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jennifer_mangieri 's review for:
Travels with Charley in Search of America
by John Steinbeck
I want to marry John Steinbeck & have his babies. That's how much I loved this book. Yeah yeah, I know he's dead, but in my universe he's alive so I can sit down & chat with John & his gentleman poodle, Charley, in a camper/truck named Rocinante, and drink coffee with whiskey in it - & look at the scenery & talk about everything & nothing.
If you want to find out what America was like in 1962, this is your book. Steinbeck crosses what he calls the “great hives of production” – and then he mentions Youngstown, Cleveland, Akron, Pontiac and Flint. He makes friends with a man who starts off by accusing him of trespassing, & sits down for a drink with him. Throughout the book, for the most part Steinbeck talks to people he meets, finds commonality, & makes friends even with people who obviously disagree with his point of view. I wonder if that could even happen now?
I love John because he ruminates on the emotional state of his dog, without being maudlin. He hates sterilized hotel rooms where everything is covered in plastic. He gets lost, frequently but hilariously. He meets people who live full-time in RVs & is fascinated by them. He loves finding and listening to “regional speech,” which he realizes is going away. He imagines a man named Lonesome Harry who once stayed in a hotel room in Chicago. He doesn’t shoot coyotes.
I live in Oregon, & just about bust a gut laughing at this, written after John gets a flat tire on an Oregon highway. “It was obvious that the other tire might go at any moment, and it was raining and it was Sunday and it was Oregon. If the other tire blew, there we were, on a wet and lonesome road, having no recourse except to burst into tears and wait for death. And perhaps some kind birds might cover us with leaves.” That’s about the best description of any Oregon day that I’ve ever read!
Warning, there’s lots of use of “the n word” in this book – because it was used for real in the South in 1962 – and John doesn’t like the state of mind among the less educated southerners one bit. He writes that the way some whites treat blacks in the south raises a “weary, hopeless nausea” in him, & he’s not even a little bit funny about it, so all the gentle comedy of the book goes into hiding during this section. Again, I loved the book even more because Steinbeck didn’t try to soften the rough edges.
So if I ever decide to wander the countryside in a camper van, I’ll try to keep a full coffeepot & a bottle of whiskey, along with an open mind. Thank you, John & Charley!
If you want to find out what America was like in 1962, this is your book. Steinbeck crosses what he calls the “great hives of production” – and then he mentions Youngstown, Cleveland, Akron, Pontiac and Flint. He makes friends with a man who starts off by accusing him of trespassing, & sits down for a drink with him. Throughout the book, for the most part Steinbeck talks to people he meets, finds commonality, & makes friends even with people who obviously disagree with his point of view. I wonder if that could even happen now?
I love John because he ruminates on the emotional state of his dog, without being maudlin. He hates sterilized hotel rooms where everything is covered in plastic. He gets lost, frequently but hilariously. He meets people who live full-time in RVs & is fascinated by them. He loves finding and listening to “regional speech,” which he realizes is going away. He imagines a man named Lonesome Harry who once stayed in a hotel room in Chicago. He doesn’t shoot coyotes.
I live in Oregon, & just about bust a gut laughing at this, written after John gets a flat tire on an Oregon highway. “It was obvious that the other tire might go at any moment, and it was raining and it was Sunday and it was Oregon. If the other tire blew, there we were, on a wet and lonesome road, having no recourse except to burst into tears and wait for death. And perhaps some kind birds might cover us with leaves.” That’s about the best description of any Oregon day that I’ve ever read!
Warning, there’s lots of use of “the n word” in this book – because it was used for real in the South in 1962 – and John doesn’t like the state of mind among the less educated southerners one bit. He writes that the way some whites treat blacks in the south raises a “weary, hopeless nausea” in him, & he’s not even a little bit funny about it, so all the gentle comedy of the book goes into hiding during this section. Again, I loved the book even more because Steinbeck didn’t try to soften the rough edges.
So if I ever decide to wander the countryside in a camper van, I’ll try to keep a full coffeepot & a bottle of whiskey, along with an open mind. Thank you, John & Charley!