[From Great Modern Reading, ed. W. Somerset Maugham, Doubleday, 1943, pp. 42 & 527:]

I have heard John Steinbeck’s “The Gift” condemned for sentimentality, and sentimentality has a meaning that is depreciatory. It describes an excess feeling, superficial and mawkish, that is indulged for its own sake. If to regard the yearnings, the eagerness, the devotion, the raptures of a child with humor and tenderness is sentimental, then, I suppose, “The Gift” must be charged with sentimentality. For my part, I should have said it was human and kindly.

[...]

The success of For Whom the Bell Tolls was so great and is so recent that it seems unnecessary to speak of it. There are episodes in this book that only Ernest Hemingway could have written, but they are so graphic and so brilliant that to my mind they somewhat impair the unity of the story, and for that reason, from purely technical standpoint I am inclined to think Farewell to Arms, though a less important book, a better novel.

From the same standpoint I think John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men more successful than his powerful and moving Grapes of Wrath. I have a notion that John Steinbeck has not yet quite managed to combine the various elements of his talent to produce the rich and shapely book I feel he has it in him to produce.