ISBN: 0-88739-350-0
182 pp.
Size: 6 x 9
Pub Date: 1/2002
Paperback Original
Price: $14.95
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John Steinbeck: The Good Companion
His Friend Dook's Memoirs
Carlton A. Sheffield
The friendship between "Dook" Sheffield and John Steinbeck began when they were dorm mates at Stanford. They took the same literature classes, wrote the same bad verse, chased the same girls, and later tried to make money as traveling salesmen and laborers at the same sugar refinery in Salinas. As married men, they drank too much and talked about art in Sheffield's house, nurturing a friendship that would last until Steinbeck's death in 1968.
Here we see Steinbeck as Sheffield knew him: a very complex man, shy but arrogant, full of delightful vanities, prone to bizarre antics, equally capable of abiding affection and casual cruelty. Here, finally, is Sheffield's version of that simple misunderstanding that interrupted, but could not destroy, a lifetime's friendship.
-Editor Terry White
"During his vacation, John devoted several hours a day to working in The Pastures of Heaven. He would set out from their camp into the towering redwood forest, carrying the old ledger, in which he did his writing, appropriated from his father's office, a five-cent bottle of ink, a carved walrus-tusk penholder, and a couple of extra nibs. The weather was warm and much of the time he wore only sandals and a pair of blue jeans; the upper part of his body soon acquired a magnificent mahogany color. He preferred to work in a little clearing he had discovered, where the sawed-off stump of a redwood tree served him as an excellent writing table."
Review: "Sheffield succesfully sublimates any alleged bitterness, instead providing us with a lively, honest account of an important, influential friendship... Scholars will surely find new materials on the life of the famously swaggering writer..."
-Publisher's Weekly
"[An] affectionate, well-written memoir by a lifelong friend of John Steinbeck... Portions of Steinbeck's correspondence are included, as are the excellent notes by Terry White, making this book of particular use to Steinbeck scholars."
-Library Journal
Bio: CARLTON A. SHEFFIELD was recalled in later life by Steinbeck. "...Sheffield was down last weekend...He is still picking at pronunciations and grammatical excellences. In many ways he has the qualities of a medieval schoolman."
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