Isn’t it somehow reassuring that even the Steinbecks of the world can have creative meltdowns? Here he describes a play which ran through his fingers after melting four times.

What he did next, by the way, was to cook up a trip to the Soviet Union with Robert Capa, using a bar, a bar man and his superb cocktails to fuel their travel planning sessions. The book that resulted was certainly worth a melted play or two.

‘A play I had written four times had melted and run out between my fingers.  I sat on the bar stool wondering what to do next.’

Source: John Steinbeck, A Russian Journal, with photographs by Robert Capa (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999 (1948)), p. 3

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