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A review by emilyconstance
Travels with Charley in Search of America: (penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by John Steinbeck
5.0
I felt that this book held true to a journey that anyone would take. You either set off with preconceptions or intentionally shake them off hoping to head into your journey with an open, empty mind...but either way it's always the most minute observations, mundane, almost subconscious details that lead to paradigm shifts in perspective: "we do not take a trip; a trip takes us."
Some legs of the journey are lived more externally or sensorily than others, which are experienced as daydreams, deep dives into memory, or glimpses of the future. When trying to capture or record your trip, you always start off strong at the start, remembering and relishing every detail; but by the end, you're no longer seeing, and rush to the trip's conclusion, just as you sometimes do as readers, whereas the opposite can also happen for both, in which you want them never to end.
this book, a "search for america" comes to no conclusion, except for the fact that there can never be a concrete answer to the question of america—or any place for that matter. reality is not so fixed as we like to believe.
Some legs of the journey are lived more externally or sensorily than others, which are experienced as daydreams, deep dives into memory, or glimpses of the future. When trying to capture or record your trip, you always start off strong at the start, remembering and relishing every detail; but by the end, you're no longer seeing, and rush to the trip's conclusion, just as you sometimes do as readers, whereas the opposite can also happen for both, in which you want them never to end.
this book, a "search for america" comes to no conclusion, except for the fact that there can never be a concrete answer to the question of america—or any place for that matter. reality is not so fixed as we like to believe.