How did Steinbeck research his novels?
I walked the roads, I lived among the people I wrote about. You can't understand the dust in a man's throat or the ache in his back from a comfortable armchair. I went out to the labor camps, I talked to the families, I saw the sweat and the tears firsthand. For 'The Grapes of Wrath,' that meant riding alongside the migrants, breathing their air, eating their food. It’s about soaking it all in, the sights, the sounds, the smells. Facts and figures are one thing, but the truth of a life, that’s in the doing and the experiencing.
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