ewkilgore 's review for:

Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck

4.0

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Once in a while you come across a statement, a quote, a quip, from a writer with whom you have only ever read their "fiction" and suddenly you understand why you like their body of work. Such is the case with Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley." Steinbeck writes with perception and precision that plumbs the depths of the American psyche and reveals much, not about America, but about himself, about how he moves through the world or how the world moves around him. Time and again I found myself nodding and saying "Yes. I feel that way." And if my acknowledgment of the truth in these statements, nearly 50 years old, bears anything, it is that my love of Steinbeck is rooted in a similar world view. There are, however, several predictions Steinbeck makes on the future of America, while he rolls across its vastness, and it is remarkable how right he was, how much he saw would come before it actually did: the loss of regional dialects, the ease of travel on "super highways" which allow us to criss-cross the country but never see it, etc. If I had any doubt about Steinbeck, and I do mean if, then this short book has removed that doubt and I am inclined to read the remainder of Steinbeck's cannon, even the texts that I read years ago but have since faded from my memory. What a treasure he was, and a lover of dogs to boot.