well....THAT was disappointing. at moments, it reminded me (but in poorer style) to the social commentary sidebars steinbeck took in The Grapes of Wrath, but in 'travels with charley' they seemed clunky and dry. i was hoping for a bit more of steinbeck's personality in reading this book. while there were glimpses of him, i feel as though he held himself back from being overly personal. the bits of steinbeck that were revealed were not always likeable - so that is a challenge to my steinbeck love. plus there's the whole 'steinbeck is a big fat liar' issue': the controversy surrounding the book, and steinbeck's (and his publisher's) lack of honesty and truthfulness about 'charley'. i began reading Dogging Steinbeck: How I Went in Search of John Steinbeck's America, Found My Own America, and Exposed the Truth about 'Travels with Charley', by Bill Steigerwald last night. mostly to try and gain a better understanding of steinbeck's project. so that's a bit weird, isn't it? reading a contemporary investigative journalist to gain a clearer picture of a journey/writing project that took place 50 years ago. but there you go. i have been wondering if my small bit of knowledge of the issues with 'charley' tainted my enjoyment of the read, and i don't think so. i was ready and open to enjoy travelling around the USA with john and charley...but was left thinking 'how soon can i get out of this truck?' (the truck, mind you, is totally cool!!)

OH! i would also like to call bullshit:  COME ON! who goes out into a bay, DURING A DEVASTATING HURRICANE, to re-secure a boat and then swims (SWIMS!!!) back to shore?? NO ONE - that's who. bullshit, john steinbeck. bullshit! sorry!!

anyway -- i am feeling a bit bummed after reading 'travels with charley'.

It wasn’t too many years after this 1960 trip of John Steinbeck’s that I spent every summer driving across the country with my family. It was something my father had to do for work, and my parents had family and friends scattered everywhere. We mostly drove night and day until we got to one of their homes, but sometimes we stayed in a motel, and my brother and I were in heaven if there was a pool. We often had the family dog with us, snuggled between my brother and me in the backseat.

So Steinbeck’s travels were something I could relate to. Growing up with that kind of car travel, day after day, highway after highway, it got into my blood. I still love being “on the road,” 1960’s style diners, and going to the ice machine at motels.

From his home on Long Island, Steinbeck and his French poodle Charley drove across the north of the United States in a camper fittingly named “Rocinante,” made his way to Central California where he grew up, and headed back through the southern states, looking to better know his country--to “feel” it.

It didn’t go exactly as planned, but we all know about the best laid plans (wait, that’s another Steinbeck story).
“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

He did learn though. He had fascinating conversations with everyday people he met on the road, and discovered kindness as well as cruelty. The badness of this country was on vivid display for part of his trip, but so was the country’s beauty. Two examples I personally know well, are
the California Redwoods:
“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.”

and the feeling on approaching the Pacific Ocean:
“I believe I smelled the sea rocks and the kelp and the excitement of churning sea water, the sharpness of iodine and the under odor of washed and ground calcareous shells. Such a far-off and remembered odor comes subtly so that one does not consciously smell it, but rather an electric excitement is released--a kind of boisterous joy.”

Of course he also learned about Charley, who wasn’t just a cute traveling companion. In Charley’s expressive “ftt,” the way he acted as ambassador when meeting people, and his struggles with illness on the trip, he played a key role, and gave us a glimpse into that magical realm of a non-human’s perspective on our shared experience. The tale of Charley’s meeting with a bear in Yellowstone was a case in point--a wonderful story-within-a-story.

Steinbeck was controversial in his time, and, for maybe different reasons, is still controversial today. His politics and the way he depicts women in his fiction can rub some the wrong way. All I know is, even in the rare times I don’t like what he says, I still like the way he says it.

“What I set down here is true until someone else passes that way and rearranges the world in his own style.”