Steinbeck’s leading scholar dives into the places that inspired the author.

Agata Popęda here with a bit of good news for all John Steinbeck fans out there. Steinbeck’s Landscapes: Where Story Meets Place by Pacific Grove-based Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw was published yesterday, Sept. 8 and is available in multiple formats, including an audiobook version.

It’s a book on the places and the environments—natural and social—that Steinbeck experienced and set his fiction around. It’s a celebration of Monterey County first, California second and America third—since Steinbeck had lived many lives and belonged to many places.

He belonged to the fields around Salinas where he witnessed labor relations and power abuse, the hubbub of Cannery Row or the lazy pleasures of Pacific Grove where his parents had a weekend cottage. It’s also where he wrote after his divorce with his first wife, Carol, and where Shillinglaw arranged to meet with me last week.

The “stud red” (Steinbeck’s words) house on 11th Street still belongs to the Steinbeck family, and Shillinglaw, who has been the leading Steinbeck scholar in the nation for more than 30 years, enjoys the privilege of access. We sat in the garden, where stone frogs seem to rule over a pond, to talk about the new book. Steinbeck was very fond of ponds, and in a way, that’s how he thought about Monterey Bay, calling it “a blue platter.”

In Steinbeck’s garden, Shillinglaw shared the origins of Steinbeck’s Landscapes, first imagined as a first-person narrative, and later, when her publisher, Timber Press, was bought by prestigious Hachette Book Group, demanded a more scholarly approach. That said, the book—heavily and beautifully illustrated—is a fun read, filled with anecdotes, set in contexts and genuinely touching, if you are a California lover.

“I kept some of it in the opening of the book,” she says, explaining what it means for her to read, think of and write about Steinbeck. This Iowa-born, Colorado-raised and North Carolina-educated scholar knows many landscapes, but credits Steinbeck for her own discovery of California. Here, she found a career, a home and a P.G.-based husband.

The book is available for sale, and the author will meet with fans on Friday, Sept. 11 at 6pm at Downtown Book & Sound in Salinas.