Travels with John Steinbeck

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Travels with John Steinbeck

Probably the ‘best’ book Joan and I read on our recent 6-week voyage from Los Angeles to Miami was Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck. This nonfiction book was originally published in 1962. Steinbeck was disenchanted with the rampant consumerism and blatant selfishness that was destroying communities throughout the country. He was disillusioned by the rush to buy and have more and more ‘things’! The book is a beautifully written travelogue of the road trip in 1960 in which Steinbeck set out with his French Poodle called Charley in a homemade recreational vehicle that he named Rocinante after Don Quixote’s horse, to rediscover America. He commenced his travel from Sag Harbor, New York, driving north through the smaller New England states and spent some considerable time in Maine, driving back and forth over logging roads east and then north nearly to the Canadian border. Then he drove across the northern states to the Pacific Northwest, down through the length of California, and the back through Texas and the Deep South where he turned north again and returned to New York – a journey of some 10,000 miles. It was the time of the Kennedy-Nixon presidential race and the burgeoning civil rights movement. From the beginning he avoided the highways, that he called ‘the great high-speed slashes of concrete and tar’ that crisscross the country. Back roads were preferable to him: more scenic and with opportunity to meet more people. He did not stop at museums but instead drank endless cups of coffee in small diners talking to the local people. The language of the book is exact and specific and the wisdom offered profound. And there are some great lines as well, ie ‘I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction’ and ‘I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments’ and ‘a beard is the one thing that a woman cannot do better than a man ’;‘I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found’ the book is replete with whimsy and charm, vignettes and lyrical descriptions of the magnificent natural landscape and countryside. There is also disenchantment, disappointment, and eventually anger. Although the book was written over 50 years ago, its relevance is as valid today as it was then. He refused at its conclusion to offer any prophecy of the future, yet America continues to struggle with the problems highlighted in the book’s pages. His description of Texas* is particularly poignant: succinct, perfect and exact. It reflects exactly how we felt travelling through that vast and complicated state, and I wish I had written it. In fact, I wish I had written the whole book, which is perhaps the highest praise a reader can offer a writer. Travels with Charley is a wonderful book and we highly recommend it to all adventures of the mind, body and soul!



*“I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.”
from John Steinbeck’s, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

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