His parents' marriage dissolved four years after he was born,[2] and subsequently Thom spent a great deal of time with his father, whom he credited for instilling in him not only a passion for the world's great writers, but also a recognition of how language and poetic rhythms affect individuals and society in general.
[5]When not in school or on holiday, Thom and his brother traveled widely with their father to Europe, Greece, and North Africa.
[2] In 1961, the family spent a year traveling the world with a young teacher named Terrence McNally, whom the elder Steinbeck hired as a tutor for his sons.
[3] Steinbeck trained to serve with Armed Forces Radio and Television at Fort Knox, but arrived in Vietnam on the second day of the 1968 Tet Offensive and was immediately reassigned as a helicopter door gunner.
[3][4] Upon his return to the U.S., Steinbeck wrote and crewed on a number of documentaries, films and television projects.
[2] At age 58, Steinbeck published his first book, Down to a Soundless Sea (2002), a series of short stories based upon the original settlers of Big Sur, California, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In 2009, he and his friend folk singer Arlo Guthrie brought a copyright infringement lawsuit against Google that was eventually settled.