User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
“I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation- a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any HERE. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every states I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move.” 
The steed...Rocinante!John Steinbeck was not feeling very well before he decided to take a trip across country. It wasn’t only physical, but also a general malaise about the condition of the country and his own place in it. Early in the book he makes a statement that reveals exactly his state of mind. The words betray a clairvoyance of a near future that would catch up with him in 1968.
“I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.”Okay, that is the life philosophy that he has tried to live by, but it is what he says next that shows that he is feeling the tight grip of his impending demise.
”My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby. I knew that ten or twelve thousand miles driving a truck, alone and unattended, over every kind of road, would be hard work, but to me it represented the antidote for the poison of the professional sick man. And in my own life I am not willing to trade quality for quantity. If this projected journey should prove too much then it was time to go anyway. I see too many men delay their exits with a sickly, slow reluctance to leave the stage. It’s bad theater as well as bad living. I am very fortunate in having a wife who likes being a woman, which means that she likes men, not elderly babies. Although this last foundation for the journey was never discussed I am sure she understood it.” 
Steinbeck lighting up the coffin nails that would eventually kill him with the wife he had a hard time leaving behind.So he is on a heroic quest. He even found the loyal steed to carry him from place to place. He named her Rocinante after the horse in
Don Quixote as if he’d already decided before starting that for most of the journey he was going to be tilting at windmills. Bill Steigerwald, former journalist, in 2010 decided to unravel the murky, twisting road of Steinbeck’s trip by following in his tire tracks. Instead of a GMC pickup, specially made with a deluxe cabin, Steigerwald took his Toyota Rav4 and slept in Walmart parking lots and used car lots. His goal was to try to part the curtain of pure mythology and actually determine where and what Steinbeck did.
There are discrepancies. There are holes in Steinbeck’s...lets call it a tale...so large that you could have driven Rocinante pulling the Empire State building through these gaps and still had clearance on both sides.
Bill Barich wrote in his book
“Long Way Home: On the Trail of Steinbeck’s America”.
“Steinbeck was extremely depressed, in really bad health, and was discouraged by everyone from making the trip. He was trying to recapture his youth, the spirit of the knight-errant. But at that point he was probably incapable of interviewing ordinary people. He’d become a celebrity and was more interested in talking to Dag Hammarskjold and Adlai Stevenson.”So the thinking is, that instead of this solo trip where he has cut all ties to the comforts of his life and is out among the people pressing the flesh and writing down his observations of real America, that Travels with Charley is actually a tall tale. The truth is, for most of the trip, he was in luxury hotels, motels, and only camping in Rocinante occasionally. The writing, well crap, he is a novelist. He was not spinning most of it out of whole cloth, but pretty close. The original manuscript, I’m told, has his wife Elaine as a companion through much more of the trip than what he admits in the book. In the story he has her flying out to Chicago as an emergency care package dropping in to give solace to the weary traveler.
I do find it sweet how attached to his wife he is. He had a hard time leaving her and I’m sure at some point the decision was made that if this trip is going to be any kind of success at all that he needed the care and comfort of his wife along the way. The book doesn’t have the same ring to it as Travels with Charley and Elaine.
But let’s talk about Charley. ”...I took one companion on my journey--an old French gentleman poodle known as Charley. Actually his name is Charles le Chien. He was born in Bercy on the outskirts of Paris and trained in France, and while he knows a little poodle-English, he responds quickly only to commands in French. Otherwise he has to translate, and that slows him down. He is a very big poodle, of a color called bleu, and he is blue when he is clean. Charley is a born diplomat. He prefers negotiation to fighting, and properly so, since he is very bad at fighting.” 
Charles le Chien and the author.We learn that Charley has crooked front teeth that he makes a Ptth sound through whenever he requires Steinbeck’s attention or as a form of general commentary on the state of affairs. He mutters to himself when agitated and he does have a prostate issue on the trip that required emergency veterinarian help. Unexpected he turns into a demon dog when he catches a whiff of bear in Yellowstone. As Steinbeck refers to him as his suddenly
”Jekyll Headed Dog”. He proves to be a source of comfort to Steinbeck when the blues, which were never far away, would descend upon him.
“A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.”The most depressing moment in the trip is when Steinbeck stops in New Orleans to go see “the cheerleaders” and to experience first hand the hatred that was blooming over desegregation of schools.
”These blowzy women with their little hats and their clippings hungered for attention. They wanted to be admired. They simpered in happy, almost innocent triumph when they were applauded. Theirs was the demented cruelty of egocentric children, and somehow this made their insensate beastliness much more heartbreaking. These were not mothers, not even women. They were crazy actors playing to a crazy audience.”These were young, white working mothers who every day stood in front of the schools and screamed the most
”bestial and filthy and degenerate” words at little black girls trying to go to school.
Ruby Bridges, one of four little black girls that had to be escorted to school by U.S. Marshalls.Most white parents pulled their kids out of the schools, but those brave souls that tried to take their kids to school were met with the same vile language and threats. Soon the black girls were the only ones in the two schools.
It makes me nauseous every time I see footage from this event.
One of my favorite parts of the book was Steinbeck’s time among the Redwoods.
“The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.” 
If you have never seen them make sure that on any trip to California that you take the time to go walk among giants. These trees are over a thousand years old and over 95% of the original old growth have been logged for their excellent timber. They are the oldest living things on the planet. How baffling it must be to entities, that are time capsules of the activities of the planet, to find themselves being destroyed by these ants on the surface of the earth who with bits of sharp steel can wipe out a 1,000 years of life within moments.
It shakes the soul to contemplate.
So let us believe that most of this book is fabrication, that Steinbeck poured himself a cup of coffee liberally laced with Applejack and typed up a series of events that never quite happened. He could throw in a few observations about an America that he didn’t have to stray far from home to determine.
“American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash--all of them--surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered in rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountain of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use.” He could disguise his guile with such pithy remarks as:
”...I cannot commend this account as an America that you will find. So much there is to see, but our morning eyes describe a different world than do our afternoon eyes, and surely our wearied evening eyes can report only a weary evening world.”I’ve taken trips with people that when we arrive back home you would think from comparing their memories to mine that we went to the same place, but possibly in a parallel universe. I feel the same way sometimes when I read a review of a person who read a book I liked. I feel as if we had read two different books.
It is because we did.
My view of life is different from everyone else’s and so is yours. We have different experiences. We bring those experiences to traveling, to reading, to conversations, and the whole kaleidoscope of it all colors our memories.
Regardless of the level of truth that this book represents I was able to spend 246 pages with the man John Steinbeck. No biographer can ignore the personal philosophies that sprinkle the pages of this book. This is a weary soul that still occasionally finds moments of brightness. He is not a note taker, because he confessed he generally loses them anyway. He lets what he sees percolate through the stratosphere to the core of his brain until the purest of thoughts lands on his tongue. Some of his “observations” were gems, some feel wooden and maybe needed the deft touch of a healthier man. I took his journey, maybe not the physical one he presents, but the journey of the mind of a writer trying to share a few last thoughts with the readers he felt destined to lose.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
Rating: really liked it
dude, steinbeck is so much better than kerouac.
and i know that is a totally obvious statement, but if i want to read a story about a man traveling across america and describing his findings, it is going to be a man with a varied vocabulary, a keen eye for detail, and some powers of interpreting his experiences. john, i am listening...
this is my first nonfiction from steinbeck, and i am impressed with how conversational it reads. he has a real skill in making his experiences near-visible to the reader,in both his physical descriptions and his musings about what an "american" is. i feel like he would be a fantastic road-trip companion, and i envy charley.
and that is another thing. when it comes to dogs, i am completely breed-ist. there are dogs that i love, and then there are dogs i think should be banned from breeding, so i don't have to see them ever again. poodles are among these breeds. they are the silliest of all dogs, and how a man's man like steinbeck could travel across the country with one of them baffles me.
this is not a dog, it is an aberration:
but, for steinbeck's sake, i can read about a poodle for a little while, and it is sweet how they bond with each other. but i still think they are ugly and not "real" dogs.
steinbeck misses out on an investment opportunity:
if i were a good businessman, and cared a tittle for my unborn great-grandchildren, which i do not, i would gather all the junk and the wrecked automobiles, comb the city dumps, and pile these gleanings in mountains and spray the whole thing with that stuff the navy uses to mothball ships. at the end of a hundred years my descendants would be permitted to open this treasure trove and would be the antique kings of the world. if the battered, cracked, and broken stuff our ancestors tried to get rid of now brings so much money, think what a 1954 oldsmobile, or a 1960 toastmaster will bring - and a vintage waring mixer - lord, the possibilities are endless! things we have to pay to have hauled away could bring fortunes.of course he is being facetious here, but i for one would kill for some vintage appliances - in another life - in a better apartment - i would have a fantastic kitchen filled with these old timey kitchen things, and i curse steinbeck for not giving a tittle.
steinbeck does not get sucked into revisionist nostalgia:
even while i protest the assembly-line production of our food, our songs, our language, and eventually our souls, i know that it was a rare home that baked good bread in the old days. mother's cooking was with rare exceptions poor, that good unpasteurized milk touched only by flies and bits of manure crawled with bacteria, the healthy old-time life was riddled with aches, sudden death from unknown causes, and that sweet local speech i mourn was the child of illiteracy and ignorance. it is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge in time, to protest against change, particularly change for the better. but it is true that we have exchanged corpulence for starvation, and either one will kill us. i am so glad my real-world book club finally chose something i can review on here instead of just a short story or an essay or a poem...and this time, i will have something to add! they are all european intellectual types, with their tales of berlin and ukraine and their war stories (as both witness and participant) and i just sit there and drink my wine and play the role of "very good young listener". thank you, steinbeck for giving america some street cred and fodder for booktalks!
come to my blog!
Rating: really liked it
"Travels with Charley: In Search of America" by John Steinbeck is a travelogue of his 1960 camping trip across America!
This is my last read and review of 2021! It's also the December '21 selection for the community book club I belong to and I'm so glad we picked it. It was the perfect book for a great end of year discussion!
John Steinbeck! Yes, that is a complete sentence. He's an author who writes stories about our country and its people, but at the age of fifty-eight, he felt he had lost touch with what he writes about and wanted to experience America and its people first hand.
There is debate over this book being non-fiction versus fiction, that Mr. Steinbeck did not travel and camp across America with his pooch. But, let's face it, this man is a novelist. He's creative, he imagines, he makes stories up, that's what he does. So why is it so shocking that this trek across America didn't actually happen?
To me, it doesn't matter. I don't feel snookered, it makes me smile. This story is creative and I was enthralled and entertained by each chapter. A book written by John Steinbeck, traveling America in his truck with a camper top and his dog by his side, talking to the 'folks' he met along the way, what's not to love?
What I discovered while listening to this audiobook was how much Mr. Steinbeck cared about our county, the people, and how in touch he was with what was happening during the 1960's and how insightful he was about our future. He spoke of the environment, loss of regional differences and uniqueness throughout our country. As a lifelong observer, he clearly understood the progression of things to come.
John Steinbeck is driving, I'm a passenger with Charley between us. He's sharing his thoughts, I'm listening and fascinated while Charley, his standard poodle, sleeps most of the way and most likely takes up most of the seat! The audiobook felt that real and was expertly narrated by Gary Sinise.
After I finished listening it occurred to me that perhaps John Steinbeck wasn't 'in search of America' as much as he was searching for himself. It is said that he was depressed, in poor health and you can feel the low points in his writing, especially towards the end.
This book was published in 1962 the same year he won a Nobel Prize for Literature. Sadly, John Steinbeck died of heart failure in 1968 at the age of sixty-six.
It's exciting to end 2021 on such a high note with a 5 star read! I highly recommend this creative and entertaining book!
Rating: really liked it
I usually enjoy fiction, but a mite cheated when I learn that a travelogue isn't. I'm sure some people enjoy the writing regardless of the misleading content. Steinbeck never went to some of the places in the book, he made up the folks that he never met and the hotels and resorts he and his wife stayed in are a bit more luxurious than the camper top on his GMC pick-up.
On the plus side, he did purchase a pick-up truck and add a camper top to it. His wife did have a poodle named Charley.
Rating: really liked it
4 to 4.5 stars
It seems like lately I have been reading a lot of books about road trips. This is just fine with me as I love the open road! Getting some perspective on others' experiences on the highway combines road trips with my other favorite hobby . . . reading, of course!
Travels With Charlie is mid 20th century America in the words of one of the most American authors that ever was. Just a truck, a dog, and the open road. It is poetic and beautiful. It is dark and mysterious. It funny and infuriating. Don't go in expecting a smooth ride, because 1960s America was full of pot holes and speed traps!
Steinbeck is viewing post WWII America before new technology takes over and shrinks the country down. When each region still each had a strong unique mystique of their own. Where prejudices still ran high in some places if you were not a local or not the right color (and, yes, I know this is still an issue today, but what Steinbeck describes is extreme). And when vending machines at rest stops could still blow Steinbeck's mind as the most cutting edge retail technology. He pulls no punches when it comes to telling the reader how much he loved or loathed his experiences. Because of this, some people may have a hard time reading this without getting upset.
I think works like this are so important. We have plenty of books preserving information on major historical events, but day to day life needs it's time in the sun as well. To be able to read something like this about life in my country around the time my parents were teenagers has the potential to impact me a lot more than learning about the major news events of the time period. I am not sure how much an impact this book might have on non-Americans, but I think everyone who grew up in the United States will be captivated.
Rating: really liked it
Audiobook.... narrated by the wonderful Gary Sinise
Wow!!!! Okay..... I am fully satisfied!!!!!
This book calmed the anxiousness of my mind, and really moved me!
While listening to Gary Sinise read John Steinbeck’s book...(Gary’s voice was a perfect match for Steinbeck),
I was aware of how grateful this ‘book-companion’, was warming my heart....
[thanks to our Public library/overdrive].
It was just what I needed!
Steinbeck’s cross-country-road-trip-companion—[his loyal-French-immigrant- poodle] was named *Charley*.
Steinbeck & Charley set out to reconnect with people from all walks of life in America....
during the 1960’s.
Steinbeck never used his real name so he could be an ordinary old chum ( without any ‘aw’-concerns to deal with).
Given Steinbeck wrote many books about America— he was ready to explore more intimately. What better way to experience the country than with a faithful dog and a reliable working RV?
Honestly- traveling in an RV has never been my desire—but with days like these—
it’s sounds rather nice!
Also, having visited the Steinbeck museum and his house, in Salinas several times, I can easily visualize the truck, photos, and paraphernalia displays from his journey adventures.
It’s been 4 weeks of house-bound for those of us living in the SFBay area—longer and short times for others across the globe— (due to the social distancing coronavirus lifestyle), and a Nationwide road trip touched on the freedom than I can ‘almost’ remember!
I was happy to travel with Steinbeck on his adventures across America. ( and dream a little myself).
What was so fascinating to me was reading about this great author’s awareness of needing to replenish his own ‘America-appreciation-tank’.
I mean — isn’t that something many of us American’s are itching to do ourselves these days? Refill our American-appreciation-tanks?
Steinbeck was one of the greatest American authors.
His writing was masterful and eloquent.
”Travels With Charley in Search of America.... crossing state lines...was absolutely witty & wonderful...
...fabulous descriptions & imagery from New York to California and back again.....
....unforgettable charming funny and grumping characters!
The dialogue was hilarious at times -
It was also heartbreaking when faced with racial issues in the South.
While hibernating here at home in my own little world .... during these tempestuous - and down right scary unsettling times, I was reminded that we ‘are’ UNITED states.
Steinbeck said it clearly:
“I admire all nations and hate all governments”.
Rating: really liked it
Loved it! A favorite of the year. For years I wanted to read this one. Always interested in hearing about people and their travels. But to be honest, wasn't sure I was a Steinbeck fan. Read his big ones earlier and just kinda eh, not my thing. I got this one a few times for the library and would return thinking he's probably not for me. But something this time pushed me and I started in still being a naysayer (not for me) but I was soon sucked into the story and just didn't want it to end.
In the 1960's, Steinbeck decides he wants to travel the states, meet people, talk with them, and just learn about his surroundings. He gets his wheels, where he sleeps and dines, which he names Rocinante and brings along his travelling companion, Charley. His French poodle who frequently says 'ffftt' to him and gets his meaning across. Steinbeck travels and meets many different types of people or characters, telling you the story, the interactions, and all about what he sees as he travels all over the place. Who doesn't love a travel story of someone just getting in their car, taking the dog, and travelling the open road.
I grabbed the audio and LOVED IT! Gary Sinise narrated and it was awesome and he added so much to it. Would it had been a 5 star for me without the narration....really can't say as the two were just a perfect marriage. I enjoyed the story and would love to read it again, in print. But it was one of the better narrations I've listened to. In my overall top 5 ever. I will have to say, Steinbeck's observations in the 60's are sometime relevant now (funny how things don't change) but also towards the end, think might be an issue for what is going on in the world these days. But if you want a good story, hear about the open road, and want to be drawn into an amazing narration....I highly suggest this one! I'm off to look for another Steinbeck. Maybe he is for me now.
Rating: really liked it
This work is a very different story from other Steinbeck books I have read so far (Of Mice and Men, The Pearl). This one is another genre our author is tackling here. It is no longer a matter of fiction in which many elements had linked to his life, but rather his daily life — a daily in a particular context, of course, but a daily all the same.
I like travel reports, especially for their hectic and unexpected things. The pace here is a bit slower than I expected at the start. But let's put it in context: this isn't about many raving youngsters going on an adventure to accomplish the 400 moves. This travel is the quiet journey of a man who is no longer very young and does not go on an adventure but to meet his contemporary fellow citizens to understand them better.
Rating: really liked it
I came across this dusty hardcover at an estate sale last month. This particular edition from 1962 offered a crisp, weathered cover and an inviting sketch of a man, a dog and a truck.
I hopped on board.
This is Steinbeck, but not the Steinbeck of fiction, the one who stands behind his creations and his delicious use of silence and space. This is Steinbeck the man.
Turns out that Steinbeck the man, here recorded for all time, in his late fifties was a bit depressed, recently diagnosed as being on his way toward heart trouble, and a little weary of the world. He was also worried he was becoming "soft."
So, he planned an extensive road trip, had a vehicle designed for it, and hit the road with Charley, his dog, circa 1960.
This is a travelogue, but an unexpected one. Yes, the reader is taken throughout the regions of America the Beautiful. But, it is more impressive as a philosophical journey. And, even though it is sometimes dated in its fifty-year-old observations, most of what he experiences here could stand the test of time.
I can think of plenty of friends who would love this book, and plenty who would set it down, bored.
All I can tell you is that I cried through most of it. Not sobs, but fat, messy tears. I related to his thoughts to the point of wondering if I'm him, reincarnated. I had no idea I had so much in common with John Steinbeck.
And, after all, who doesn't love a good road trip?
Rating: really liked it
My father bought me this book when I was probably about eight years old, and I read it quickly and fell in love with it. One day (now that I've thought of it, probably sooner than later) I'll reread it, but for now I'm content believing I would still find it a good read.
Rating: really liked it
John Steinbeck put a house on a pickup, left the wife behind in their Long Island home and traveled the nation for several months. This is his tale of that experience. I found many quotables here, and I guess one should expect that when the traveler’s name is Steinbeck. In a book of about two hundred pages, one can hardly expect a detailed look at all of America. Steinbeck picks his spots. Sometimes they work, sometimes not. It was, of necessity, merely a sketch of some parts of the country. But some of those sketches should hang in the Louvres. Two in particular grabbed me. His description of “The Cheerleaders,” a group of women who gathered every day at a newly integrated southern elementary school to taunt and threaten the black kids and Steinbeck’s look at the culture surrounding that was chilling, a close portrait of an incendiary place at an incendiary time, and is, alone, a reason to read this book. The other was his depiction of a redwood forest in northern California, where the massive trees alter dawn and blot out the night sky.
Steinbeck and Charley - from the NY Times
The subtitle of the book is “In Search of America.” What travel books are really about, particularly when undertaken by a literary person, is self-discovery. It works the same as in literature. The road, the quest, the journey all exist in an interior landscape and lead to an inner destination. I did not feel that this was much at work here, and was disappointed. Steinbeck kept his eyes on the external road. Sometimes his snapshots of early 1960s America were uninteresting. Sometimes they were compelling. The compelling parts made the trip one worth taking.
=============================
EXTRA STUFFApparently, there is some thought that not all the material in this book was actually...um...real. GR friend Jim sent along a link to a site by a guy named Bill Steigerwald, who writes about Steinbeck. Looks like he did a fair bit of research and concluded that Steinbeck's journey may have been more of an internal one than we believed. check it out.
Rating: really liked it
I first read this book in high school, and it's what made me fall in love with travelogues. In 1960, John Steinbeck drove a small camper around the United States with his dog, Charley. He wrote that he wanted to get to know his country again, to learn more about this "new America."
"For many years I have traveled in many parts of the world. In America I live in New York, or dip into Chicago, or San Francisco. But New York is no more America than Paris is France or London is England. Thus I discovered that I did not know my own country. I, an American writer, writing about America, was working from memory, and the memory is at best a faulty, warpy reservoir. I had not heard the speech of America, smelled the grass and trees and sewage, seen its hills and water, its color and quality of light. I knew the changes only from books and newspapers. But more than this, I had not felt the country for twenty-five years. In short, I was writing of something I did not know about, and it seems to me that in a so-called writer this is criminal. My memories were distorted by twenty-five intervening years."
"Travels with Charley" was published in 1962, and Steinbeck, who had been in poor health, died just six years later.
I remember
loving this book. I loved Steinbeck's stories about the people he met and the places he visited, and even the details of how he organized the camper and his trip. I have recommended this book to countless friends over the years, gushing about how good it was.
So you can imagine my UTTER HEARTBREAK because I found out that parts of the story were fabricated or fictionalized. Reporters have verified that some details in the narrative could not have been true, and that Steinbeck made up a lot of the conversations he supposedly had with people along the road. (This news first broke in 2011, but I didn't learn it until I saw it mentioned in John Waters' book about hitchhiking, "Carsick.")
When the 50th anniversary edition of "Travels with Charley" was published in 2012, it came with a disclaimer: "Indeed, it would be a mistake to take this travelogue too literally, as Steinbeck was at heart a novelist, and he added countless touches – changing the sequence of events, elaborating on scenes, inventing dialogue – that one associates more with fiction than nonfiction."
So here is my conundrum: Knowing that parts of it have been fictionalized, should I continue to recommend it to others? If the book is as good as I remember, doesn't that outweigh its dubious origin?
Or I could just live in denial and remember the joy I felt when I first read it.
Update June 2014:I was so upset to learn that Steinbeck had embellished his stories that I decided to reread the book to see how it holds up. It was great! It was glorious! I will even say that I think it's one of the best travelogues written about America, ever. "Travels with Charley" is beautifully written - it is so quotable and insightful that I had dozens of pages marked.
"It would be pleasant to be able to say of my travels with Charley, 'I went out to find the truth about my country and I found it.' And then it would be such a simple matter to set down my findings and lean back comfortably with a fine sense of having discovered truths and taught them to my readers. I wish it were that easy... This monster of a land, this mightiest of nations, this spawn of the future, turns out to be the macrocosm of microcosm me. If an Englishman or a Frenchman or an Italian should travel my route, see what I saw, hear what I heard, their stored pictures would be not only different from mine but equally different from one another. If other Americans reading this account should feel it true, that agreement would only mean that we are alike in our Americanness... For all of our enormous geographic range, for all of our sectionalism, for all of our interwoven breeds drawn from every part of the ethnic world, we are a nation, a new breed. Americans are much more American than they are Northerns, Southerners, Westerners, or Easterners... The American identity is an exact and provable thing."
Because it had been criticized by modern reporters, on this reread I paid more attention to Steinbecks' "conversations" with folks around the country, and yes, the dialogue was so smooth and concise that it had to have been finessed. But after considering the issue, I've relaxed on this point because I bet every writer does that. Every writer is going to streamline speech so that it reads well. Steinbeck even talks about writers who can quickly take measure of a place:
"I've always admired those reporters who can descend on an area, talk to key people, ask key questions, take samplings of opinions, and then set down an orderly report very like a road map. I envy this technique and at the same time do not trust it as a mirror of reality. I feel that there are too many realities. What I set down here is true until someone else passes that way and rearranges the world in his own style."
I do think Steinbeck got at the spirit of what was going on in America in 1960: it was a big election year between Kennedy and Nixon; racial tensions were high in the South because schools had been desegregated; and there was heightened anxiety about Russia and the threat of the atomic bomb. He even wrote about environmentalism and his concerns for how much waste America was producing, and he contemplated how the new cross-country interstate system would change the country. The guy was prescient, I tell you.
Some of my favorite parts were when Steinbeck tried to cross into Canada with his dog and ran into a bureaucratic snafu regarding Charley's vaccination paperwork (very amusing); a warm conversation he had with a family of immigrants while they shared a drink in his camper; and when he drove through a forest of massive Redwood trees out West.
"The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time. They have the mystery of ferns that disappeared a million years ago into the coal of the carboniferous era. They carry their own light and shade. The vainest, most slap-happy and irreverent of men, in the presence of redwoods, goes under a spell of wonder and respect."
Another theme Steinbeck returns to often is the wanderlust that seems to pervade Americans everywhere. He mentions how many families had started buying mobile homes so they can move more freely about, and how many others gazed at his camper and said they wished they could travel across the country.
"I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation -- a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every state I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move."
I so enjoyed rereading this book that I will definitely continue to recommend it to friends. I even upgraded my original 4-star rating to 5, because of how gorgeous Steinbeck's writing was. I just wish I could give Charley a biscuit and a belly rub for being such a good traveling companion.
Rating: really liked it
In 1960, when John Steinbeck was 58 years old, ill with the heart disease which was to kill him eight years later and rather discontented with life, he decided to embark on a road trip around the United States in a fitted-out pick-up truck, accompanied by his standard French poodle, Charley. Steinbeck’s plan was to re-connect with the America which had informed his fiction and to assess how much it had changed over the years.
This book is the result of that trip: part memoir, part travelogue, part philosophical treatise … and part fiction. Just how much of the narrative is fiction rather than fact has been the subject of investigation and discussion in recent years, much of it instigated by the work of journalist Bill Steigerwald, who recreated Steinbeck’s trip and exposed what he argues to be the fallacies in the narrative. This article in the New York Times summarises Steigerwald’s findings and typing Steigerwald’s name into any reliable search engine will locate a range of Steigerwald’s writings on the issue, as well as some responses to his position on the book.
While I've read Steigerwald’s conclusions about Steinbeck’s journey with interest, it matters little to me that the work has been edited in such a way as to make it look like Steinbeck and Charley were travelling alone almost all the time, whereas Steinbeck’s original manuscript (held at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City) shows that Steinbeck’s wife Elaine was with him for much of the time and that he probably spent more than half the nights he was away sleeping in hotels rather than in the truck. Likewise, it matters little to me that Steinbeck’s reported conversations with people he meets on the way are fiction rather than reportage.
In relation to this, the fact that Steinbeck preserved and then donated his manuscript indicates that he was not concerned that readers might discover that there was more (or possibly less) to the journey than appears in the book. Further, the narrative itself is full of disclaimers. Steinbeck does not claim that the book is a day-by-day, diary-style account of his journey. Rather, what he conveys is a range of impressions on a number of topics, some insights into issues he considered important and some at times painful self-reflection, all conveyed in Steinbeck’s powerful yet accessible prose. On some matters Steinbeck was ahead of his time. For example, what he wrote about the destruction of the environment and the overuse of packaging products (“The mountain of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use.”), expressed what I doubt was a matter of widespread public concern as early as 1960.
Other parts of the narrative are much more personal. Steinbeck’s encounter with old Latino drinking buddies in a bar in Monterey is particularly poignant. As Steinbeck’s friend tries to persuade the New York resident to come “home”, Steinbeck names all of their friends who have died and concludes that Thomas Wolfe was right: “You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory."
Possibly the most powerful incident in the book is Steinbeck’s witnessing of the “cheerleaders” in New Orleans – a group of women who stood across the street from William Frantz Elementary school and yelled obscenities at Ruby Bridges - the first black child to attend the all-white school - and at the few white parents who did not comply with the white boycott of the school. Ruby, who had started at the school only a week or two before Steinbeck was in New Orleans, was escorted to school by federal marshalls. Her ordeal is recorded in this painting by Norman Rockwell.
Shortly after witnessing the behaviour of the cheerleaders, Steinbeck decided to cut his journey short and head straight back to New York City. The narrative gives the strong impression that the incident left him heart-sick and distressed.
Overall, whatever may be this book’s shortcomings as a piece of travel reportage, it's a moving and engaging piece of writing. Steinbeck had become rather a cranky old man by the time he embarked on the journey, and was an even crankier old man by time he finished it. He was certainly no longer the novelist at the peak of his powers. But there’s still passion, warmth and humour in his words and plenty for the reader who loves Steinbeck’s writing to engage with. And there's Charley. Charley is wonderful.
Rating: really liked it
The United States is more divided than ever and I wonder how we will survive this national crisis. We are red or blue. Trump or Biden.
Fox News or
The New York Times. We tear down Confederate statues or wave the rebel flag.
Have we nothing in common? Do we share no hopes and dreams? Have talking points completely replaced dialogue? Do we even speak the same language?
Enter Rocinante. Steinbeck’s
Travels With Charlie has the three things all Americans love: freedom, the open road, and a dog. There is nothing more American than a road trip, nothing that revives us like that endless white line on the black asphalt, for we are all explorers, adventurers, pioneers in our star-spangled hearts.
Under the spacious skies of this great country, the American spirit awakens within us. On the road, we shed all that is extraneous to this spirit. Who among us does not long to see this land? There are many indeed who do not long for the hardship, the expense, the monotony of a road trip, but there are none whose eyes do not sparkle at the idea of a road trip.
And that’s just what I need right now: a road trip to restore my faith in America and my fellow Americans, a road trip to remind me what I really am, for I am so much more than a cog in the machine. But a road trip is the last thing any of us will be doing for some time.
There will be no strangers stopping strangers just to shake their hand. No roadside diner breakfasts with hash browns instead of home fries. (I know I’m far from home when my potatoes are shredded instead of sliced.) No glimpses into the lives of people from different walks of life. No friendly conversations with the folks who voted for the other guy.
Are we still one nation under God? Or are we fractured into many babbling tribes? In our grocery stores we are all surgeons and bandits. We long for teeth: white teeth, yellow teeth, false teeth, crooked teeth. We want to smile, smile, smile. We need to tip our different colored hats to our neighbors. This land was not made for you
or me. This land was made for you
and me.
So here I sit with my pink slip and my U.S. Blues wondering if we will save this grand and noble political experiment that we call the United States of America. And I find myself wishing to see the country. To see it and hear it and smell it from a moving vehicle. To go from sea to shining sea and back.
I have barely even seen the east coast, so I wonder what life is like in Wisconsin and Nebraska and Kansas. Is it really very hot in Texas and New Mexico? I want to know. I love hot weather. I want to stop for a bit in Colorado. Then if I don’t forget where the car is parked, I want to go further west until I see a different ocean than the one we have here.
We all want the same thing. We’re just setting out from different starting points so our journeys don’t look quite the same. But we’re all travelling the same road and we meet on that road. We sleep in the same motels, eat in the same diners, pee at the same rest stops. We have a cigarette or a donut or a coffee and talk road talk to our fellow travelers.
Steinbeck says his camper evoked the same response from nearly everyone who saw it: a desire “
to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something” (10). This is what we all have in common. It is a shared dream and when we talk about it we speak the same language.
If only all of America could hit the road right now, just drive and drive without any destination except the next farm stand or the world’s largest ball of string.
Rating: really liked it
A nice way to travel 1960s America again is to hop into a camper truck with John Steinbeck and his dog, Charley. Plagued by a chronic disease and probably feeling like it was now or never, Mr. Steinbeck hit the road from his home in Sag Harbor and traveled across the states and back again, making astute observations as he went and sharing a bit of the flavor of America in this moment of great upheaval and change.
I was afraid this might be boring, like watching someone else’s home movies (no matter how stunning the scenery, we just don’t want to see you posed in front of it over and over again). I should have had no fear, since this was not your everyday traveler, this was John Steinbeck. His powers of observation are acute and he knows how to render them into a free-flowing conversation with his reader. I felt he was pretty even-handed in his observations as well, even though his trek through the 1960s south made me cringe with shame. He notes that as an outsider his encounters might not be a true representation of the people, and I think he is right because he intentionally sought out the ugliest kind of setting to observe them in, but then he didn’t make up the setting or the people he saw, they were there and, while not speaking for everyone, they certainly spoke for far too many.
One of my favorite parts of the book was his visit to his own home turf around Salinas, California. As he prepared to leave, he says,
”I printed it once more on my eyes, south, west, and north, and then we hurried away from the permanent and changeless past where my mother is always shooting a wildcat and my father is always burning his name with his love.”I know this feeling all too well. You can hardly visit the place of your youth with a clear and unprejudiced eye, for the past is always there coloring it a much rosier color than it actually is. That is alright, that is part of life. We are meant to feel it.
I am glad I finally got around to making this trip with one of my favorite authors. It made me feel that I would have liked the man as much as I like his work.
