jeremy's review
Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck
Wanderlust is a pervasive, seemingly incurable "virus of restlessness." Not contagious in any clinical sense, you either have it or you don't. John Steinbeck did, in spades. As the 1960's commenced, Steinbeck, according to his oldest son, sensed his impending twilight, and thus set out with his French poodle, Charley, to see his country a final time. Spanning nearly 10,000 miles from New York, through New England, across the northern U.S. border, into the Pacific Northwest, down through California and the Southwest, across Texas and the Deep South, and back up to the Empire State, Travels with Charley is a classic travelogue full of hope and heartbreak. Steinbeck's journey showed him an America of utter abundance, full of wrenching beauty, yet also replete with deplorable excess and intolerance. Nearly fifty years later, the book's candid observations remain both poignant and pertinent, a literary snapshot of a nation whose idyllic portrayal of itself never quit...more
