stephanie_roberts 's review for:

A Life in Letters by John Steinbeck

5.0

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I remember gasping when I opened the box and saw the book was almost two inches thick. I remember carrying it with me on a bus to Toronto. I remember after spending the days chasing down little kids that did not want to: eat, nap, or stop picking on their siblings, i would crash into my bed at night and read John's beautiful correspondences. I told a friend the language that John Steinbeck used at twenty-three writing casually to his friends will make you feel like a moron. I fell in love with him. I really did. It wasn't like reading the words of a dead person. You felt as though you could have looked him up in the white pages and if you called him, he would have been glad to hear from you. He was so down to earth, humorous and falliable. He wasn't a god. He was a guy that went hungry in NYC, and was true to his friends(and inspired friends to be true to him too), he was this guy whose creative writing teacher did not think was talented, who never graduated university, who had a hell of a time selling his work and felt like a failure and fraud. He made me feel as though this thing called writing I could do. And this thing of love and life too. I consider him a mentor. A book that saved my life.