This life-size sculpture of John Steinbeck sits on top of the Cannery Row Monument that was erected in 2014. He was an author and Nobel Prize winner who wrote many of his famous novels when he lived nearby in Pacific Grove during the 1930s. Two of his novels, “Cannery Row” (1945) and “Sweet Thursday” (1954) featured characters that were based on his friends from Ocean View Avenue that’s now called Cannery Row. Some of those people were also memorialized in bronze by artist Steven Whyte below this writer’s statue.