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.
