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 John Steinbeck IV John Ernst Steinbeck IV (June 12, 1946 – February 7, 1991) was an American journalist and author. He was the second child of the Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. In 1965, he was drafted into the United States Army and served in Vietnam. He worked as a journalist for Armed Forces Radio and TV, and as a war correspondent for the United States Department of Defense. In 1968, Steinbeck returned to Vietnam as a journalist. Along with Sean Flynn (the son of actor Errol Flynn), he started Dispatch News Service, which originally published Seymour Hersh's story on