Prohibition Protagonists as Seen through the Lens of Alcohology

Critical and biographical writings on John Steinbeck have identified and described the writer's propensity to engage in alcoholic consumption. Labeled by one critic as a "hard drinker" on a par with his contemporary Ernest Hemingway, Steinbeck could be said to have "written what he knew" given the plurality of drinking episodes in his writings. Drawing on the the social, economic, and historic aspects of Prohibition as well as the findings of anthropologists whose behavioral research focused on alcohol consumption as "constructive drinking," this study examines selected characters in The Long Valley, Steinbeck's Prohibition-era short stories. While the motivations behind the drinking of the Long Valley denizens may run contrary to anthropological findings, such diversion from the expected is lent credence given the impact of Prohibition, with its overarching backdrops of crime, suppression, and violence, upon John Steinbeck.