Book review: My Life With John Steinbeck, by Bruce Lawson and Gwyn Conger Steinbeck

THERE are two dangers in reading a biography of a famous person such as John Steinbeck when written by a partner; the first is you are offered up revelation that can impact upon your appreciation of the talent. The second is that while the writer may write in detail about, in this case a writer, they can’t actually write very well.

My Life With John Steinbeck: The Story of John Steinbeck’s Forgotten Wife, has been written by Wife 2 in the sequence, Gywn Conger Steinbeck, and from the outset it certainly informs the reader of the character of the man who produced classic novels such as Of Mice and Men, East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath.

Steinbeck, we are told, grew up in a “lovely outpost of American life, in Salinas, California,” doted on by his mother and three sisters and expected to be doted on by every woman he’d have a relationship with from that point. Gwyn Conger, a former nightclub singer, met Steinbeck in 1938 while he was married to first wife, Carol. Conger reveals there was an immediate attraction, but she didn’t sleep with him because she “didn’t want to become a marriage wrecker”.

Steinbeck, essentially a functioning alcoholic at this point, came to play upon Conger’s obvious attention, but then played her off against his wife by putting them in the same room and telling the pair to work out which one of them needed him most. “I know you both love me,” said Steinbeck. “And I have been thinking. I want you to talk this out. What do you want to do about me?” Conger backed off at this point, but the pair eventually came together and married.

Yet, however besotted Conger was with the novelist, she didn’t fail to spot his “acts of cruelty.” Steinbeck, she recalls, had a pet rat. “John was a sadistic man, of many emotions, but being sadistic was one of his many qualities. And he would let the rat loose to frighten visitors, especially women.”

Steinbeck, according to his second wife, enjoyed the affections of many women. “Life with Steinbeck was quite a combination of heaven and hell – I never knew where one started and the other left off,” she writes.

However, what Conger fails to illustrate is why she was content to live with an unfaithful husband. Could love forgive all? Was she happy to live with a person who was obsessed with his work? It seems so. But the depth of her concession isn’t detailed. She does add however; “I was never, ever bored with John; angry, yes. But how could you be bored with a man who always had something exciting to say, even if he made it up with his immense imagination.”

Conger seems to rely on broad strokes rather than precision. The book, for example, references Steinbeck’s pal and drinking partner Burgess Meredith several times, but we don’t get a real sense of the depths, or otherwise, of that relationship. There is a hint in a tale about Steinbeck’s relationship with Alfred Hitchcock, who was interested in developing the writer’s novella Lifeboat as a film. But Conger explains the dynamic all too simply. “He was a determined man, while Alfred Hitchcock was a powerful man, in his way.” No way!

What we do get is lots of insignificant detail, about the houses Steinbeck and Conger lived in, how the writer liked certain chairs, about how he loved classical music, and much domestic twaddle. There is one telling line; “John didn’t particularly like writing for the movies. The only thing that ever came close to what he had in mind on screen was Of Mice and Men, with Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr.” But she adds, he liked The Grapes of Wrath. Sadly, what we don’t get is a sense of what really informed Steinbeck to come up with the likes of his account of an expedition he took in 1940, The Log from the Sea of Cortez; instead we get a lengthy account of how he seemed intrigued by voodoo.

Steinbeck and his wife appeared to be always on the move, changing homes, cities, and that’s a metaphor for this book which skims the surface of a life. We are told about the homes in New York, or Mexico, what they liked to eat, or drink, and a succession of intensely dull stories.

Conger mentions Steinbeck beginning work on his novel Cannery Row for example, but rather than offer an insight into what inspired him, she reveals the type of coffee he liked to drink during the writing process and the preparation time for Steinbeck’s favourite Mexican chilli. “John did not talk to me about Cannery Row, but of all his writing this was his great fascination. He did not have to research – he had lived there for so long.” As if we couldn’t have guessed.

What the book does, however, is prompt questions. Why did Steinbeck ask his new wife’s mother to come live with them in New York when he didn’t like her? Why did Steinbeck leave his new wife to enlist? And how could he walk out the door one day in 1943, leaving her and their two sons, without so much as a kiss on the cheek?

The rat, says Conger, was a major feature in Steinbeck’s life. After it died, she writes, “That was the only time I ever saw John Steinbeck cry. He never cried for me. He never cried for anybody.” But why was that the case? We are never told her thoughts, which leaves the reader feeling frustrated at a doormat of a woman. And a confusing writer. She says Steinbeck said to her he had been faithful while serving in the Forces, then adds he once wrote to her from Italy: “I was horny and slept with a woman and stole her perfume bottle and I’m sending it to you.”

She reveals he once tried to kick her down the stairs of their New York apartment, and seemed only interested in sex when drunk. “But I still loved him. I always will.”

Steinbeck died in 1968, and by the end of this book it was hard to care less, so reductive had been the effect of this memoir. Sadly, there is more to be gleaned about Steinbeck from Steinbeck himself in his Letters: “What an extension of life this pen is. Once it is in my hand, like a wand, I stop being a confused, ugly and gross person.”