Tortilla Flat was published by Covici-Friede, New York, on 28 May 1935, in a first printing of approximately 2,800 copies priced at $2.00. It was Steinbeck’s fourth book but his first to sell — his previous novels had attracted little attention. Tortilla Flat became a bestseller, won the California Commonwealth Club’s Gold Medal, and was quickly sold to Paramount Pictures. The money allowed Steinbeck to write In Dubious Battle and Of Mice and Men; the fame eventually became a source of regret, as Steinbeck felt the book’s comedy was taken at face value when he had intended something more complex.
The Novel
Danny returns from World War I to discover he has inherited two houses on Tortilla Flat, the paisano quarter above Monterey. His friends — Pilon, Pablo, Big Joe Portagee, Jesus Maria Corcoran, the Pirate — gradually move in, and the novel follows their episodic adventures: drinking red wine, stealing from each other and from the wider community, helping (and robbing) neighbours, debating philosophy, and pursuing women with varying degrees of success.
Steinbeck modelled the narrative explicitly on the Arthurian legends — Danny is Arthur, his friends are the Round Table, the houses are Camelot, and the wine is the Grail. The preface states this openly. The parallels are playful rather than schematic: Danny’s friends swear loyalty, undertake quests (usually for wine or food), and exhibit a code of honour that is simultaneously noble and absurd. The novel ends with Danny’s death — a Dionysian frenzy of destruction followed by a fatal fall — after which his friends disperse, the house burns, and the fellowship dissolves.
Collecting Tortilla Flat
First edition (1935, Covici-Friede): Approximately 2,800 copies, $2.00.
Identification points:
- Covici-Friede, Inc. imprint (the publisher went bankrupt in 1938)
- First printing stated
- Tan cloth binding
- Dust jacket extremely rare
Approximate market values:
- Fine/Fine in dust jacket: $10,000–$30,000
- Near Fine/Good jacket: $5,000–$15,000
- Signed first edition: $15,000–$40,000+
- Without jacket: $500–$1,500
Value trajectory: Strong and stable. The Covici-Friede imprint (a short-lived publisher) adds bibliographic interest, and the small print run makes fine copies scarce. Steinbeck’s subsequent Nobel Prize (1962) and death (1968) established a high floor for all his first editions. Tortilla Flat is particularly desirable as the book that launched his career.
The Paisano Controversy
Steinbeck was criticised for romanticising the paisanos — mixed-heritage residents of Monterey who were, in reality, an impoverished and marginalised community. Some readers saw the novel’s humour as condescension; others appreciated its warmth. Steinbeck himself was defensive: he argued that the paisanos’ values — friendship, generosity, contempt for property — were preferable to those of mainstream American society. When the film adaptation was announced, Monterey’s Chamber of Commerce objected to the portrayal of their town; the Mexican-American community was divided between those who felt honoured and those who felt patronised. The debate anticipated later arguments about literary representation that would become central to American cultural politics.
Arthurian Parallels
The Arthurian framework is more than a literary conceit. Steinbeck was deeply read in Malory — he spent the last years of his life working on a modernisation of Le Morte d’Arthur — and the structure of Tortilla Flat anticipates themes he would pursue for decades. Danny’s house, like Camelot, is both a real place and a symbol of fellowship; when Danny dies and the house burns, the destruction is simultaneously comic and genuinely elegiac. The Round Table structure also solves a narrative problem: it allows Steinbeck to write picaresque episodes without needing a plot in the conventional sense. Each chapter is a “quest” — for wine, for money, for a woman, for redemption — and the quests accumulate into a portrait of a community rather than a story about an individual.
Critical Reception and Legacy
The novel was warmly received on publication. Burton Rascoe in Esquire compared it to Rabelais; other reviewers noted its Cervantine quality. The Paramount film (1942), starring Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, and John Garfield, was a commercial disappointment — the studio sanitised the material and imposed a conventional romance. Steinbeck disliked it.
Tortilla Flat remains underrated in the Steinbeck canon, overshadowed by the social realism of The Grapes of Wrath and the tight construction of Of Mice and Men. But it established the voice — warm, comic, attuned to the rhythms of working-class speech — that Steinbeck would deploy to greater effect in Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday. It is also the most purely joyful of his novels, before the weight of the Depression and the war darkened his vision.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Tortilla Flat a sequel to anything? No, it stands alone. However, Cannery Row (1945) and Sweet Thursday (1954) revisit the same Monterey setting with a similar picaresque structure and comic tone. Together they form an informal Monterey trilogy.
Why did Steinbeck model it on King Arthur? Steinbeck was a lifelong Arthurian enthusiast who first read Malory as a child. He saw the paisanos’ code of loyalty, generosity, and communal living as a genuine parallel to the chivalric ideal, transposed from medieval England to Depression-era California. The parallel is both sincere and ironic.
What is a paisano? In the Monterey context, a paisano is a person of mixed Spanish, Indian, Mexican, and Caucasian heritage — a distinct social group in early twentieth-century Monterey. Steinbeck portrays them as living outside the mainstream economy, subsisting on odd jobs, charity, and petty theft, but rich in friendship and philosophy.
How scarce is the first edition? Very. Covici-Friede printed only about 2,800 copies, and the publisher went bankrupt three years later. The dust jacket is exceptionally rare — most surviving copies lack it. A fine copy in jacket is one of the most desirable Steinbeck firsts after The Grapes of Wrath.