John Steinbeck celebrated friendship, both in his life and in his fiction. Before he began to write each morning, he frequently scrawled letters to friends, and these voluminous pages, many unpublished, map the contours of his life and art. Friendship is the most enduring relationship in his best work, a fact that places him solidly in a long tradition of American writers who send male duos into uncharted terrain. But Steinbeck's vision of camaraderie is less markedly an escape from marriage, home, and commitment than an exploration of the parameters of society and self.