Susan shillinglaw carol steinbeck biography
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Susan Shillinglaw Details John Steinbeck&#;s Dramatic Marriage to Carol Henning
Nobody knows more or writes better about the life of Steinbeck than Susan Shillinglaw, professor of English at San Jose State University, former director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies, and scholar-in-residence at the National Steinbeck Center. Her superb scholarship and elegant style are equally evident in Carol and John Steinbeck: Portrait of a Marriage, the biography of Steinbeck’s marriage to Carol Henning, a Jazz Age rebel with a Great Depression conscience. As Shillinglaw observes, John and Carol were no Scott and Zelda. But their dramatic story book reads like a novel—unfortunately, one with a similarly unhappy ending.
From Jazz Age Joy to Great Depression Decline
Meticulously researched over a period of 20 years, Shillinglaw’s life of Steinbeck and his first wife, from Jazz Age joy through Great Depression decline, describes a companionable marriage of equals and op
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Carol and John Steinbeck
Carol and John Steinbeck, Portrait of a Marriage, Susan Shillinglaw&#;s ground-breaking portrait of Steinbeck&#;s first marriage.
I’d been on a Steinbeck jag (reviewing Steinbeck’s Ghost,rereading The Long Valley,browsing through Harvest Gypsies,and finally reading Obscene Extreme, The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath) when I saw UNR Press had published Carol and John Steinbeck, Portrait of a Marriage. I immediately begged for a review nglaw&#;s book about a young Steinbeck bursting at the seams romantically, intellectually, and politically is another reason never to pass up what university presses, in this case, the University of Nevada Press, offers the general reader, as well as the academic.
Susan Shillinglaw, scholar in residence at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, is a professor of English at San Jose State University and, from to , was Director of its Center for Steinbeck Studies. Had she written her
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Shillinglaw explores Steinbeck and first wife
“Carol and John Steinbeck” by Susan Shillinglaw. (University of Nevada Press. $)
Local connection: monterey Peninsula resident Susan Shillinglaw was the director of the Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University from to She fryst vatten currently scholar in residence at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas and a professor of English at San Jose State University, where she was named President’s Scholar for Shillinglaw previously authored “A Journey into Steinbeck’s California.”
Content: They met at Lake Tahoe in and two years later Carol Henning and John Steinbeck were married. The couple lived in San Francisco, Los Gatos and Pacific Grove during what many critics consider the most productive period of Steinbeck’s career as a writer. Unfortunately, by the marriage “had shriveled to what John declared it was all along — a ‘constant state of hostility’” and the couple went their separate ways. In , their divorce was finali