A Rough Edges Rerun: Travels With Charley - John Steinbeck

Before Captain America and Billy did it in the movie EASY RIDER, before Green Lantern and Green Arrow did it in the comic books, author John Steinbeck and a ten-year-old poodle named Charley set off in the fall of 1960 in search of America. Appropriately enough, that’s the subtitle of the resulting book, TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY: IN SEARCH OF AMERICA.

When I was a junior in high school, a friend and I went through a pseudo-intellectual phase, as sixteen-year-old boys will sometimes do. We read and discussed Hemingway and Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and God knows what else. If our parents would have let us get away with it, we probably would have smoked pipes and worn jackets with leather patches on the elbows. It’s a wonder we didn’t choke on our own pretentiousness. But we actually did read some good books and discover some good authors along the way, among them John Steinbeck. Two of Steinbeck’s books stand out in my memory: the novel THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT and the memoir TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY. I liked a lot of his other novels, too, most notably CUP OF GOLD, TORTILLA FLAT, and OF MICE AND MEN. I was less fond of THE GRAPES OF WRATH and EAST OF EDEN, even though those two are probably his most popular novels. It’s been more than forty years since I read TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY, so I decided to see how well it holds up.

I’m happy to report that it holds up very well indeed. Steinbeck writes beautifully about nature and the places he visits and the people he meets. His social and political observations are always interesting, although this time around I did notice an occasional touch of smug superiority about his comments that I didn’t recall from my first reading of the book. It’s not enough to really cause a problem, though.

The best part of TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY is the relationship between Steinbeck and Charley, who becomes as vivid a character as any in the book. When Charley develops medical problems and you don’t know what the outcome will be, there’s genuine suspense. As some of you know, I’m a dog person, and Charley’s a great dog.

It’s nice to know that this is as fine a book as I remember it being. Now, will I go back and reread THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT or some of Steinbeck’s other novels and see if they hold up as well? It could happen.

(News flash: It didn't happen. I don't think I've read anything by Steinbeck in the fifteen years since this post first appeared in a somewhat different form on June 5, 2009. And since then, it's become pretty well accepted that TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY is highly fictionalized, almost more of a novel based on the actual trip Steinbeck and Charley took rather than pure non-fiction. I don't care. It's still a good book, and I still have good memories of those long-ago high school days when I first read it.)

Forgotten Books: Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

I mentioned this book a couple of weeks ago in my post about Philipp Meyer’s novel AMERICAN RUST, and I realized then that I’d never read it. So I found a copy and remedied that situation.

There’s no point in going into the plot to any great extent. I imagine most of you have read OF MICE AND MEN, either in high school or college or on your own. (I still remember a librarian asking me, “Which class is this for?” when I checked out a copy of THE GREAT GATSBY. I told her it wasn’t for a class, I just wanted to read it. She looked surprised.)

But to get back to what I was saying, you know the story: George and Lennie, the rabbits, the tragic ending. I knew the story and I’d never read the book or seen any of the movie versions. So what is there to say about it?

Well, it’s really well-written. Steinbeck’s descriptions of the Salinas Valley are very effective, and the terse, hardboiled, realistic dialogue is great, conveying a lot more than just what’s said on the surface. The book is noir as all get-out, with a pervading sense of doom that makes you root for the characters even though you know things aren’t going to end well for them. In fact, the whole thing reminds me very much of a Gold Medal novel, with the farm setting, the restless, slutty wife, etc. Heck, this could almost be an Orrie Hitt novel!

Which leads me to say something that some of you may consider heretical: classic or not, I don’t think OF MICE AND MEN is any better than the best of, say, Charles Williams’ or Harry Whittington’s work. I’m not sure it’s even as good as some of their novels. It’s true that Steinbeck was trying to write literature and Williams and Whittington were writing to put food on the table and gasoline in the car. But here’s what it comes down to for me, and this is something I firmly believe.

They’re all words on paper.

Doesn’t matter who wrote them, doesn’t matter the intent, once they’re there, they’re just words on paper and the only thing that’s important is what they say. In this particular case, I think some of the Gold Medal writers said the same sort of thing that Steinbeck is saying in OF MICE AND MEN, only they did it better.

That said, I don’t want to disregard the quality of Steinbeck’s book. It’s regarded as a classic for a reason. It’s very, very good, very evocative, very suspenseful. Indeed, a great book, if for no other reason than the influence it had on popular culture. If by some chance you haven’t read it, you should. It’s short, fast, and mean, and reading it is a powerful experience. Highly recommended.

Forgotten Nonfiction Books: Travels With Charley - John Steinbeck

Before Captain America and Billy did it in the movie EASY RIDER, before Green Lantern and Green Arrow did it in the comic books, author John Steinbeck and a ten-year-old poodle named Charley set off in the fall of 1960 in search of America. Appropriately enough, that’s the subtitle of the resulting book, TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY: IN SEARCH OF AMERICA.

When I was a junior in high school, a friend and I went through a pseudo-intellectual phase, as sixteen-year-old boys will sometimes do. We read and discussed Hemingway and Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and God knows what else. If our parents would have let us get away with it, we probably would have smoked pipes and worn jackets with leather patches on the elbows. It’s a wonder we didn’t choke on our own pretentiousness. But we actually did read some good books and discover some good authors along the way, among them John Steinbeck. Two of Steinbeck’s books stand out in my memory: the novel THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT and the memoir TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY. I liked a lot of his other novels, too, most notably CUP OF GOLD, TORTILLA FLAT, and OF MICE AND MEN. I was less fond of THE GRAPES OF WRATH and EAST OF EDEN, even though those two are probably his most popular novels. It’s been more than forty years since I read TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY, so I decided to reread it for this Forgotten Nonfiction Books Friday and see how well it holds up.

I’m happy to report that it holds up very well indeed. Steinbeck writes beautifully about nature and the places he visits and the people he meets. His social and political observations are always interesting, although this time around I did notice an occasional touch of smug superiority about his comments that I didn’t recall from my first reading of the book. It’s not enough to really cause a problem, though.

The best part of TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY is the relationship between Steinbeck and Charley, who becomes as vivid a character as any in the book. When Charley develops medical problems and you don’t know what the outcome will be, there’s genuine suspense. As some of you know, I’m a dog person, and Charley’s a great dog.

It’s nice to know that this is as fine a book as I remember it being. Now, will I go back and reread THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT or some of Steinbeck’s other novels and see if they hold up as well? It could happen. They’d make good Forgotten Books, after all, since I don’t think anybody reads Steinbeck much these days, with the possible exception of THE GRAPES OF WRATH for school assignments.