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Travels with Charley: In Search of America

John Steinbeck

4.08 · Rating details · 64,903 ratings · 4,829 reviews

A quest across America, from the northernmost tip of Maine to California’s Monterey Peninsula

To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—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 ...more

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Paperback, 214 pages

Published February 5th 2002 by Penguin (first published 1962)

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Aug 10, 2014 Jeffrey Keeten rated it really liked it

“I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation- a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any HERE. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every states I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move.”

photo 29095a40-91bf-4933-b339-aefea996521b_zps0be83509.jpg

The steed...Rocinante!

John Steinbeck was not feeling very well before he ...more

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Sep 11, 2010 karen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: roof, i-joined-a-bookclub, littry-fiction

dude, steinbeck is so much better than kerouac.

and i know that is a totally obvious statement, but if i want to read a story about a man traveling across america and describing his findings, it is going to be a man with a varied vocabulary, a keen eye for detail, and some powers of interpreting his experiences. john, i am listening...

this is my first nonfiction from steinbeck, and i am impressed with how conversational it reads. he has a real skill in making his experiences near-visible to the ...more

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Oct 19, 2017 Lori rated it did not like it

I usually enjoy fiction, but a mite cheated when I learn that a travelogue isn't. I'm sure some people enjoy the writing regardless of the misleading content. Steinbeck never went to some of the places in the book, he made up the folks that he never met and the hotels and resorts he and his wife stayed in are a bit more luxurious than the camper top on his GMC pick-up.

On the plus side, he did purchase a pick-up truck and add a camper top to it. His wife did have a poodle named Charley.

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Jun 18, 2019 Matthew rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classic, non-fiction, biography, library, audio, 2019

4 to 4.5 stars

It seems like lately I have been reading a lot of books about road trips. This is just fine with me as I love the open road! Getting some perspective on others' experiences on the highway combines road trips with my other favorite hobby . . . reading, of course!

Travels With Charlie is mid 20th century America in the words of one of the most American authors that ever was. Just a truck, a dog, and the open road. It is poetic and beautiful. It is dark and mysterious. It funny and ...more

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Jan 27, 2009 Will Byrnes rated it liked it

Shelves: nonfiction

John Steinbeck put a house on a pickup, left the wife behind in their Long Island home and traveled the nation for several months. This is his tale of that experience. I found many quotables here, and I guess one should expect that when the traveler’s name is Steinbeck. In a book of about two hundred pages, one can hardly expect a detailed look at all of America. Steinbeck picks his spots. Sometimes they work, sometimes not. It was, of necessity, merely a sketch of some parts of the country. But John Steinbeck put a house on a pickup, left the wife behind in their Long Island home and traveled the nation for several months. This is his tale of that experience. I found many quotables here, and I guess one should expect that when the traveler’s name is Steinbeck. In a book of about two hundred pages, one can hardly expect a detailed look at all of America. Steinbeck picks his spots. Sometimes they work, sometimes not. It was, of necessity, merely a sketch of some parts of the country. But some of those sketches should hang in the Louvres. Two in particular grabbed me. His description of “The Cheerleaders,” a group of women who gathered every day at a newly integrated southern elementary school to taunt and threaten the black kids and Steinbeck’s look at the culture surrounding that was chilling, a close portrait of an incendiary place at an incendiary time, and is, alone, a reason to read this book. The other was his depiction of a redwood forest in northern California, where the massive trees alter dawn and blot out the night sky.

description

Steinbeck and Charley - from the NY Times

The subtitle of the book is “In Search of America.” What travel books are really about, particularly when undertaken by a literary person, is self-discovery. It works the same as in literature. The road, the quest, the journey all exist in an interior landscape and lead to an inner destination. I did not feel that this was much at work here, and was disappointed. Steinbeck kept his eyes on the external road. Sometimes his snapshots of early 1960s America were uninteresting. Sometimes they were compelling. The compelling parts made the trip one worth taking.

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Apparently, there is some thought that not all the material in this book was actually...um...real. GR friend Jim sent along a link to a site by a guy named Bill Steigerwald, who writes about Steinbeck. Looks like he did a fair bit of research and concluded that Steinbeck's journey may have been more of an internal one than we believed. check it out. ...more

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Aug 14, 2007 Diane rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, memoirs, travelogues

I first read this book in high school, and it's what made me fall in love with travelogues. In 1960, John Steinbeck drove a small camper around the United States with his dog, Charley. He wrote that he wanted to get to know his country again, to learn more about this "new America."

"For many years I have traveled in many parts of the world. In America I live in New York, or dip into Chicago, or San Francisco. But New York is no more America than Paris is France or London is England. Thus I ...more

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Feb 25, 2012 Kim rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobook, travel

In 1960, when John Steinbeck was 58 years old, ill with the heart disease which was to kill him eight years later and rather discontented with life, he decided to embark on a road trip around the United States in a fitted-out pick-up truck, accompanied by his standard French poodle, Charley. Steinbeck’s plan was to re-connect with the America which had informed his fiction and to assess how much it had changed over the years.

This book is the result of that trip: part memoir, part travelogue,
In 1960, when John Steinbeck was 58 years old, ill with the heart disease which was to kill him eight years later and rather discontented with life, he decided to embark on a road trip around the United States in a fitted-out pick-up truck, accompanied by his standard French poodle, Charley. Steinbeck’s plan was to re-connect with the America which had informed his fiction and to assess how much it had changed over the years.

This book is the result of that trip: part memoir, part travelogue, part philosophical treatise … and part fiction. Just how much of the narrative is fiction rather than fact has been the subject of investigation and discussion in recent years, much of it instigated by the work of journalist Bill Steigerwald, who recreated Steinbeck’s trip and exposed what he argues to be the fallacies in the narrative. This article in the New York Times summarises Steigerwald’s findings and typing Steigerwald’s name into any reliable search engine will locate a range of Steigerwald’s writings on the issue, as well as some responses to his position on the book.

While I've read Steigerwald’s conclusions about Steinbeck’s journey with interest, it matters little to me that the work has been edited in such a way as to make it look like Steinbeck and Charley were travelling alone almost all the time, whereas Steinbeck’s original manuscript (held at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City) shows that Steinbeck’s wife Elaine was with him for much of the time and that he probably spent more than half the nights he was away sleeping in hotels rather than in the truck. Likewise, it matters little to me that Steinbeck’s reported conversations with people he meets on the way are fiction rather than reportage.

In relation to this, the fact that Steinbeck preserved and then donated his manuscript indicates that he was not concerned that readers might discover that there was more (or possibly less) to the journey than appears in the book. Further, the narrative itself is full of disclaimers. Steinbeck does not claim that the book is a day-by-day, diary-style account of his journey. Rather, what he conveys is a range of impressions on a number of topics, some insights into issues he considered important and some at times painful self-reflection, all conveyed in Steinbeck’s powerful yet accessible prose. On some matters Steinbeck was ahead of his time. For example, what he wrote about the destruction of the environment and the overuse of packaging products (“The mountain of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use.”), expressed what I doubt was a matter of widespread public concern as early as 1960.

Other parts of the narrative are much more personal. Steinbeck’s encounter with old Latino drinking buddies in a bar in Monterey is particularly poignant. As Steinbeck’s friend tries to persuade the New York resident to come “home”, Steinbeck names all of their friends who have died and concludes that Thomas Wolfe was right: “You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory."

Possibly the most powerful incident in the book is Steinbeck’s witnessing of the “cheerleaders” in New Orleans – a group of women who stood across the street from William Frantz Elementary school and yelled obscenities at Ruby Bridges - the first black child to attend the all-white school - and at the few white parents who did not comply with the white boycott of the school. Ruby, who had started at the school only a week or two before Steinbeck was in New Orleans, was escorted to school by federal marshalls. Her ordeal is recorded in this painting by Norman Rockwell.

Shortly after witnessing the behaviour of the cheerleaders, Steinbeck decided to cut his journey short and head straight back to New York City. The narrative gives the strong impression that the incident left him heart-sick and distressed.

Overall, whatever may be this book’s shortcomings as a piece of travel reportage, it's a moving and engaging piece of writing. Steinbeck had become rather a cranky old man by the time he embarked on the journey, and was an even crankier old man by time he finished it. He was certainly no longer the novelist at the peak of his powers. But there’s still passion, warmth and humour in his words and plenty for the reader who loves Steinbeck’s writing to engage with. And there's Charley. Charley is wonderful.
...more

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Jun 05, 2007 Cheri rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

My father bought me this book when I was probably about eight years old, and I read it quickly and fell in love with it. One day (now that I've thought of it, probably sooner than later) I'll reread it, but for now I'm content believing I would still find it a good read.

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Sep 22, 2010 Jason Koivu rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

Goddamn it! I've driven coast to coast across the U.S. fives times already and yet, thanks to Travels with Charley I'm ready to go again!

During the mid-century period, discovering America and/or oneself through the medium of the road-trip came into vogue. While other prominent authors, such as Kerouac and Thompson, were publishing their own, more heralded versions, I prefer Steinbeck's. It lacks the hedonism of the others and I love him for that. And furthermore, these journals often get ...more

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Apr 27, 2018 J.L. Sutton rated it liked it

In Travels with Charley: In Search of America, John Steinbeck provides an entertaining and wry account of his observations as he road trips with his poodle in what essentially becomes his house on wheels, Rocinante. I'm a big fan of Steinbeck's work (I really like what I see as his sympathetic treatment of quirky and damaged characters in novels like Cannery Row and Tortilla Flats). I also remember enjoying Travels with Charley (at least the few chapters of it which I read while I was in high ...more

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Oct 27, 2010 K.D. Absolutely rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 501 Must Read Books (Memoirs)

Shelves: travel, memoirs, nobel, 501

Six years before he died, John Steinbeck (1902-1968) had a lonesome trip aboard a camper named Rocinante (after Don Quixote’s horse) around the USA. He said that he would like to see this country on a personal level before he died as he made a good living writing about it. Considering his heart condition, such trip alone could have been disastrous to his health but he insisted. The main question that he would like to be answered was “What are Americans like today?” and after travelling with his Six years before he died, John Steinbeck (1902-1968) had a lonesome trip aboard a camper named Rocinante (after Don Quixote’s horse) around the USA. He said that he would like to see this country on a personal level before he died as he made a good living writing about it. Considering his heart condition, such trip alone could have been disastrous to his health but he insisted. The main question that he would like to be answered was “What are Americans like today?” and after travelling with his poodle Charley for around 10,000 miles for 3 months, he did not like the answer that he got.

He saw the wastefulness of the people. He got worried about excessive packaging that consumers liked. He noticed the ambiguity of culture brought about my mass media technologies. Advancement in technologies, though giving people instant gratification, could alienate members of the families from each other. He met people who could not be trusted even by giving the right direction. He met poor migrant potato pickers from Canada (that reminded me of the Joads family in his opus, The Grapes of Wrath). He finally saw Niagara Falls that made him happy because finally we could say we saw it already. He met unreasonable and illogical border authorities. He saw how people in different states differ on how they talk to one another and treat other people. For example, in New England people spoke very little and waited for him to come over while in Midwestern cities, people were more outgoing and did not hesitate approaching him. He got amazed on how fast the population grew in those states that he had visited before. When he visited Sauk Centre because he would like to see the birthplace of his favorite writer, Sinclair Lewis he got disheartened. A waitress in the restaurant did not know who Lewis was. In fact, ignorance, according to him, was prevalent in most people he encountered particularly in politics, economics and culture. In Texas, he despised the so-called “Cheerleaders” who were protesting the integration of black children in a school in New Orleans. In New Orleans, he learned that racism of the South was not confined with those towards blacks but also towards Jews. The trip ended with Steinbeck missing a U-turn and telling the policeman: “Officer, I’ve driven this thing all over the country – mountains, plains, deserts. And now I’m back in my own town, where I live – and I’m lost.”

This is my 3rd book by Steinbeck and for me this is the most down-to-earth. Although I have only been to California, Philadelphia, Texas and Ohio, visualizing those places he visited and conversations that he had with the people he met was not a problem. I used to enjoy watching American movies in the 50’s and 60’s and I was able to picture those scenes in my mind. Also, I think Steinbeck wanted to have a last hand long look with the people he wrote about in his novels that made him who he was – one of the greatest American authors (and certainly one of my favorite novelists of all times). So what if he had a heart problem? So what if he was alone with just a dog to talk to? So what if there was a raging snow storm outside? So what if he might be killed by dangerous mad men in the forests and highways? The thought of Steinbeck risking his life to be able to see the country for the last time and talk to the people who patronized his novels was a marked of a good artist or, simply, a good humble man.

And oh yes, if you love reading about dogs, read this because Charley could even talk. Steinbeck imagined words being said by his dog in one of the scenes and their dialogues were so clever and amusing. Steinbeck could write anything. He could make any scenario believable. Enough for me to gasp for air as his words were always outrageously breathtaking.
...more

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Dec 14, 2017 Sara rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, memoir, borrowed-from-library, travel

A nice way to travel 1960s America again is to hop into a camper truck with John Steinbeck and his dog, Charley. Plagued by a chronic disease and probably feeling like it was now or never, Mr. Steinbeck hit the road from his home in Sag Harbor and traveled across the states and back again, making astute observations as he went and sharing a bit of the flavor of America in this moment of great upheaval and change.

I was afraid this might be boring, like watching someone else’s home movies (no A nice way to travel 1960s America again is to hop into a camper truck with John Steinbeck and his dog, Charley. Plagued by a chronic disease and probably feeling like it was now or never, Mr. Steinbeck hit the road from his home in Sag Harbor and traveled across the states and back again, making astute observations as he went and sharing a bit of the flavor of America in this moment of great upheaval and change.

I was afraid this might be boring, like watching someone else’s home movies (no matter how stunning the scenery, we just don’t want to see you posed in front of it over and over again). I should have had no fear, since this was not your everyday traveler, this was John Steinbeck. His powers of observation are acute and he knows how to render them into a free-flowing conversation with his reader. I felt he was pretty even-handed in his observations as well, even though his trek through the 1960s south made me cringe with shame. He notes that as an outsider his encounters might not be a true representation of the people, and I think he is right because he intentionally sought out the ugliest kind of setting to observe them in, but then he didn’t make up the setting or the people he saw, they were there and, while not speaking for everyone, they certainly spoke for far too many.

One of my favorite parts of the book was his visit to his own home turf around Salinas, California. As he prepared to leave, he says, ”I printed it once more on my eyes, south, west, and north, and then we hurried away from the permanent and changeless past where my mother is always shooting a wildcat and my father is always burning his name with his love.”

I know this feeling all too well. You can hardly visit the place of your youth with a clear and unprejudiced eye, for the past is always there coloring it a much rosier color than it actually is. That is alright, that is part of life. We are meant to feel it.

I am glad I finally got around to making this trip with one of my favorite authors. It made me feel that I would have liked the man as much as I like his work.
...more

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May 31, 2008 Grip Dellabonte rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: people who enjoy Steinbeck, travelogues, standard size poodles!

Recommended to Grip by: No one recommended this book to me

I hadn't expected to enjoy this book as much as I did. It was my first travelogue, and I only read it because, a) I was bored and b)I figured I couldn't go wrong with Steinbeck - a writer I already enjoyed reading (still do).

But I have a wicked streak of wanderlust in me, too, and Steinbeck really caught me at a good time. It was Summertime, and I was already in a daydream-y mood. That mood lasted all through the book.

I managed to get through the whole trip with the cranky writer, and he was ...more

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May 02, 2013 Julie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-non-fiction, favorite-books, year-of-the-dog

I came across this dusty hardcover at an estate sale last month. This particular edition from 1962 offered a crisp, weathered cover and an inviting sketch of a man, a dog and a truck.

I hopped on board.

This is Steinbeck, but not the Steinbeck of fiction, the one who stands behind his creations and his delicious use of silence and space. This is Steinbeck the man.

Turns out that Steinbeck the man, here recorded for all time, in his late fifties was a bit depressed, recently diagnosed as being on ...more

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Nov 18, 2016 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it really liked it

Shelves: read2016, audiobook, travel, creative-non-fiction

I read the Steinbeck trifecta in junior high and highschool - The Red Pony, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath. Since that time, graduating 20 years ago, I have not read Steinbeck again. I bought this book to read on a train trip I had planned in California, since I knew that Steinbeck's father was a train man and that he grew up in California. Since that trip was cancelled the book has lingered on my shelf at home, long enough for me to forget I had it. So when the audio version of the I read the Steinbeck trifecta in junior high and highschool - The Red Pony, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath. Since that time, graduating 20 years ago, I have not read Steinbeck again. I bought this book to read on a train trip I had planned in California, since I knew that Steinbeck's father was a train man and that he grew up in California. Since that trip was cancelled the book has lingered on my shelf at home, long enough for me to forget I had it. So when the audio version of the book came up on a BOGO sale in Audible, narrated by Gary Sinise, I bought it without checking. Ah well, the audio was great. The book will be nice to refer back to. Win/win.

Steinbeck reminds me of Orwell in his non-fiction writing. Talking to individuals and writing about their experiences, focusing on people in rural areas living their everyday lives. He is traveling the country with his dog Charley in 1960, from Maine to Wisconsin to Oregon to California to Texas to the south. The world is getting ready to change and there is this feeling of the "last times" of whatever we can call the years before the president and MLK Jr are assassinated, before the Civil Rights Movement. The chapters in the south are particularly insightful and painful to read.

A few broad comments on travel that I liked:

"I felt at last that my journey had started; I think I hadn't really believed in it before."

"We know so little of our own geography." (Maine)

"It is possible, even probable, to be told a truth about a place, to accept it, to know it, and at the same time, to not know anything about it... Why then was I unprepared for the beauty of this region?" (Wisconsin)

"For all of our enormous geographic range, for all of our sectionalism... we are a nation."

I need to read more Steinbeck. Between his literature classics everyone studies in school and his non-fiction works like this one, he wrote several novels that I have never read. The main one I think of is East of Eden, which I also have bought and left on a shelf. I used to think I disliked him, but what I disliked as a child are traits that make me appreciate him now. His descriptiveness, his straightforward nature, his tone. I was jarred by it at age 12. I didn't realize that was a sign of growth. ...more

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Jan 28, 2014 Joe Valdez rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: memoirs

My dip into the fiction of John Steinbeck turned into a journey, with East of Eden, Cannery Row, Tortilla Flat, The Winter of Our Discontent, The Grapes of Wrath and Sweet Thursday. It seemed appropriate to end my tour on Travels with Charley, the author's memoir of a circuitous road trip of the United States he began in September 1960 with his French poodle, Charley.

Steinbeck's account begins at his home on Long Island, New York. Getting on in years, he realizes he's been writing about a ...more

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Feb 28, 2013 Maciek rated it really liked it

Shelves: travelogue, reviewed, non-fiction, read-in-2013

Eight years before a lifelong smoking habit finally killed his heart, John Steinbeck embarked on one last road trip across the United States. Steinbeck desired to see the country he described all his life with his own eyes - "to look again, rediscover this monster land", become reacquainted with its people. His sole companion would be Charley, a French standard poodle. Together they would board the Rocinante - Steinbeck's truck named after the horse of Don Quixote - and go and try to understand ...more

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Mar 02, 2008 Chicklit rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: people who don't like "classics"

Recommended to Chicklit by: book group

Shelves: book_group_selection, 2008

I have a feeling that if I had read Travels with Charley back in high school instead of The Grapes of Wrath or even Of Mice and Men, I would have actually liked Steinbeck rather than merely appreciated him.

Part of my Steinbeck indifference was obviously influenced by my teenage attitude. At 15 there were other things I'd much rather have been doing than reading novels about the great depression. Also, I had that "what does this have to do with me" attitude I saw so frequently while trying to ...more

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Feb 10, 2015 Barbara rated it it was amazing

Shelves: memoirs, travel, 2015-reads

Although I read this book just last year, it was a delight to read again. I think I was struck by different aspects of the book the second time around. This time I realized just how much time Steinbeck spent describing his experiences of racism in the South. I imagine this caused some waves back in the early 1960's when the book was published, before the passage of the Civil Rights Act. But we should expect nothing less from Steinbeck, the champion of the oppressed, and chronicler of the lives ...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Carol rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, read-2014, non-fiction, travel

REALLY enjoyed this eventful journey thru 40 States with Mr. Steinbeck and his dog Charley. The adventure begins in September 1960 with Hurricane Donna before he even leaves home and ends with a historic snowstorm, but everything in the middle is pretty darn good too!

The story is written with humor, but with a profound sadness to it (perhaps due to Mr. Steinbeck's declining health) and whether the novel is truly fact or just fiction is unimportant to me as I found it an insightful and

...more

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Sep 15, 2016 Jon Nakapalau rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, travel, classics

How often I have wished to do this: just get on the road and head off for destinations unknown. Searching for America John Steinbeck also finds out more about himself - via the intersection of "Examined Life" avenue and "Socratic" lane.

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Apr 01, 2014 Christopher rated it really liked it

Shelves: 20th-century, memoir, non-fiction, audiobooks, american, classics

What is there not to love about a travelogue featuring John Steinbeck and his French poodle Charley? Look at them, they're best friends:

And check out the awesome Rocinante (named after Don Quixote's horse), a custom-made camper truck that carried them around America:

This is the route they took that I'd love to retrace someday:

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Aug 09, 2017 Mike rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir, reviewed, classics

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.

I liked the idea that inspired this book: John Steinbeck, great American writer, decides to set off on a cross country exploration of America, a country he became

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.

I liked the idea that inspired this book: John Steinbeck, great American writer, decides to set off on a cross country exploration of America, a country he became acclaimed for writing about after fearing he has lost touch with his roots. So he sets out with his faithful poodle Charley to rediscover America.

He decides that his quest will eschew the big cities of America.

But New York is no more America than Paris is France or London is England. Thus I discovered that I did not know my own country. I, an American writer, writing about America, was working form memory, and memory is at best a faulty, warpy reservoir. I had not hard the speech of America, smelled the grass and trees and sewage, seen its hills and water, its color and quality of light. I knew the changes only from books and newspapers. But more than this, I had not felt the country for twenty-five years. In short, I was writing of something I did not know about, and it seems to me that in a so-called writer this is criminal.

So this titan of American literature sets out in the fall of 1960 to rediscover America. He relates his travels both through his observations of the countryside and society ("The rivers were full of logs, bank to bank for miles, waiting their turn at the abattoir to give their woody hearts so that the bulwarks of our civilization such as Time magazine and the Daily News can survive, to defend us against ignorance.") as well as through the interactions he has with the people he meets ("...Why I remember when people took everything out on Mr. Roosevelt. Andy Larsen got red in the face about Roosevelt one time when his hens got the croup. Yes, sir," he said with growing enthusiasm, "those Russians got quite a load to carry. Man has a fight with his wife, he belts the Russians." "Maybe everyone needs Russians. I'll bet even in Russia they need Russians. Maybe they call it Americans.").

Steinbeck's travels took him all across America:

description

But as a whole this book felt a bit hollow to me. The meat of this book was Steinbeck's ruminations on such things as memory, the loss of regional dialects ("I can remember a time when I could almost pinpoint a man's place of origin by his speech. that is growing more difficult now and will in some foreseeable future become impossible. It is a rare house or building that is not rigged with spiky combers of the air. Radio and television speech becomes standardized, perhaps better English than we have ever used. Just as our bread, mixed and baked, packaged and sold without benefit of accident of human faility, is uniformly good and uniformly tasteless, so will our speech become one speech."), the future promise of mobile homes (I kid you not), and very little of hearing from the citizens he comes across. And even then the conversations he relates were more composites of conversations he had then actual, word for word, transcriptions of reality.

This book struck me as a vehicle for Steinbeck to reflect on what he experienced and how it affected him instead of relaying the facts of his journey. And that is fine, the man is a novelist, not a stenographer. But I felt this choice but him front and center instead of the America he ostensibly set out to discover. What should have been the core of the book was small and diminished, more an afterthought than a quest.

But Steinbeck does have a wonderful way of putting things and sharing his observations of the country or countryside:

As I was not prepared for the Missouri boundary, so I was not prepared for the Bad Lands. They deserve this name. They are the world of an evil child. Such a place the Fallen Angels might have built as a spite to Heaven, dry and sharp, desolate and dangerous, and for me filled with foreboding. A sense comes from it that it does not like or welcome humans.

~~~

Beyond my failings as a racist, I knew I was not wanted in the South. When people are engaged in something they are not proud of, they do not welcome witnesses. In fact, they come to believe the witness causes the trouble.

~~~

The place of my origin had changed, and having gone away I had not changed with it. In my memory it stood as it once did and its outward appearance confused and angered me...Tom Wolf was right. You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.

I think the most interesting part of his journey was when he traveled through the South. Specifically New Orleans, where Steinbeck traveled to witness The Cheerleaders, a repugnant group of people as I have ever read about. These were a group of women who would hurl invective and racial slurs at very young African-American children who were desegregating New Orleans schools:
They wanted to be admired. They simpered in happy, almost innocent triumph when they were applauded. Theirs was the demented cruelty of egocentric children, and somehow this made their insensate beastliness much more heart-breaking. These were not mothers, not even women. they were crazy actors playing to a crazy audience.
His entire experience with the South was somewhat interesting and probably the only part of the book that maintained cohesion throughout the section. Generally though the book was meandering and never really fulfilled the promise of the premise in my opinion. The wiritng did, however, make me more interested in checking out his novels (of which I have not read any). ...more

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Mar 18, 2012 Sarah rated it it was amazing

Shelves: memoirish, favorite-authors

You know how the heroes of westerns and comic books and adventures are always good men? My dad likes that kind of story where the moral is, "nothing is better than a good man!" He is the type that thinks a "man" just lives the best way he can! He loves legends and spooky tales and always made himself the hero. He told us, my friends and me, that he once saved his whole platoon by jumping on a grenade, and we believed him, though he never served in the military.

So how can I not give five stars ...more

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Nov 29, 2014 Paul rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-read-2015

Filled by a desire to see his country one more time, John Steinbeck has a truck modified to be a camper. Named Rocinante, after Don Quixote's horse, and equipping it with guns, books and other essential items, not forgetting Charley his dog, he sets off on his journey.

His 10,000 mile journey takes him on a circular route around the country, starting in the north east, he travels across to the Pacific, down to California, along to Texas and the deep south and back up to New York. On his trip he ...more

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Aug 28, 2018 Roy Lotz rated it really liked it

Shelves: americana, biography-memoir-travel

In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.

This little volume must rank as one of the great American travel books—though I am not quite sure what that means. Travel literature, by its nature, finds itself in a paradoxical position: to search for truth by becoming briefly acquainted with a wide and disconnected series of experiences. Steinbeck addresses this in his opening salvo: “So it was I decided to look again, to try to rediscover this monster land. Otherwise, in writing, I could not tell the small diagnostic truths which are the foundations of the large truth.” But the riddle is to figure out which truths are diagnostic and which distractions. Steinbeck seems later to have thrown up his hands in despair at the prospect, as he retreats into subjectivism: “I feel that there are too many realities. What I set down here is true until someone else passes that way and rearranges the world in his own style.”

Yet if the cliché is true, and the journey is more important than the destination, then Steinbeck’s search for America is more important than what he finds. That sounds reassuring, at least. In any case, the search is a pleasure to read. Steinbeck presents himself as an aging everyman, puttering about with his poodle and his camper, making small-talk with locals, sampling diner breakfasts, and getting lost on country roads. Very little of consequence happens; nothing much is discovered that the fifty-eight year old author did not already know; and it is lovely to read about. True, Steinbeck could, and did, narrate a fly buzzing around a dirty kitchen and turn it into poetry; but his writerly skill is not the only virtue this book possesses.

The book’s most consistent note is that of resigned obsolescence. Steinbeck looks upon the country—one which he once knew so deeply that he created its most representative novels—and finds it unfamiliar. He is past his prime, and knows it; and, more impressively, accepts it. He was writing in the wake of On the Road, another iconic travel book; and though Steinbeck’s work is far more mature and, I think, much better written, it nevertheless fails to capture the ethos of the time in the way Kerouac or, indeed, the younger Steinbeck was able to do. I am not saying this in criticism, but in admiration, since Steinbeck still managed to create a classic book. Like any great artist, he found the great universal in his tiny particular; and he transformed his sense of being out of touch into a great sighing comment on his changing country.

Now, of course much of this book isn’t true. All novelists are born and bred liars. But it sounds true enough, and that is all I want from a travel book. ...more

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Feb 24, 2009 Seana rated it really liked it

Man, this book came so exactly at the right time in my life. I think I was about thirteen or fourteen. I went back to the ancestral home in Illinois, and my cousins were getting rid of some books. One of them was Travels With Charley. I read it while we were driving back home. I think I made my family's life a living hell by comparing them constantly to Steinbeck and Charlie's trip across the country. Oh, well. Sometimes the families of readers have to suffer.

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Aug 11, 2012 Chrissie rated it really liked it

Shelves: bio, audible, usa, travel

Gosh, there are so many good reviews here to read, why should I add my two cents?

While I was reading it, I found it interesting, insightful, humorous and sad. Now that is a wide range of emotions captured in a small book.

A question that always arises is: how much of this is true and how much is imagined? There is a simple answer to this. Steinbeck points out that no two people will see the same event with the same eyes. What you see depends upon who you are. This is what Steinbeck saw and Gosh, there are so many good reviews here to read, why should I add my two cents?

While I was reading it, I found it interesting, insightful, humorous and sad. Now that is a wide range of emotions captured in a small book.

A question that always arises is: how much of this is true and how much is imagined? There is a simple answer to this. Steinbeck points out that no two people will see the same event with the same eyes. What you see depends upon who you are. This is what Steinbeck saw and experienced, and he may even have juggled the facts to fit what he wanted to have said by this book. It is said that his wife he was then married to, Elaine, was there with him for much of the trip. It was not just a trip shared by a man of 58 with his "blue" French Poodle, Charley. They were a threesome. In 1960 he traveled 10,000 miles in his converted truck, which he fondly named Rocinante after Don Quixote’s horse, across America from Sag Harbor, N.Y., to the West Coast and back to find out who were these Americans that he peopled his novels with. Who were they today, and by that I mean 1960? What makes an American an American? Is there something that binds the New Englanders with those of the Midwest and Texans and those of the Deep South? And how are people from these different areas different? He is curious about all of this and about what he values in life, be it a dog, a sparkling brook with the rings of a trout's last jump or a good drink. He sees the the garbage cluttering the ever-expanding cities and small streams. He looks at the climate of racial unrest that was building. Primarily he looks at and tries to talk to the people he meets, although he was lucky if he got even a few "yeps" out of New Englanders in the early hours. Mobile homes, and the beauty of Montana, the dry desert, a kind vet, and a bad one - they are all here. But do remember that what you see is through Steinbeck's eyes. Steinbeck died eight years later from a heart attack.

I like Steinbeck's manner of expressing himself, but I also appreciate his insights, his views and what he is thinking about.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Peter Marinker. Very well done!

Now I am going to do something naughty. I have already begun listening to Songdogs, written by Colum McCann and narrated by Paul Nugent. One shouldn't compare writing skills, but in both books a picture is drawn of a man standing there in his Wellingtons, and in both there is that stream cluttered with garbage. McCann's depiction just sings. It is gorgeous. It is stupendous. How can I not make a comparison when the same "picture" is there in both books, and yet they are not at all the same, and I know which one I prefer? I am still giving “Charley” four stars because while I was reading it I really liked it! ...more

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Oct 13, 2016 Luís C. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: animals, travel, livros-do-brasil, from-my-father, biography, reading-the-world, 20th-century, us-canada-author

When I chose this title of Steinbeck to the bookstore, I did not knew exactly what I expect, not knowing the title. But I imagined a journey across a large part of United States, many meetings and a kind of report on the 1960's America. Somewhat a journalist's book. In fact over the eleven weeks Steinbeck toured the USA. If there are meetings, often over a bottle, they do not learn much about the region in which they take place. Except perhaps in the South. Let us recall that he'd voyaged in ...more

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Feb 13, 2015 Connie G rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: autobiography-memoir, non-fiction, book-club, travel

John Steinbeck took a road trip around the United States in the fall of 1960 "to try to rediscover this monster land." He bought a pick-up truck with a camper top, and named it Rocinante (after Don Quixote's horse). Charley, an older large French poodle, was Steinbeck's traveling companion. Charley served as an ice-breaker, making it easier for Steinbeck to meet strangers. Steinbeck had a chronic illness at the time of his trip, and Charley had his own set of veterinary problems, but they John Steinbeck took a road trip around the United States in the fall of 1960 "to try to rediscover this monster land." He bought a pick-up truck with a camper top, and named it Rocinante (after Don Quixote's horse). Charley, an older large French poodle, was Steinbeck's traveling companion. Charley served as an ice-breaker, making it easier for Steinbeck to meet strangers. Steinbeck had a chronic illness at the time of his trip, and Charley had his own set of veterinary problems, but they offered emotional support to each other. Charley also added some humor to the story, such as when he turned into a vicious barking beast when he spotted and smelled the bears in Yellowstone Park.

Steinbeck tried to talk to the "everyman" during his journey--farmers, migrant workers, and waitresses--to take the pulse of the country. Although Steinbeck has associated with many famous people, he has never forgotten his humble roots as a dock worker. As one who has lived through the 1960s, I felt that he gave a true sense of the era. He traveled through the Northeast, then took a northern route to the west coast, then headed home by taking a southern route eastward.

The most awe-inspiring stop on his journey was at a forest of majestic redwoods. The most upsetting incident was in New Orleans where a group of women (called the Cheerleaders) shouted racist comments at small black children walking to their recently integrated school. His visit to a bar in his hometown in California showed that you really can't go home again after an absence of many years--people change and the town changes.

Steinbeck got lost quite often during his trip. He seemed to suggest that America was also getting lost as the population moved from the country to the city to work in industry. He was concerned about damage to the environment as factories, garbage dumps, and interstate highways ringed the cities.

There has been some controversy about the accuracy of Steinbeck's tale, especially in journalist Bill steigerwald's book, "Dogging Steinbeck". Steinbeck did not camp out as often as his book relates, his wife flew out to meet him quite often during the trip, and his conversations with people seem to often be composites of several people. That really did not bother me since I find that most travel books give the flavor of a location, and are not a day-to-day diary. I can also understand why Steinbeck would be spending many nights in motels, considering his poor health. I enjoyed the hours I spent with Steinbeck and Charley on the road. ...more

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About John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck

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John Steinbeck III was an American writer. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939 and the novella Of Mice and Men, published in 1937. In all, he wrote twenty-five books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and several collections of short stories.

In 1962 Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Steinbeck grew up in the Salinas Valley John Steinbeck III was an American writer. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939 and the novella Of Mice and Men, published in 1937. In all, he wrote twenty-five books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and several collections of short stories.

In 1962 Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Steinbeck grew up in the Salinas Valley region of California, a culturally diverse place of rich migratory and immigrant history. This upbringing imparted a regionalistic flavor to his writing, giving many of his works a distinct sense of place.

Steinbeck moved briefly to New York City, but soon returned home to California to begin his career as a writer. Most of his earlier work dealt with subjects familiar to him from his formative years. An exception was his first novel Cup of Gold which concerns the pirate Henry Morgan, whose adventures had captured Steinbeck's imagination as a child.

In his subsequent novels, Steinbeck found a more authentic voice by drawing upon direct memories of his life in California. Later he used real historical conditions and events in the first half of 20th century America, which he had experienced first-hand as a reporter.

Steinbeck often populated his stories with struggling characters; his works examined the lives of the working class and migrant workers during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. His later body of work reflected his wide range of interests, including marine biology, politics, religion, history, and mythology.

One of his last published works was Travels with Charley, a travelogue of a road trip he took in 1960 to rediscover America. He died in 1968 in New York of a heart attack and his ashes are interred in Salinas.

Seventeen of his works, including The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Cannery Row (1945), The Pearl (1947), and East of Eden (1952), went on to become Hollywood films, and Steinbeck also achieved success as a Hollywood writer, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Story in 1944 for Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat. ...more