distinction more clearly than this massive volume of Steinbeck’s own letters: 861 of them, culled from a selection of more than 5,000, and covering 45 of the 66 years of his life.

Elaine Steinbeck, his widow, and Robert Wallsten, a long-time close friend of both Steinbecks, are the editors. The subtitle they have appended to the collection, A Life in Letters, suggests both their intention and their method. On first inspection Steinbeck seems a daunting, overpowering behemoth of a book, conveying by its very bulk the sort of exaggerated sense of self-importance Steinbeck scorned in himself and others. Gingerly but gamely, the reader steps in, perhaps believing that, as is usually the case with such collections, abrief skimming of each section will impart all one could possibly wish to know of Steinbeck’s correspondence.