Tortilla Flat [SEP] narrative location
Tortilla Flat
Tortilla Flat (1935) is an early John Steinbeck novel set in Monterey, California. The novel was the author's first clear critical and commercial success.
The book portrays a group of "paisanos"—literally, countrymen—a small band of errant friends enjoying life and wine in the days after the end of the Great War.
"Tortilla Flat" was made into a film in 1942. Steinbeck would later return to some of the panhandling locals of Monterey (though not the Mexican paisanos of the Flat
after its founder "Sugar King" Claus Spreckels. When it opened, the Spreckels plant was the world's largest sugar beet factory, each day consuming 13 million gallons of water (much of it pumped from wells) to process 3000 tons of beets.
Spreckels is associated with the writer John Steinbeck, who lived and worked there for a time, and used it as a setting in "Tortilla Flat". Spreckels was used as a location for the 1955 Steinbeck movie "East of Eden".
Geography.