No writer yet has fully succeeded in bringing life together all in one piece. The good writer never stops trying, and he will be discovered, as Steinbeck has been, by the readers for whom he is writing, by those who recognize that he has carried, further than they have been able to carry, some of their own efforts to make life into an orderly pattern. This is what you will find in these short novels, along with much else-beauty (and ugliness), questions (and some answers), and always the high drama, the urgent flow, of fine storytelling. Which is to say you will see Steinbeck plain, and maybe your world, too, a little more plainly than you had before.
Joseph Henry Jackson – Berkley California – 1953
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