Travels with Charley: In Search of America

A rich old curmudgeon with a reputation of speaking for the common man realizes he has not been out amongst the hoi polloi in a while, so he sets out in a little camper with his poodle to rediscover the soul of America. Steinbeck strings together some sightseeing, rants, and colorful road trip characters into a mostly entertaining and often humorous travelogue.

Some of the sections seemed unlikely or too good to be true, so upon finishing the book, I was not surprised to find that researchers have found that Steinbeck fictionalized chunks of the book.

What did surprise me was how little things seemed to have changed in nearly 60 years as Steinbeck writes about a divisive political election, migrant workers, urban sprawl, the crazy show more reputation of Texas, and racism among other topics. show less

Steinbeck called himself “an American writer, writing about America” but, in 1960, he was twenty years beyond some of his most famous and recognized work. He felt that he had lost his connection with the land and the people that he wrote about and he wanted to find his voice once again. So, he secured a truck and camper, naming it Rocinante for Quixote’s horse, and he and his dog, Charley, went in search of America. He drove from his Sag Harbor home to Maine, across the northern reaches of the country trough Wisconsin, the Dakotas, and Montana, dipping down from Washington to his home country in Northern California, and then ventured across Texas and into the South before making the trek home. The account of the trip was published show more in 1962 as [Travels with Charley].

What is most interesting about Steinbeck’s book is that it turns out to be more of an internal journal, an account of his own personal journey as much as the physical journey. Though he set out to find America, Steinbeck seems more in search of himself and the soul of his writing. As he nears the end of his trip, Steinbeck records:
“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. But what I carried in my head and deeper in my perceptions was a barrel of worms. I discovered long ago in collecting and classifying marine animals that what I found was closely intermeshed with how I felt at the moment. External reality has a way of being not so external after all.”
So, what Steinbeck records is a distillation of his own thoughts and life rather than conclusions on the country. In seeing the land and interacting with its people, he refocuses his heart, learning as much about himself as anything.

What is transposed from other Steinbeck writing into this book is his keen eye for people. The reason his characters seem so human is because Steinbeck has a unique ability to lay bare the essence of people. For instance, early in his trip, Steinbeck enters a roadside café to find a waitress “who can drain energy and joy, can suck pleasure dry and get now sustenance from it…spread a grayness in the air about them.” Long before Steinbeck explains this waitress’s nature, he has described her and recounted his interaction with her in such a way as to reveal her completely. His depiction of ‘mercenary migrant’ potato workers in Maine or a philandering businessman from only leavings in a hotel room identify these people as though you are at the fire or in the hotel room with Steinbeck.

Steinbeck’s eye for the land is no less keen than his eye for people. As a desert dweller, I was most interested in how he perceived the desert Southwest. After all, Steinbeck is a penultimate man of the sea, driven by its rhythms and raw power. How would he view the exact opposite of what he is most familiar and comfortable with? Of course, his perception cut to the very quick of the desert’s nature, identifying what is most beautiful and vibrant in a place where most only see desolation.
“And the desert, the dry and sun-lashed desert, is a good school in which to observe the cleverness and the infinite variety of techniques of survival under the pitiless opposition. Life could not change the sun or water the desert, it changed itself. The desert, being an unwanted place, might well be the last stand of life against unlife. … The desert has mothered magic things before this.”
After sliding into the high desert and pushing through Gallup to the Continental Divide, he camps in a canyon off the road for the night. Even at this lonely place, he notes something so telling about the nature of the place, but without knowing why or how. Near their campsite, he and Charley uncover a mound of broken bottles, whiskey and gin bottles, thousands of them. He says, “I don’t know why they were there.” Having lived near where he is describing, I know it is one of a thousand drinking spots that draw the inhabitants of that region, often daily. Some mystical pull attracts people to these spots and they mark their gatherings with the leavings of their addiction.

Perhaps most telling of the stories in this book is Steinbeck’s trip back to the Salinas and Monterey of his early life. Steinbeck meets up with an old friend from his younger days in a bar. The man begs Steinbeck to return so that things will be like they were before. But Steinbeck notes how different the place and the people are, how all of their friends are dead or gone. Though, in the end, Steinbeck doesn’t see the ghosts of things past. He says about his return,
“I was the ghost. My town had grown and changed and my friend along with it. Now returning, as changed to my friend as my town was to me, I distorted his picture, muddied his memory. When I went away I had died, and so became fixed and unchangeable. My return caused only confusion and uneasiness. Although they could not say it, my old friends wanted me gone so that I could take my proper place in the patter of remembrance – and I wanted to go for the same reason. Tom Wolfe was right. You can’t go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.”

This book solidified Steinbeck’s place in my own personal canon. His writing is crisp, though not as spare as Hemingway or McCarthy. But what he shares with those two authors is an uncanny sense of the human condition in its various forms. The resulting truth of his work is comforting and provocative.

Bottom Line: An intimate and internal diary of a trek across America.

5 bones!!!!!

A favorite for the year and an all-time favorite. show less

In the fall of 1960, John Steinbeck set out on a cross-country journey in his camper Rocinante, accompanied by his poodle, Charley. Steinbeck records his impressions of people he met and places he visited as he sought to understand the American national character. Steinbeck captures a vanishing travel culture following legislation establishing the Interstate Highway System during the Eisenhower administration. Fellow dog lovers will connect with Charley, who seems to have been the perfect travel companion. It’s intriguing that Steinbeck doesn’t mention being recognized by anyone he meets on his journey. His face might not have been familiar to all, but his name surely was since readers would know his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The show more Grapes of Wrath, and non-readers would be familiar with film adaptations of his novels. Was Steinbeck just being modest when he wrote Travels with Charley, or did he really fly under the radar during his travels? show less

Summary: John Steinbeck’s memoir of his 1960 roadtrip in his truck/camper Rocinante with his French poodle Charley.

It was 1960. Richard Nixon and John Kennedy were in a race for president. Highways from town to town were being replaced by high speed Interstate highways. The South was in deep conflict over desegregation. Mass media was expanding its impact on the culture. And John Steinbeck was aging. His son, Thom, said Steinbeck knew he had the heart condition from which he would die in 1968. And he wanted to see the America that had been the backdrop of his stories one more time,

So he bought a 3/4 ton truck on which a custom camper top was installed with bed, stove, lights, and facilities and dubbed his vehicle “Rocinante,” show more after Don Quixote’s mount. One wonders if he thought this journey quixotic in nature. He sets out from New York City north to main, across New England and New York, along the south of the Great Lakes through the Midwest, across the northern states all the way to Washington, down to California including revisiting his old stomping ground, trekking across the Southwest, through Texas, stopping in New Orleans during a desegregation crisis which he witnesses, across the South, up through Virginia, and New Jersey and back home.

Accompanying him is his faithful old companion, his ten year old French poodle, Charley, who would go “Ffft” when Steinbeck was too slow to take him out. One of the most endearing parts of this work was the bond between them, often evoking some of the strongest emotions Steinbeck has throughout–contempt for the government bureaucracy that wouldn’t allow them to cut through Canada without Charley’s inoculation papers, surprise at Charley’s fierceness when they spot grizzlies, anger at a veterinarian whose indifference to Charley’s bladder problems, frustration at Charley’s lack of interest in the greatest of the redwoods, and warm affection for another vet who cared for his old dog. As the title suggests, Charley is perhaps the main character in this memoir besides Steinbeck himself.

Steinbeck remarks the changes that have occurred throughout the country. He speaks of the massive growth of the cities, which he tries generally to avoid (one exception is Minneapolis, and the nuclear evacuation route he followed, reflecting on the traffic jams that would have made this route worthless). He describes listening to jukeboxes, where the same songs were #1 wherever you went, a harbinger of the growth of mass culture. He remarks on the odd phenomenon of the reticence of people to talk about the presidential election.

Christian Smith has described American religion as “moral therapeutic deism.” Steinbeck noted this even in the 1960’s as he traveled across the country, contrasting what he found in one Vermont church with what he found elsewhere:

“For some years now God has been a pal to us, practicing togetherness, and that causes the same emptiness a father does playing softball with his son. But this Vermont God cared enough about me to go to a lot of trouble kicking the hell out of me. He put my sins in a new perspective…I wasn’t a a naughty child but a first rate sinner, and I was going to catch it” (p. 61).

Steinbeck said he felt so revived he put $5 in the offering plate and commented of the pastor: “He forged a religion designed to last, not predigested obsolescence.”

These larger observations of society alternate with personal encounters, many at breakfast counters across the country, taciturn in New England and more voluble as he entered the Midwest. Then there is the very human encounter with a property manager who informed Steinbeck that he was trespassing, and as they talk and share some coffee with something added, the manager shows him a place to park and takes him fishing. Like so many, they saw Steinbeck’s camper, and wanted to be him.

In the end, Steinbeck wanted to get home. Something seemed to change once he reached California. Spotting coyotes he could have easily taken down and done others a favor, he cannot. He witnesses the viciousness of white women (the cheerladies) when a little black girl tries to integrate a school in Louisiana. Encounters with two hitchhikers, one white, one black underscore the deep racial divide of the time. Strikingly, the black man fears him, and gets out before reaching his destination, preferring walking to fear.

Getting lost, being misdirected and directed runs through the narrative. Even back in New York City, he requires directions from a policeman to make it home. One senses that it is a lost man who is in search of America with his dog. And what did he find? In his own words, “I do know this–the big and mysterious America is bigger than I thought. And more mysterious.”

I have to admit, the older I get, the more I find myself in agreement with Steinbeck. All the things I thought I knew about the country, I know no longer. What I thought I knew has become mysterious. And I find myself longing more and more for people like that Vermont preacher. Someone needs to kick the hell out of us. show less

"… the Monterey Peninsula… The canneries which once put up a sickening stench are gone, their places filled with restaurants, antique shops, and the like. They fish for tourists now…" (pg. 156)

Americans are movers, John Steinbeck writes early on in Travels with Charley. Regardless of where he is in his wanderings across the United States, he talks to people about the road trip he is undertaking and sees in their eyes "a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here" (pg. 9).

For a novelist who wrote literature of such a high quality, and concerned so intensely with the American experiment and its great westering, it's something of a surprise to read his short, amiable late-period travelogue Travels show more with Charley and find something which fulfils that life-long task in its own way. It might not address those questions with greater precision than novels like The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, but this book possesses a looser but all-encompassing grasp of what this singular writer was seeking.

The American wanderlust and restlessness is reflected in Steinbeck himself; in his late fifties and with health problems, he decides that he has lost the feel for the country and its people. He sets out in a camper truck for a good old-fashioned road trip, accompanied by his faithful poodle Charley. Starting in New York, he heads up to Maine and then across into Chicago and the Mid-West (including a memorable encounter with the Wisconsin Dells). He travels into Montana and reflects on the American pioneering spirit, then diverts into Yellowstone National Park before heading to the Pacific Northwest. He then returns home to California, to the Monterey and the Salinas Valley of his youth, remarking with great pathos on the changes that have taken place over the previous few decades. He then returns east to wrestle with that unfathomable, independent chimera known as Texas, before the journey is soured by experiences in the Deep South, which is in the midst of its unedifying battles of the Civil Rights era (Steinbeck's trip takes place in 1960). He then comes full-circle back to New York.

The book is short and, as you would imagine, filled with motion, so it is sometimes hard to take in the immensity of America and Steinbeck's journey. But Steinbeck is a judicious guide. It's a bit obvious to say that his writing is excellent, but it is. Steinbeck knows what to include and what not to, and so we really get a sense of his quixotic quest to understand America. He brings all the qualities of a novelist to this book: he develops a structure and brings to life the characters he meets, including some entertaining (and probably fictionalized) dialogue. He makes perceptive literary comments on the people, the land and the emerging trends he encounters. Some passages, such as the one regarding the enduring giant redwoods of northern California, have a magic to them.

The book is a dream to read. Steinbeck seems to leave any ego back in New York; he is disarmingly relaxed and yet spirited. I mentioned above that Travels with Charley has a looser but perhaps more all-encompassing grasp of Steinbeck's purpose than is found in his more imperial literature, and I think this is because he not only captures the changing America he was exploring in those books, but because he is at one with his other multitudes here. Steinbeck's literary influences include Cervantes, and his quixotic quest across America here overtly recalls Don Quixote (Steinbeck's truck is called Rocinante, for example). The book's title comes from a similar book by Robert Louis Stevenson, and Steinbeck's search also recalls King Arthur and the quest for the Holy Grail. He recognises all of this, and has fun with it. Steinbeck never wrote an autobiography as such, and so passages of Travels with Charley are the closest we get to the man behind such great works of literature, including a self-effacing self-portrait early on in the book. The titular Charley helps a lot here; the dog is adorable and quickly emerges as his own character, bouncing well off his master. There's a lot of warm humour in the book, and Steinbeck can deliver an anecdote or an aside. He is enjoying himself, and the reader does too.

For all the joy and spirit in Travels with Charley, the book is also qualified by Steinbeck's self-reflective honesty. While lamenting the changes he is witnessing across America – "I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction" (pg. 138) – he is also aware that "it was a rare home that baked good bread in the old days. Mother's cooking was with rare exceptions poor" (pg. 83). He is aware that his nostalgia, while real, was also something made more potent by memory; one of the lessons he learns in his travel is that "external reality has a way of being not so external after all" (pg. 159). There is no one 'true' America to 'find'; everyone brings their own impressions, and all you can do is try to look at your own life experiences, your losses and your pleasant memories, with gratitude and honesty.

Steinbeck brings us along this journey with seemingly effortless will. Those who enjoy Steinbeck will relish this peek at a writer without the armour of fiction to protect him, and those who are intimidated by his writing – which often looks bleak from the outside – will be attracted to and won over by this picaresque adventure in the company of a dog. Lamenting the loss of the old New World and the dying of the breed, one character Steinbeck meets asks for ten Americans "who aren't afraid to have a conviction, an idea, or an opinion in an unpopular field" (pg. 129). What a shame there don't seem to be writers of this calibre, honesty and composure today – if there are, they must be buried in obscure depths or left withering on the vine. Steinbeck takes care of Charley Dog and the reader both – not by throwing us treats, but by letting us sit contentedly in "the seat beside me, peering ahead at the unrolling road" (pg. 189). show less

John Steinbeck took a road trip across the US in 1960 with his dog Charley to find what America was all about. Sixty years later, so much is still the same. Particularly poignant during these troubled times is his description of an ugly crowd led by women called “ the Cheerleaders “ outside a New Orleans school that was integrating. We thought we had moved beyond that in the last 60 years but current events show we haven’t moved far

"Travels with Charley" proved to be the right book at the right time. Since we sold our house six months ago and started traveling full time in our 17-foot-van with our three cats (vs. one poodle), I've been thinking about this book. Mostly what I thought was, it's about damn time I read it. The timing will never be better.

Steinbeck is a delightful and prescient writer of the road (though the veracity of some of his encounters has since been cast into doubt) and he professionally lays his forefingers across the pulse of America despite his reservations about his ability: "I came out on this trip to try and learn something of America. Am I learning anything? If I am, I don’t know what it is."

The lessons are stark: we're schooled in show more everything of the human nature from kindness to obscene racism. In the end, he reflects, "This monster of a land, this mightiest of nations, this spawn of the future, turns out to be the macrocosm of microcosm me." show less