John Steinbeck: The Story of an American Writer — Vol III
Other American Writers & Death
Part I — Arthur Miller
“ After dinner Miller walked with Steinbeck up Sixth Avenue…”
In 1943 Miller was working on a screenplay adaptation of war correspondent Ernie Pyle’s book, Here is Your War, and on the evening of the meeting with Steinbeck (this was early in 1943 before Steinbeck headed off for England) had been drinking heavily with Pyle and a large group of other journalists in the office of United Press for whom Pyle worked. Around 10pm Miller and a group of around ten or twelve journalists headed for ‘21’ and dinner, where they found Steinbeck. Arthur Miller describes the meeting in his autobiography Timebends:
“There, in the dining room already half empty, seated alone at a table chewing on crumbs from a broken piece of bread, was another American hero [the other one being Pyle] John Steinbeck. He turned out to be an old friend of Miller’s [Lee Miller, head of UP], who had sent him to Russia and elsewhere as a correspondent. ”
Miller was rather disappointed to find Steinbeck ‘idling’ in such a place, and rather embarrassed…
