Author John Steinbeck was 58 when he set out to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years. With his elderly French poodle, Charley, he embarked on a quest across America, from the northernmost tip of Maine to California's Monterey Peninsula. Traveling the interstates and the country roads, they stopped to smell America: trucker and strangers, old friends and new acquaintances. Steinbeck's poignant, perceptive reflections reveal the American character: a blend of unexpected kindnesses and racial ...
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Author John Steinbeck was 58 when he set out to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years. With his elderly French poodle, Charley, he embarked on a quest across America, from the northernmost tip of Maine to California's Monterey Peninsula. Traveling the interstates and the country roads, they stopped to smell America: trucker and strangers, old friends and new acquaintances. Steinbeck's poignant, perceptive reflections reveal the American character: a blend of unexpected kindnesses and racial hostilities, loneliness and humor.
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Steinbeck makes you feel like you are riding along in his camper.
His encounters with people he meets on the road are so real to life, you can feel the interactions.
What a story teller.
Wherever he goes, you would like to have his outspokenness when he meets someone.
All the stories are outstanding, but the one when he picks up the young person, who then describes his hatred towards blacks is timeless. When Steinbeck, stops the camper, and lets him out on the road, you want want to cheer Steinbeck for getting rid of such a jerk. Truly Steinbeck is totally American and one of a kind.
David S
Aug 29, 2015
Great Read
A tale only Steinbeck could spin. A MUST read for anyone interested in a well written documentation of Americana in the early '60s.
bookworm
Jul 18, 2013
Delightful
This is the sweetest book I've read in a long time.
It's certainly a must read for anyone who loves people and dogs.
rejoyce
Aug 15, 2007
Biblical Simplicities
In Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck manages to be wise about so many things: Americans and the American landscape, being male, aging, hunting, the national impulse to "go" (that is, wanderlust and mobility), migratory workers (the subject of his great novel Grapes of Wrath), New Englanders' taciturn character, the madness of nuclear terror.
Like Hemingway, Steinbeck had achieved mastery over what he knew, but his prose style lacks the artifice of a Faulkner or Hemingway. He is more easily engaging and accessible. If some Eastern critics were dismissive of his "Biblical simplicities," to quote Norman Mailer, the following question might be asked: Need all 20th century American novelists be as tortured as those two self-conscious stylists? Besides, my guess is that John Steinbeck would've made a more companionable tour guide than either Papa, F. Scott or Big Daddy Faulkner. His book proves it. A wonderful and prescient journey into the heart of a lost America.
