John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr.
Author: John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr
Dates: 27 February 1902 – 20 December 1968
Nationality: American
Title of Book: Of Mice and Men
A tall man stood in the doorway. He held a crushed Stetson hat under his arm while he combed his long, black, damp hair straight back. Like the others he wore blue jeans and a short denim jacket. When he had finished combing his hair he moved into the room, and he moved with a majesty only achieved by royalty and master craftsmen. He was a jerkline skinner, the prince of the ranch, capable of driving ten, sixteen, even twenty mules with a single line to the leaders. He was capable of killing a fly on the wheeler’s butt with a bull whip without touching the mule. There was a gravity in his manner and a quiet so profound that all talk stopped when he spoke. His authority was so great that his word was taken on any subject, be it politics or love. This was Slim, the jerkline skinner. His hatchet face was ageless. He might have been thirty-five or fifty. His ear heard more than was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought. His hands, large and lean, were as delicate in their action as those of a temple dancer.
He smoothed out his crushed hat, creased it in the middle and put it on. He looked kindly at the two in the bunk house. ‘It’s brighter’n a bitch outside,’ he said gently. ‘Can’t hardly see nothing in here. You the new guys?
Brief Biography: Steinbeck is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize novel ‘The Grapes of Wrath’. He was a college dropout and worked as a labourer until turning his hand to writing. During WW2 he served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune.
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