All I can say about this book is that I've read it. All that really struck me as I read it is that this book wasn't written by the same fellow who wrote 'The Grapes of Wrath.' That fellow understood what it meant to be poor and dispossessed. This fellow can't remember what it means to be poor and dispossessed, if in fact he ever did know.

'The Grapes of Wrath' was written by a firebrand. This thing was written by a doddering old man who sold out long ago, made his pile and came to terms with the way things are as if the way things are is the way things ought to be. Ho-Hum. ( )

In the fall of 1960, Civil Rights was still an ugly snarl and a hopeful young presidential candidate was waiting in the wings. Steinbeck was well into his fifties at the time and decided to take a final tour of his beloved America. He packed up his converted pick-up truck and along with his French poodle named Charley, he set out. From Sag Harbor New York, he followed a northerly route, ending up in Monterrey California and then returned, covering the southern part of the country. This book contains his thoughts and observations about the people he met and the towns he visited, along with a sharp commentary about this vast beautiful landscape, we call home. This is his view of the Badlands:
“They deserve this name. They are like the work of an evil child. Such a place the Fallen Angels might have built as a spite to Heaven, dry and sharp, desolate and dangerous, and for me filled with foreboding. A sense comes from it that it does not like or welcome humans.”
The second half of the narrative is a bit more dry and wordy but it does conclude with a devastating event in the deep south, where a very young black girl is being escorted into a “white” grade school, amid a torrent of verbal abuse from a matronly group of women, who call themselves “The Cheerleaders”. Steinbeck is so shaken, he immediately returns home in a daze. This is a very good book, by one of America’s finest writers. ( )

When I recently read this book, I was concerned that “Travels with Charley” might be outdated, because it was in 1960 when John Steinbeck made a road trip across America with his French Poodle, Charley. I did not need to worry. Human nature and dog nature never really change over the years.

John Steinbeck decided, despite his health (he died just a few years after “Travels with Charley” was published), that he would go ahead and drive across the country– alone but with Charley– in a truck with a custom-built camper that he dubs “Rocinanate” after the horse in Don Quixote. He says:

“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 quanitity. 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.”

You go, John Steinbeck! I think that was a very good mind-set for him to have. So, he sets off from his home in New York City with Charley, drives to Maine, and then from there drives through to California with many stops along the way. From California, he swings over to Texas and Louisiana on the way back home to New York. Of course, he meets many people along the way, and he and Charley are good observers of character.

Yes, Charley figures largely in this book. As Steinbeck says,

“He is a good friend and traveling companion, and would rather travel about than anything he can imagine. If he occurs at length in this account, it is because he contributed much to the trip. A dog, particularly an exotic like Charley, is a bond between strangers. Many conversations en route began with ‘What degree of a dog is that?’”

Some encounters are amusing, some tragic. One part I thought funny was when Steinbeck encounters a father and son, motel owners or managers, out in the sticks, somewhere in the West, and Steinbeck finds that the boy desires to be a hairdresser someday. The father is unhappy about this– but Steinbeck goes on about how great it would be for the boy to become a hairdresser, saying that women place their secret lives in their hairdresser’s hands– and seems to convince the father that it’s all okay, after all.

Tragic was when Steinbeck goes through Louisiana and observes the ugliness of racism there– observing white women screaming, daily, at little African-American girls being escorted in a school building that is being de-segregated.

Description of place tend to be still true today as they were back in 1960. When he speaks of Texans, he says:

“We have heard them threaten to secede so often that I formed an enthusiatic organization– The American Friends for Texas Secession. This stops the subject cold. They want to be able to secede but they don’t want anyone to want them to”.

Charley helps Steinbeck through the occasional lonely times on the road, and as quoted earlier, helps Steinbeck with meeting strangers. I loved Charley’s personality and agree he would be a great travel-mate.

John Steinbeck isn’t a well-known writer for nothing, and his way with words are evident here as they are in his better known novels such as “Grapes of Wrath” and “East of Eden”. ”Travels with Charley” was a very good read, and I think many of you would enjoy it also. ( )

The best parts of this book was when it slowed down and he acutally talked about the encounters he had with people. The French-Can. Potato pickers in Maine, the lonely kid who wanted to get out of working at the hotel in Idaho. Unfortunately, most of the book was not like this. There were many sections on his dog which I found incredibly boring. Also, once he got to California, it turned into a weird set of essays.Not sure why this was recommended to me. ( )

This is my fourth Steinbeck read and he has become one of my favorite authors. I think he could have made the Yellow Pages into a riveting book if he'd had a mind to. No matter what the subject I find that his prose just seems to move me along like a lovely boat ride on calm water—it just flows.

This book was about a circular trip around the USA, conceived because he wanted to get the feel of what made America a cohesive country and learn about her character. When he finished he decided he really didn’t learn what he thought he would and he was left with more questions than answers. However, I learned a lot reading this book, not the least of which was much about Steinbeck himself as he shares his impressions of the people, places, and events he witnesses. His musings on his experiences were enlightening and reminded me of the saying “the unexamined life is not worth living.” (Wasn’t that Thoreau? Audacity88 corrected me--it was Socrates.) Steinbeck shows us the Good, Bad, Ugly and Beautiful of our country in 1960. This was the America of my youth which made it somewhat of a nostalgic read for me because I have been to many of the places he visited and found his observations striking chords of remembrance for me. One thing that made me smile, as long ago as 1960 Steinbeck was complaining that newspapers were more about giving us opinion than news! It’s only gotten worse!

One of the most riveting and disturbing part of the trip was near the end when he went through the Deep South. This was at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement and he gives a very good and balanced picture as an outsider observing what was happening and speaking to some of the people. I moved from California to Savannah, GA about a decade after Travels was written and observed over the next about 25 years the gradual changes that took place in the Civil Rights problems--not enough and not fast enough. However there have been gains made that give me hope for the future--but like Steinbeck it probably won't happen in my lifetime.

The Centennial Edition (2002) contains a final chapter that was left out of the original publication that is really fun.

Bottom line: Steinbeck’s account of his passage through America is interesting, thought provoking, and in the end, delightful. Highly Recommended ( )