John Steinbeck allowing Steinbeck to spend a full day on the set of "The Grapes of Wrath" and the next day on the set of "Of Mice and Men." In the 1930s and 1940s, Ed Ricketts strongly influenced Steinbeck's writing. Steinbeck frequently took small trips with Ricketts along the California coast to give himself time off from his writing and to collect biological specimens, which Ricketts sold for a living. Their joint book about a collecting expedition to the Gulf of California in 1940, which was part travelogue and part natural history, published just as the U.S. entered World War II, never
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