John Steinbeck, the Good Companion

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