BOSTON (AP) — A tender and touching letter that author John Steinbeck penned to his teenage son, offering fatherly advice after the young man confided that he was in love for the first time, is going up for auction.
Boston-based RR Auction says the handwritten draft of a letter to his eldest son, Thomas — then 14 — shows the “Of Mice and Men” author’s empathy: He refused to dismiss it as puppy love.
“While this letter offers an intimate, private glimpse into Steinbeck’s family life, it also expresses his ideas about love with profundity and eloquence,” said Bobby Livingston, executive vice president of the auction house.
In the two-page letter, dated Nov. 10, 1958, the Nobel Literature Prize laureate told his son: “If you are in love — that’s a good thing — that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.”
Steinbeck, who won a Pulitzer for “The Grapes of Wrath” in 1940 and the Nobel in 1962 for a body of acclaimed work, showed he was no stranger to matters of the heart.