Nobel Prize-winning "Grapes of Wrath" author John Steinbeck had quite an imagination, and not only for his characters.

Harper's magazine recently unearthed a memo dated Jan. 14, 1966, written to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara by Jack Valenti, then special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson. Valenti, who corresponded with Steinbeck "from time to time," calls the novelist "a fascinating man, with a kind of imaginative flair for war and weaponry."

In the memo, Steinbeck proposed that the army adopt a baseball-like napalm grenade for use in Vietnam, which he called the "Steinbeck super ball." "An enemy with a bit of flame on his clothes or even in front of him is out of combat," he noted.

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