Bill Steigerwald's Blog, page 5
January 10, 2015
Geert Mak & Me
The English version of Geert Mak’s Steinbeck/America book, “In America: Travels With John Steinbeck,” is the hit of the UK book pages. It’s been reviewed fairly favorably in the last two weeks by the bookies at the Guardian newspaper, the Spectator magazine and now the Herald, the Scottish paper that is the longest running national newspaper in the world. Mak’s book — an impressive combination history book and travel book aimed at informing his fellow Dutch — is more than 500 pages and covers a lot of American ground. A 2013 bestseller in Holland, it was hooked around the idea of following John Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charley” route exactly 50 years later. An ocean apart, we had the same book idea — to show how much America had changed from 1960 to 2010 by retracing Steinbeck’s “Charley” trip and comparing what we saw on the road with what he did. Mak mentions me about a dozen times in his book and repeatedly praises me for my drive-by journalism and for digging up and exposing the fictions and lies Steinbeck filled “Charley” with. It was/is a great honor to be praised by a great journalist like him. We didn’t meet on the Old Steinbeck Highway in the fall of 2010, but we’ve met since. (He flew to Pittsburgh last year just to meet me and buy me lunch.) We were only a day or two apart on the road as he and his wife drove behind me in their rented Jeep. Mak slept in motels and behaved like a mature mid-60s author and journalist while I slept in my car and drove like a mad teenager. Mak is a major Dutch media figure, best-selling historian and journalist who had a sweet book deal. I, being a nobody, could not get a publisher and so I had to travel on my own dime and time. As I’ve said often, I had a blast chasing Steinbeck’s ghost, exposing his ethical lapses and dueling with the Steinbeck scholars. I would not rewind the tape of the last five years to do it any other way. I’ll get my payoff when Kevin Costner options my book so he can play Steinbeck, the great author who at age 58 bit off more than he could chew when he set out to rediscover America. Mak and I are not political soul mates, though we are both against the war on drugs, the wars in the Middle East and poor city planning. He is a self-defined “euro-socialist” and therefore what we say is right and wrong about the Americas we saw in our books differs by about 180-degrees when it comes to economic policy, the wage gap and the efficacy of government welfare programs. The America he found was an ocean of impoverishment with outposts of prosperity that needed more government, not less; the America I found was an ocean of prosperity with outposts of poverty that had the federal government and both parties to blame for the economic woes of the Great Recession. Someday I hope we will have a debate in Holland, where Mak says he has made Bill Steigerwald a household name.
January 1, 2015
The Spectator implies I’m a Fox News Republican because its book reviewer doesn’t know what a libertarian is
Geert Mak’s Steinbeck book, “In America,” was reviewed in the Spectator magazine by a guy with a great British name, Lewis Jones. Unfortunately, though Jones manages to give me credit for discovering the literary fraudulence of “Travels With Charley,” he screws up my politics. Jones doesn’t know what a libertarian is, obviously, or he wouldn’t have said that libertarianism is the same as being stridently Republican. Go to the Spectator to read the review, which is of the typical lefty variety. Or just stay here and read my comment, which gave me the opportunity to plug my book to the good people of the UK. Thanks much to Lewis Jones for mentioning me, my book ‘Dogging Steinbeck’ and my role in exposing the fictions and fibs in Steinbeck’s iconic work of non-nonfiction, ‘Travels With Charley’. As my new friend Geert Mak knows, for 50 years ‘Travels’ was marketed, reviewed and taught as work of nonfiction — until I came along, did some basic snooping in libraries and on the road, got lucky, proved it was mostly made up and occasionally outright deceptive and declared it a ‘literary fraud’. (Not that I haven’t said it somewhere in a blog or interview, but the phrase ‘a very flawed load of fictional crap and deception’ does not appear in my book, which, while full of jokes, void of footnotes and liberally sprinkled with my libertarian politics, is a serious work of journalism that has changed the way ‘Travels’ will be read forever. Anyone interested in learning more is urged to buy my ‘literary expose’ at Amazon.com.UK or go to www.truthaboutcharley.com). I especially urge Mr. Lewis to read my book — or at least skim it — before jumping to any more conclusions or launching any more of his ‘surmises’ (i.e., wild and uninformed guesses) about my politics, my affection for the Republican Party or my adherence to Fox News’ historical interpretations. He’d find evidence in ‘Dogging Steinbeck’ that I dislike (i.e., hate) both major parties for their bipartisan plundering and wrecking of our land, which is still great in spite of them: “It was Nov. 2 – Election Day. The historic date the Tea Party was going to seize America from the Democrats and give it back to the Republicans, the party that had taken us to a foolish war in Iraq, copiloted the economy into a mountainside and squandered federal money it didn’t have like drunken Democrats.” And the morning after the election, I write: “Overnight America supposedly underwent a historic political change. Republican Tea Partiers had seized the U.S. House and a new Golden Age of limited government, lower taxes and personal freedom was allegedly on the way. It was the usual hype and hysteria. Nothing would be changing on the U.S.S. Big Government except a few deck chairs.” Based on his review, I surmise Lewis won’t like my politics. Nor will he appreciate what I say about the political biases and cultural snobbery of liberal New Yorkers like Steinbeck (that’s what he was in 1960) who’ve made it a habit to sneer at the politics, culture and values of the Americans they encounter in Flyover Country when they dare to travel by car between Manhattan and the Hollywood Sign. When Lewis wrote that I take “an ‘openly libertarian’ (i.e. stridently Republican) [...]
December 27, 2014
Call Glenn Greenwald — The Guardian bookies screw Bill Steigerwald
My name finally appeared the Guardian newspaper in connection with my Steinbeck exploits, but Bill Steigerwald.">look at what happened. The Guardian reviews Geert Mak’s book about his “Travels With Charley” trip around the USA, which I appear in about 10 times, but it fails to credit me for my expose. The Guardian’s reviewer also falsely accuses me of having a web site for dog-lovers. My barrister will be contacting them. My comment is at the end. In case it gets killed out, here is what it says, using Brit punctuation: It’s nice to see my name in print in the Guardian, but can we get a few things straight — things that my Dutch pal (and ideological opposite) Geert Mak got straight in his fine book. First off, while I am a longtime libertarian newspaperman and columnist, and I did chase Steinbeck’s ghost concurrently with Mak in the fall of 2010, I did not have a web site for dog lovers. That was fellow Steinbeck-chaser John Woestendiek, a Pulitzer Prize winner who used to work for the Baltimore Sun. A minor quibble in a long review, to be sure, but we ex-newspapermen can get picky with our facts. Much more important to me and readers of the Guardian is the failure of the reviewer to credit me and my dogged journalism (on and off the road) for exposing, after 50 years, that “Travels With Charley” was filled with so many fictions and lies that it did not deserve to be called a work of nonfiction. (It had been deceptively marketed, reviewed and taught as a true nonfiction account of Steinbeck’s iconic 1960 road trip since 1962; because of the trouble I caused in newspapers, Reason magazine and in my book “Dogging Steinbeck”, the latest introduction to “Charley” by Jay Parini has been carefully amended to tell readers the truth — that they are about to read a work of BS, I mean fiction. My name was not mentioned by Professor Parini but the paper I was working for was.) Geert Mak — who went out of his way earlier this year to fly from new York City to Pittsburgh to meet me face-to-face — honestly/graciously credited me in his book for discovering, long before he did, the inconsistencies between Steinbeck’s first draft of “Charley” and the published version. I’ve tried many times to get the Guardian’s book people to pay attention to “Dogging Steinbeck”, which was self-published on Amazon and therefore has trouble being taken seriously, or reviewed, by newspapers and magazines. My book contains no footnotes, cracks lots of jokes and looks at 11,276 miles of the Steinbeck Highway from a refreshingly libertarian point of view (i.e., not the standard cliche-ridden East Coast liberal establishment one that Steinbeck had and Mr. Lennon betrays), but it is a serous work of journalism. “True nonfiction”, I call it. The New York Times editorial page and travel writer Paul Theroux were highly pleased with what I learned about “Charley”, its author and the lengths to which Viking Press went to create the myth that Steinbeck traveled alone, traveled rough and traveled slow. Mak gave me credit for my literary expose several times in his book, but Mr. Lennon somehow missed it. Here’s what Mak wrote to me in an email: “I wanted … first to express [...]
December 6, 2014
Geert Mak’s Steinbeck/”Charley”/USA book is out in English
About 54 years ago today, John Steinbeck finished his failed “Travels With Charley” road trip and dragged his tired and unhappy ass back home to New York City. He had driven Rocinante about 10,000 miles in the fall of 1960 and spent the next 10 months, off and on, writing “Charley.” As we now know, and as I put into “Dogging Steinbeck,” he had to make up a lot of stuff to fill his slim travel book — which was, quite deviously, edited and marketed as a true nonfiction account of his search for the America he had lost touch with. When I followed Steinbeck’s trail faithfully in the fall of 2010, I didn’t know it but I was a few days ahead of famed Dutch historian/journalist Geert Mak. I only found out in 2012 that Mak too had had the idea of retracing Steinbeck’s journey as a way to compare the changes that have beset/improved America in the last 50 years. The English edition of Mak’s “In America: Travels With John Steinbeck” — a fat and footnoted bestseller in Holland — has just come out. Mak is a self-defined Euro-socialist. Therefore his view of the USA is more pessimistic than mine, which is libertarianly tilted and critical of the current media and the snooty liberal East Coast view of Flyover Country that Steinbeck also held. The Independent in London has reviewed Mak’s book critically but fairly. There’s only one comment — mine. Here’s how Stuart Evers’ review starts…. In America: Travels with John Steinbeck by Geert Mak, book review: A depiction of a country in decline, but was he looking in the right places? The cultural life of America – film, music, literature – so important in founding and reasserting a national identity, is almost totally ignored by the author Geert Mak’s retracing of John Steinbeck’s celebrated American journey, Travels with Charley, first appeared in the Netherlands in 2012 under the title Travels Without John: In Search of America. In this fluid English translation by Liz Waters, the title has been transposed and refocused to In America: Travels with John Steinbeck. In purely commercial terms, one can see why the publisher would want to amplify the Steinbeck link, make him a part of the action. Yet this is a disparity that points to the problem at the heart of this book: it doesn’t quite know exactly what it wants to be. Steinbeck, at least at first, had a clear idea of both what he was writing, and why he was writing it. In 1960, after an illness had forced him to take stock, he set off from Sag Harbour – with his dog, Charley – journeying through 33 of the 50 American states, to find the country he loved. It’s the last of Steinbeck’s major works, and one that begins in hope and macho endeavour, and ends in downbeat disappointment. It’s a journey riven with great writing, moments of drama and self-reflection; it is also hugely fictionalised, and most probably more imagination than fact.
October 25, 2014
Marking John Steinbeck’s Nobel win and learning the truth about ‘Charley’
More than half a century ago, on Oct. 25, 1962, John Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for literature he should have received years earlier. The Swedish Academy of Letters hailed Steinbeck for his “realistic and imaginative writings” and called his “Grapes of Wrath” a “poignant description of life as it is lived by the common man.” The committee also favorably mentioned “Travels With Charley,” his last major work, which was high atop the New York Times nonfiction list that fall. This excerpt from my expose “Dogging Steinbeck” discusses the generally positive critical reaction to “Charley,” which, as we now know, was a mostly made-up and deceitful account of Steinbeck’s trip of discovery around the USA. Critics Cheer Steinbeck was never liked by the East Coast literary mafia, which alone is a good reason to friend him. The big critics dismissed him for snobbish intellectual reasons, according to his friendly biographer Jackson Benson: He was from out West. He had a sense of humor. He was too popular, too sentimental, too accessible and insufficiently political (i.e., he didn’t keep writing “The Grapes of Wrath” over and over to please diehard lefties like Mary McCarthy at Nation magazine). Yet when “Travels With Charley” was published, it generally got raves from reviewers in mainstream newspapers and magazines. Most of them embraced/swallowed the romantic man-and-dog-on-the-road storyline. Even critical reviews didn’t question the authenticity of Steinbeck’s supporting cast of cardboard characters. Harper’s, Saturday Review and a few other highbrow places were not particularly impressed by Steinbeck’s “predictable” observations. But the New York Times, Newsweek and the Atlantic loved the book. The Times’ reviewer, Eric F. Goldman, lost his grip. The Princeton history professor and world authority on modern American culture blubbered in the Sunday Book Review on July 29 that it was “a pure delight, a pungent potpourri of places and people interspersed with bittersweet essays on everything from the emotional difficulties of growing old to the reasons why giant Sequoias arouse such awe.” Goldman wasn’t 100 percent pleased, however. He pointed out, correctly, that the America Steinbeck saw was “hardly coincident” with the real American heartland because he had avoided the most significant new developments of the 1960s – the big cities and the growing suburbs. But Goldman, like other reviewers, bought completely into the myth of “Travels With Charley.” Goldman assumed Steinbeck had exhausted himself on a grueling, undercover, three-month road trip in a truck. He wrote sentences like “To avoid hotel stays and certain recognition he had a manufacturer build for him a cabin body equipped for day-and-night living. He traveled accompanied only by his aged French poodle.” Calling it “affecting and highly entertaining,” Newsweek praised Steinbeck for his “quick mind and honest heart” but damned him for “his self-indulgent loathing of every city he drove through.” The reviewer in Atlantic’s August issue predicted that it was a book “to be read slowly for its savor, and one which, like Thoreau, will be quoted and measured by our own experience.” The Boston Herald enthused that “Travels With Charley” was one of “the best books John Steinbeck has ever written. Perceptive, revealing, and completely delightful.” The San Francisco Examiner deemed it “profound, sympathetic, often angry . . . an honest and moving book by one of our great writers.” Only Time magazine, whose owner Henry Luce reportedly never [...]
September 29, 2014
The sloppy scholarship and creepy arrogance of the Steinbeck Review
The Steinbeck Review is supposed to be devoted to scholarship, but is it? Here’s what SR says it is all about: Steinbeck Review is an authorized publication on the life and works of American novelist John Steinbeck (1902-1968). It publishes scholarly articles; notes; book and performance reviews; creative writing; original artwork; short intercalary pieces offering fresh perspectives, including notes on contemporary references to Steinbeck, discussions of the contexts of his work, and an occasional poem. Review has a three-fold mission of broadening the scope of Steinbeck criticism, promoting the work of new and established scholars, and serving as a resource for Steinbeck teachers at all levels. Sounds like a fair and honest publication, right? Reliable. Trustworthy. Too bad it hasn’t reviewed my 2013 book “Dogging Steinbeck.” Or even mentioned it. The SR did print a shall-we-say less-than scholarly article by a Steinbeck fan in response to what the New York Times wrote about my discoveries of Steinbeck’s lies in spring 2011. But it hasn’t seriously addressed or critiqued or accepted what I proved four years ago — that John Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charley” was a work of fiction and not the true or honest nonfiction account of his 1960 road trip and what he thought about America. For half a century Steinbeck scholars blew it on “Charley.” They never bothered to look with a skeptical eye at the iconic American road book, which has flashes of good writing and glints of wise humor but is awful in many many ways that have nothing to do with telling the truth in a nonfiction book. As I’ve said in my book, which exposed “Charley” for the literary fraud it was for 50 years and changed the way the book will be read forever, I don’t expect the Steinbeck Studies Industrial Complex to give me an honorary masters in literary studies. And I recognize that it is possible for English professors with Ph.D’s to argue with a straight face that the fictions and lies Steinbeck told were told in the interest of telling larger truths about America. Or that the truths were so large that he had to make them up and put them in a nonfiction book. Or that the professoriat knew all along about Steinbeck’s fabrications but didn’t want to tell us civilians. But the most recent issue of the Steinbeck Review shows just how sloppy and stupid or just plain smug and arrogant its editors (Editor-in-Chief Barbara A. Heavilin; Associate Editor Mary M. Brown and Book Review Editor Thomas E. Barden) can be. In the back SR presents a list of the “Major Steinbeck Publications of 2012–2013.” Maybe they ran out of space, but I wish the compilers had mentioned my 2013 Amazon.com e-book “Dogging Steinbeck” — or just one of several newspaper and magazine articles I wrote in 2012 about the fictional (and deceptive) nature of Steinbeck’s classic “Travels With Charley.” Steinbeck scholars dismiss “Dogging Steinbeck” for various reasons. It didn’t have a big publisher — Steinbeck and road books by unknown newspapermen don’t sell, my Madison Avenue agent was told about 30 times in 2011. It doesn’t have footnotes. It’s not an academic work. It wasn’t peer-reviewed (unless the great Brian Lamb of C-SPAN counts). But “Dogging Steinbeck” is a serious work of journalism that should interest all Steinbeck lovers/scholars, pro [...]
September 3, 2014
At Daily Caller Robert Dean Lurie gives “Dogging Steinbeck” a fair and fine review — calls author’s style ‘jocular’
In the Sept. 3 Daily Caller’s opinion piece Just The Facts: Bill Steigerwald Exposes A Great Writer’s ‘Literary Fraud’ In Dogging Steinbeck, author, musician and creative fiction practitioner Robert Dean Lurie of Arizona serves up a fair, fine and thoughtful review of my literary expose/travel book. Lurie, who also discusses the eternal fight between facts and fiction in Thoreau’s “Walden” and elsewhere, is a writer who leans toward the creative/ fiction side of creative nonfiction. He isn’t a just-gimme-the-facts kind of guy, like most career journalists. Nevertheless, Lurie says that my exhaustive — and sometimes clunky — journalism won him over. One might think, given my stated positions above, that I would be fundamentally opposed to Steigerwald’s assertion that Travels With Charley is a “literary fraud.” And, indeed, I fought that premise tooth and nail throughout much of the book, even while falling in love with Steigerwald’s jocular style, his unvarnished political opinions, and, yes, his honesty. But the wily devil wore me down in the end. The mountain of damning evidence is just too massive to ignore. When I get my first million in royalties, I’ll be sure to send Mr. Lurie and the great guys at the Daily Caller their checks. Until then, here’s a plug for his book, “No Certainty Attached.” As Publishers Weekly said … Lurie remains stridently impartial in this skillfully balanced assessment of his musical idol, Steve Kilbey, the esoterically minded front man for the Australian rock band the Church. Into his noisy myriad of interviews with Kilbey and his circle, Lurie mixes his own personal journey as a fan, musician and first-time author, offering something to both Church devotees and the uninitiated. The result is a quietly and thoughtfully structured narrative that entertains as well as informs.
August 31, 2014
Debating the one-star “reviewers” of “Dogging Steinbeck” on Amazon
“Dogging Steinbeck” – the book itself and the reviews posted by 48 readers who either loved it or hated it – really exists in only one place – at Amazon.com. I’m very protective of what is said about the book and me, so I have always made it a point to rebut or correct the “reviewers” on Amazon who mis-characterize the book’s contents or my motives. They usually one-star “Dogging Steinbeck” because they don’t like my politics, are trying to defend John Steinbeck’s tarnished honor from a nobody like me or because they feel I’ve somehow ruined the romance of all road trips by outing “Travels With Charley” as a very flawed load of fictional crap and deception. Here is the best (i.e., most lively and most informative) example of a debate on Amazon’s “Dogging Steinbeck” site between me and my detractors. It stars an unknown hero, a smart, wise and kind man named Mr. La Tour, who ably comes to my rescue. The debate started with Bob Hoffmann’s annoying 1-star review on April 30, 2013. – Bill s Steigerwald’s “Dog” of a Companion Bob Hoffmann Steigerwald sets out to re-trace Steinbeck’s famous 1960 trek “In Search of America”, and along the way to describe how he had “exposed the truth about ‘Travels with Charley’”, as the subtitle suggests. His first introductory paragraph mentions that he “… found out the great author’s iconic “nonfiction” road book was a deceptive, dishonest and highly fictionalized account of his actual 10,000-mile road trip.” Although he provides a disclaimer that “my book is subjective as hell. But it’s entirely nonfiction. True Nonfiction.” So what is “subjective non-fiction,” anyway? While Steigerwald claims that Steinbeck’s work “…was not a travelogue, not a serious work of journalism and, as I soon realized, it was not an accurate, full or reliable account of his actual road trip,” he might have taken some time to put a rear-view mirror to his own work, to recognize that he was observing his own “journalistic” work through a pair of thickly-tinted red, libertarian glasses. In between his researched and verified “facts” about Steinbeck’s actual movements, he inserts slants, biases, and attacks from his own rightist POV against the Nobelist’s admittedly Democratic affiliations. His focus on “The Truth” denies Steinbeck any “narrative license” to the original story, repetitively implying that if a particular detail isn’t fully accurate, then it must fully be a lie. My understanding, as a reader of journalistic products, is that “news” and “research” is not so simply bifurcated, and it is the writer’s role to illuminate the shadings between the real and the fantasy. Having been raised along the Missouri River divide in North Dakota, I was proud to read Steinbeck’s descriptions of my prairie homeland when the book first appeared in the early Sixties. In my own travels on the old US routes through forty-six contiguous states, mostly tenting with my Dodge Dakota, I recognize many of the character types that both authors describe. I will agree that not much has changed in a half-century (outside the metro regions), as the more recent traveler summarizes in chapter 21 – “America the Mostly Beautiful”. Yet Steigerwald’s version of the journey could have been a useful supplement to Steinbeck’s original narrative, had he dropped off the concluding four chapters. Instead, he showed that [...]
August 12, 2014
‘Dogging Steinbeck’ tells it true
Half literary expose and half American road book, “Dogging Steinbeck “is the honest and accurate account of my long journey with the great John Steinbeck and his beloved work of BS, “Travels With Charley.” It details how I stumbled on to the truth about Steinbeck’s iconic 1960 road trip with his dog Charley and how I exposed the fraudulent nature of the allegedly nonfiction book Steinbeck wrote about his journey. “Charley” is not very true or honest. It’s mostly fiction and a few lies. For only $5.99 you can learn every true thing I found out about Steinbeck’s trip, plus read about my crazy 2010 road trip on the Steinbeck Highway. My “true nonfiction” book is a multi-hybrid — literary detective story, traditional American road book, primer in drive-by journalism and how the media work. All from an openly libertarian point of view. It’s also part history lesson of 1960 America, part book review, part Steinbeck bio and part indictment of the negligence of Steinbeck scholars who failed to discover Steinbeck’s literary deceit for 50 years and then blithely excused it as inconsequential or irrelevant after I told them about it. Guess I should have included footnotes. The liberals manning the New York Times editorial page liked what I learned. So did the leftward boys at “On the Media” on NPR. So did Paul Theroux, Brian Lamb and my 96-year-old Mom. But a lot of people — especially young and/or romantic diehard “Charley” fans — don’t appreciate me for ruining the romance of Steinbeck’s flawed book. Just look at the dumb 1-star reviews on Amazon. But sorry, Steinbeckies, what I did with my humble work of journalism has changed the way “Travels With Charley” will be read forevermore. From now on, no 14-year-old who reads Steinbeck’s classic road book will be fooled into thinking it’s a true story.
July 29, 2014
Why all ‘Travels With Charley” fans should read ‘Dogging Steinbeck’
“Dogging Steinbeck,” in case you haven’t read it yet, is a new genre I’m trying to popularize called “True Nonfiction.” Half literary expose and half American road book, “Dogging Steinbeck” is the honest and accurate account of my long journey with the great John Steinbeck. It details how I discovered the truth about Steinbeck’s iconic 1960 road trip with his dog Charley and how I exposed the highly fictionalized and fraudulent nature of “Travels With Charley,” the allegedly nonfiction book Steinbeck wrote about his journey. As I explain and prove at length, “Travels With Charley” is not very true or honest. It’s mostly fiction and a few lies. My book, which I swear is 100 percent true, is a literary detective story, a traditional American road book and a primer in drive-by journalism and how the media work. It’s also part history lesson of 1960 America, part book review, part Steinbeck bio and part indictment of the negligence of Steinbeck scholars who failed to discover Steinbeck’s literary deceit for 50 years and then blithely excused it as inconsequential or irrelevant after I told them about it. Guess I should have included footnotes. The New York Times editorial page liked what I learned. So did the boys at “On the Media” on NPR. But a lot of people — especially young and/or romantic diehard “Charley” fans — don’t appreciate me for ruining the romance of Steinbeck’s book. Just look at the 1-star reviews on Amazon. But sorry, Steinbeck fans, what I did with my humble work of journalism has changed the way “Travels With Charley” will be read forever more. In the fall of 2012 the book’s publisher, Penguin Group, issued a 50th anniversary edition of “Travels With Charley” that admitted that what I had learned and exposed was right. “Charley’s” introduction, first written by Steinbeck biographer Jay Parini in 1997, from now on contains a major disclaimer warning readers that the famous book they are about to read is so full of fiction and fictional techniques that it should not be taken literally or considered to be a work of nonfiction. Parini’s disclaimer includes this stark sentence: “It should be kept in mind, when reading this travelogue, that Steinbeck took liberties with the facts, inventing freely when it served his purposes, using everything in the arsenal of the novelist to make this book a readable, vivid narrative.” I wasn’t given credit for this discovery of truth. I was identified only as a former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter who did some fact-checking. But at least from now on, no one who reads Steinbeck’s classic road book will be fooled into thinking it’s true. I hope.
