John Steinbeck into the California Hall of Fame, located at the California Museum for History, Women and the Arts. His son, author Thomas Steinbeck, accepted the award on his behalf. To commemorate the 112th anniversary of Mr. Steinbeck's birthday on February 27, 2014, Google displayed an interactive doodle utilizing animation which included illustrations portraying scenes and quotes from several novels by the author. Steinbeck and his friend Ed Ricketts appear as a fictionalized characters in the 2016 novel, "Monterey Bay" about the founding of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, by Lindsay Hatton (Penguin Press). Steinbeck was affiliated to the St. Paul's Episcopal Church
John Steinbeck they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception". Many critics complained that the author's best works were behind him. "The New York Times" ran an article by Arthur Mizener titled "Does a Writer with a Moral Vision of the 1930s Deserve the Nobel Prize?" that claimed Steinbeck was undeserving of the prestigious prize as he was a "limited talent" whose works were "watered down by tenth-rate philosophizing". Many American critics now consider these attacks to be politically motivated. The British newspaper "The Guardian", in a 2013 article that revealed that Steinbeck had been a compromise choice for the Nobel Prize,