John Steinbeck with "Tortilla Flat" (1935), a novel set in post-war Monterey, California, that won the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal. It portrays the adventures of a group of classless and usually homeless young men in Monterey after World War I, just before U.S. prohibition. They are portrayed in ironic comparison to mythic knights on a quest and reject nearly all the standard mores of American society in enjoyment of a dissolute life devoted to wine, lust, camaraderie and petty theft. In presenting the 1962 Nobel Prize to Steinbeck, the Swedish Academy cited "spicy and comic tales about a gang of "paisanos",
John Steinbeck IV he studied Tibetan Buddhism with Chögyam Trungpa. On March 6, 1982, he married Nancy Harper, who had two children from a previous marriage; Steinbeck also had a child of his own. In 1983, the family traveled around the world for a year, living in Kathmandu to pursue their Buddhist studies. In 1984, Steinbeck was diagnosed with hemochromatosis, a genetic disease that causes iron retention. After years of heavy drinking, he quit in 1988. He became very interested in alcoholism's genetic aspects, and participated in Twelve-Step Programs. It was Steinbeck who broke the story of Ösel Tendzin's AIDS to the Boulder