John Steinbeck is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Grapes of Wrath.
The book was first published in April 14, 1939. The book won the National Book Award & Pulitzer Prize for fiction, & it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. When preparing to write the novel, Steinbeck wrote: "I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this [the Great Depression and its effects]."
@gutenberg_org one of the greatest works of 20th century American literature, and still a heavy hitter today. We read it in high school but I found the pace too slow, and didn't much more than skim it. Reread a few years later in college and it floored me. Steinbeck paints with a heavy hand, but he does so deliberately, with awareness and purpose.
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