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When I recently read this book, I was concerned that “Travels with Charley” might be outdated, because it was in 1960 when John Steinbeck made a road trip across America with his French Poodle, Charley.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 ( )

The tale of John Steinbeck's travels across America with his dog Charley ( )

At the age of 58, John Steinbeck realized that he had spent much of his career writing about the United States . . . without seeing it. He felt it was time to explore America first hand, so he packed up a camper truck and made a three month trek around the outskirts of the country. Seeing the land and the people of America taught Steinbeck much, but not necessarily what he had expected. And, who's Charley? Charley is Steinbeck's companion, a French standard poodle.

I loved Of Mice and Men, and was disappointed to find nothing special in this travelogue. Steinbeck shared his days on the road with a subdued tone. Yes, there were some highs and lows, but for the most part his experiences and thoughts about them seemed to be a bit mundane. I was expecting more. (3/5)

Originally posted on: "Thoughts of Joy..." ( )

An enjoyable read. John Steinbeck travels round America with his poodle Charley. The thoughts of Charley often feature as Steinbeck interacts with the dog, people and places he meets on route. One should remember that the America of the 1960s (when the book was written) was of course different from the America of today. An well written and eleoquent book ( )

I bought this book in the middle of my road trip; it touches you right at the heart and brings back good memories. In a way all of us are travels. Me I took my one individual journey for finding what is America and discovered my one answer.
A good piece of art.. ( )

An enjoyable little ditty, the best bits are the ones when Steinbeck is drinking with others, bringing him closer to Bukowski, whose best bits are when he is drinking alone. ( )

I have a feeling that if I had read Travels with Charley back in high school instead of The Grapes of Wrath or even Of Mice and Men, I would have actually liked Steinbeck rather than merely appreciated him.Part of my Steinbeck indifference was obviously influenced by my teenage attitude. At 15 there were other things I'd much rather have been doing than reading novels about the great depression. Also, I had that "what does this have to do with me" attitude I saw so frequently while trying to teach my college freshmen literature from the Vietnam War. But the other half of the problem was that I was exposed to those two books by a teacher who taught these novels as The Greatest Literary Masterpieces Ever. Great Literary Masterpieces have themes and symbols and (like vegetables) are consumed for (intellectual) nutrition and not for enjoyment. The image of Steinbeck that I took away from that class one of a Very Important American Author, sitting behind a grand oak desk, pondering which Important Theme to tackle next.Reading Travels with Charley showed me that my imagination was grossly mistaken. In place of the grand desk was a pickup truck and trailer and a poodle named Charley. Steinbeck ponders road maps instead of Important Themes and I was pleased to note that while he has me licked in literary masterpieces, my directional sense is far superior to his. Also, Steinbeck is funny. Really funny. And he uses his wit and dry humor to provide a commentary on American life that is still accurate today.I have a new appreciation for Steinbeck now. He's still an Important American Author, but one that shares philosophy with his poodle in the same way that I sometimes serenade my cats with Meatloaf songs. Okay, maybe not the same thing, but the point is, the memoir humanizes Steinbeck and makes him assessable. It's a shame I didn't read this sooner. ( )

John Steinbeck takes a journey across the country with his dog. On his journey he meets a lot of people and sees a lot of things that paint a grim if realistic portrait of the United States at the time. Steinbeck has an insightful eye and writes a brilliant memoir of his travels. ( )

9.5

In 1960, at the age of 58 and with his health beginning to decline, John Steinbeck boarded his motor home, Rocinante (named after Don Quixote's horse), in the company of his French poodle Charley, and set off from his Long Island home on a circumnavigation of the USA. He travelled via New England, through the industrial heartlands of the mid-west and the big skies of Wisconsin and Montana, down through his native California, then back across the desert, Texas and the Deep South.

This was a time when the country was on the brink of momentous change, with the election of Kennedy imminent and the stirrings of the civil rights movement. However, these impinge on the narrative only occasionally but powerfully, particularly towards the end when Steinbeck encounters "the Cheerleaders", a group of protesting women outside a white Louisiana elementary school where one black girl is being bussed in.

Steinbeck's chief concerns seem to be environmental, as he mourns the way noone sees anything from an Interstate highway and the way Americans have opted for "cleanliness first at the expense of taste." This makes the book seem surprisingly modern on occasion. Given what a fine writer of descriptive prose he was, it is perhaps not a surprise that where this book really excels is in providing the reader with a sense of place, obviously critical for successful travel writing.

As well as the locations, Steinbeck captures the people well, from taciturn New Englanders through more garrulous midwesterners and the unexpected generosity he finds when Rocinante suffers a blowout in California to the conspicuous consumption and wealth of Texas and finally to the ugly racism of Louisiana.

This is an example of what travel literature should be like. ( )

I read this book for a critical thinking course, and absolutely loved it. Steinbeck writes with a wry humor, and his observational skills were amazing. This book describes a cross-country drive he made with his poodle, Charley, and the people and things he encountered along the way. Possibly the most interesting part for me weren't his descriptions of places, but of the way his experiences made him feel. He also discusses many social issues which are no less relevant today than they were when he wrote this book nearly 50 years ago, and some of his insights seem almost prophetic. A wonderful book. ( )

If any recently read book has reminded me of the importance of giving a writer and his or her words the care and attention they deserve, it is John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley: In Search of America. If you happened to have read this post (sorry, we're back to Hardy again . . .), you'll know that I came late to this book, just a few weeks ago. And during those weeks, I've been reading it at a gentle pace. Because that is what it demands. Yes, you could speedread it in a couple of hours but you would miss so much in the rush to reach the last page.

But how could one rush at a book that opens thus:

"When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked."
When Steinbeck and his standard poodle headed off in a camper van called Rocinante, (named after Don Quixote's horse) to rediscover the author's native land, the heart disease that was to end his life just a few years later had aready made its presence known. This was to be Steinbeck's last opportunity to reconnect with his roots and to note what remained and what had changed in America, especially in parts of the country he remembered from his youth and earlier life.

His travelling companion, the eponymous Charley, was "an elderly gentleman", struggling - nobly as dogs do - with the infirmities of age; Steinbeck's concern to preserve his venerable canine's dignity is poignant yet never sentimental.

But not only did Steinbeck write great opening lines, he wrote great closing lines too - and pretty well everything in between is as good as it gets. Every word counts; every sentence is carefully crafted. Nothing is superfluous. Emphasis and inflection, when needed, arise as they should from the words and the images themselves, not an exclamation mark in sight.

Here is a writer at the very height of his powers; a writer who, in just a few words, can give us the measure of a man or a woman: a lonely lake guardian in northern Michigan, who "wanted his pretty little wife and . . . . something else" and who "couldn't have both"; an equally lonely and loquacious elderly woman stuck in the Bad Lands, with her "dying vestiges of a garden", or the vagabond actor with his handwritten note from John Gielgud, which he kept "in a carefully folded piece of aluminium foil".

When I was in my teens and early twenties, I read every Steinbeck I could get my hands on; landmark novels, such as The Grapes of Wrath informed my political thinking, as well as my thoughts on writing. But, somehow, this one book had passed me by. I'm grateful, however, to have discovered and read it at more or less the same age as Steinbeck was when he wrote it. Perhaps one needs to be this age to understand why he noticed the things that he did and the responses that they evoked in him.

And he was such a perceptive observer of the human condition; as readers, we marvel at his ability to translate his thoughts and reflections into words that speak to us all. Read Travels with Charley and you will know what it is to write from the heart, as well as from the head. If you've not yet had the good fortune to sit down with this wise, compassionate and exquisitely written book, buy or borrow a copy as soon as you can, take it slowly and know what it is to read from the heart. ( )

A journey story is the easiest kind of story because the beginning, middle, and end are all set for the writer. But the sense of the country that Steinbeck filled the pages between the beginning and end with are fire-star material. Remember it was 1962 when this was published. Kennedy was in the White House and the school desegration fight was happening in the South. All is believable. I was there just four years later and it is very believable.I believe there are very few books where you can sense America throiugh a traveller's eyes, but this surely in one of them. It is, really, historial fiction. I like the humorous way he makes Charlie a character in the story, attributing human emotions to him. I have two poodles and they DO smile and have emotions. ( )

I picked up this book because I am a big fan of John Steinbeck, but this maybe one3 of this weaker works. I did enjoy it and it was well written, but it is a bit dated and if someone is looking for the America describe in that book it is no longer there and is barely a good description of America. There were some really good parts that summarized a particular part of America, namely the south and Maine. The fact that for much of it it felt as if he did not want to be where is was hurt the book. It is honest, but I think this is something that if he did at a younger age it would have turned out to be a much stronger piece. I wish there was more interactions with individuals, but there were enough to keep me happy. I loved the interactions with Charlie, but felt as if there was a little too much and it felt forced at times. The lesson learned by the end of the book was nice and its saving grace: we cannot find America because it is such a dynamic place that has a character that cannot be defined in a way that would ever please a casual observer. ( )

I really loved listening to this book!!

What a wonderful read. I picked this up in a Philadelphia bookstore to read on the way home to Seattle on the plane. I simply could not put it down.

Steinbeck's travels across the country with his dog Charley, with a few exceptions, could have been written today. It's about a changing America, one that troubled the writer. Though it is also immersed in some of the social issues of 1960, if we substituted some of our own, such as immigration, or wealth and poverty, we could easily plug our own predicaments into the narrative. Awesome stuff. ( )

http://www.amazon.com/review/R3NAWD0T... ( )

Very enjoyable travel through the U.S. with Steinbeck. It wasn't really a travelogue in the sense that it detailed a lot about the places he traveled. Instead it was really a meditation on America and where it was and where it was going at the time of publication. Some things were remarkably prescient. It was also quite enjoyable and fascinating to be able to listen to Steinbeck in his own voice instead of a fictional narrator's voice. It makes me want to go back to the Steinbeck Center in Salinas. They have Rocinante in the museum there. And don't get me started on the querencia theme...

In Travels with Charley, Steinbeck is on a journey to discover if he still knows the country he memorializes in almost all of his other works. Steinbeck manages to express in this memoir of his journey through America a whole host of emotions that many of us still feel today, a conflicting love for our country and disgust with our countrymen, appreciation for our past and worries about what we have become. Like all of his best works, the writing is natural, warm, and often funny. This is a beautiful book that captures America, both the good and the bad, in it’s pages. ( )

A fascinating journey. The chapter about the southern school integrations are just as searing to read now as it was when new. ( )

I loved this book. I was slightly not enthused about the book but in the end did not want it to finish. ( )