John Steinbeck House (Monte Sereno, California) stayed in the guest house while visiting the couple. In 1938, the Steinbecks left the house, as they felt that its location was no longer as secluded as it had been two years earlier. The John Steinbeck House was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 28, 1989. Unlike Steinbeck's birthplace in Salinas, California, this house is now a private residence home and is closed to the public. John Steinbeck House (Monte Sereno, California) The John Steinbeck House at 16250 Greenwood Lane in Monte Sereno, California, was the home of author John Steinbeck from 1936 to 1938.
John Steinbeck notes, "[T]his honor was one of the few in the world that one could not buy nor gain by political maneuver. It was precisely because the committee made its judgment ... on its own criteria, rather than plugging into 'the main currents of American writing' as defined by the critical establishment, that the award had value." In his acceptance speech later in the year in Stockholm, he said: In 2012, (50 years later), the Nobel Prize opened its archives and it was revealed that Steinbeck was a "compromise choice" among a shortlist consisting of Steinbeck, British authors Robert Graves and