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Travels with Charley in Search of America: (Centennial Edition) (original 1962; edition 2002)

by John Steinbeck

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
8,450212997 (4)1 / 486
Biography & Autobiography. History. Travel. Nonfiction. HTML:An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers
 
To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the lightâ??these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.

With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and  the unexpected kindness of strange
… (more)
Member:dlarios
Title:Travels with Charley in Search of America: (Centennial Edition)
Authors:John Steinbeck
Info:Penguin (Non-Classics) (2002), Paperback, 224 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:
Tags:nonfiction, roadtrip, steinbeck

Work Information

Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck (1962)

  1. 40
    The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson (John_Vaughan)
  2. 30
    The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck (John_Vaughan)
  3. 10
    No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin (andomck)
    andomck: Non fiction from these novelists where their pets play a large role. Also, UKL has an essay in her book about knowing Steinbeck in real life
  4. 11
    Blue Highways: A Journey into America by William Least Heat-Moon (usnmm2)
  5. 00
    Of Men and Their Making by John Steinbeck (Booksloth)
  6. 11
    Coast to Coast by Jan Morris (John_Vaughan)
    John_Vaughan: Two authors with different backgrounds but both books filled with love of travel and America.
  7. 11
    Tagebuch, spÀter (edition suhrkamp) by Andrzej Stasiuk (Philosofiction)
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» See also 486 mentions

English (208)  Swedish (1)  French (1)  Spanish (1)  Catalan (1)  All languages (212)
Showing 1-5 of 208 (next | show all)
Unsurprisingly, the Russian translation I read bears no mention of the discussion of Khruschev's UNO tantrum, that took place in New Hampshire between the author and a farmer. I noted this omission by following this book up with a modern investigation of the trip 'Dogging Steinbeck'.
  Den85 | Jan 3, 2024 |
Travels with Charley is a great story of Steinbeck‘s road trip around America. While it dances on the line between fiction and non-fiction, it succeeds beautifully in capturing both the essence of wanderlust and a telling snapshot in time of the US. At times I wished I had read this in print so that I could highlight some of its many memorable passages, but then I would have missed this excellent feat of audiobook narration by Gary Sinise. ( )
  yourotherleft | Dec 31, 2023 |
I love Charley. He's a lovely dog. Fft. I loved the way Steinbeck treated Charley. Double Fft.

Steinbeck's travelogue was pretty darn good. I enjoyed reading it, although I don't know what took so long. It wasn't as good as Twain's roaming journals, but most of it hit a nostalgic note for a time before I hit the earth. None of it was real. He was looking at it through the eyes of an older man, and I was grateful for his perspective. ( )
  rabbit-stew | Dec 31, 2023 |
I'm in love with Steinbeck still. And again. ( )
  rebwaring | Aug 14, 2023 |
Steinbeck was long one of my favorite authors. This road trip memoir didn't pretend to be stories, but still held my interest. ( )
  mykl-s | Aug 4, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 208 (next | show all)
Steinbeck’s book-length account of his journey, “Travels With Charley: In Search of America,” published in 1962, was generally well reviewed and became a best-seller. It remains in print, regarded by some as a classic of American travel writing. Almost from the beginning, though, a few readers pointed out that many of the conversations in the book had a stagey, wooden quality, not unlike the dialogue in Steinbeck’s fiction.

Early on in the book, for example, Steinbeck has a New England farmer talking in folksy terms about Nikita S. Khrushchev’s shoe-pounding (or -brandishing, depending on whom you ask) speech at the United Nations weeks before Khrushchev actually visited the United Nations. A particularly unlikely encounter occurs at a campsite near Alice, N.D., where a Shakespearean actor, mistaking Steinbeck for a fellow thespian, greets him with a sweeping bow, saying, “I see you are of the profession,” and then proceeds to talk about John Gielgud.

Even Steinbeck’s son John said he was convinced that his father never talked to many of the people he wrote about, and added, “He just sat in his camper and wrote all that [expletive].”
 

» Add other authors (35 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
John Steinbeckprimary authorall editionscalculated
Álvarez Flórez, José ManuelTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bianciardi, LucianoTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Duvivier, M.M.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Farber, PaulPhotographersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Foerster, IrisTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Foerster, Rolf HellmutTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Freeman, DonCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Fritz-Crone, PelleTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Haff, KristenCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Herman, Rein F.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Parini, JayIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Sampietro, LuigiEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Sinise, GaryNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
Dedication
This book is dedicated to
HAROLD GUINZBURG
with respect born of an association and
affection that just growed.
-JOHN STEINBECK
First words
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.
Quotations
No newspaper had printed the words these women shouted. It was indicated that they were indelicate, some even said obscene...But now I heard the words, bestial and filthy and degenerate. In a long and unprotected life I have seen and heard the vomitings of demoniac humans before. Why then did these screams fill me with a shocked and sickened sorrow?
For how can one know color in perpetual green, and what good is warmth without cold to give it sweetness?
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.
Who has not known a journey to be over and dead before the traveler returns? The reverse is also true: many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Biography & Autobiography. History. Travel. Nonfiction. HTML:An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers
 
To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the lightâ??these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.

With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and  the unexpected kindness of strange

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Penguin Australia

An edition of this book was published by Penguin Australia.

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