Travels With Charley In Search Of America was written by legendary author John Steinbeck who, for those who can't recall their grade and/or high school English lessons, wrote the classic novels The Grapes Of Wrath and Of Mice & Men and a whole slew of other classic books that have been read by countless readers. Travels With Charley might not be as "classic" as some of his others, but it's actually one of my personal favorites. In 1960, at age 58, Steinbeck decided to take a road trip across the country in spite of his failing health. With his French poodle named--of course!--Charley, and with his wife's blessing, he rode across America in a specialty-made camper he called Rocinante after Don Quixote's horse (Don Quixote is another classic novel for all you who feel asleep in English class). In his book, John Steinbeck wanted to see how much America was changing and, at times, he found said changes wanting as he made what Bill O'Reilly (bet'cha never thought Bill O'Reilly would EVER be mentioned in the same sentence as John Steinbeck, did ya?) would call "pithy" comments about things like the increasing number of mobile homes he saw and American's increasing need for instant gratification. I think John made some of his best observations when he traveled down to New Orleans during the time when they were staring to "integrate" public schools. He mentions this group of older women called "the cheerleaders" who were leading the protest against said "integration" in a very vocal--and, as Steinbeck described it, very ugly--way. In fact, John himself describes the show "the cheerleaders" put on as "bestial and filthy" as they shout down the black--and even white--children being ushered into the school. The book was published several months before he deservedly won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Fans of John Steinbeck's fiction will, I feel, no less enjoy this "nonfiction" work of his. And I put the word "nonfiction" in quotes because some critics over the years have questioned the "validity" of Steinbeck's accounts of his travels in his book (like, for instance, author Bill Steigerwald who wrote the far-less-than-classic book Dogging Steinbeck that was highly questionable--and critical--of the book's "validity"). However, as Bill Barich wrote in his book Long Way Home: On the Trail of Steinbeck's America about the book: "I'm fairly certain that Steinbeck made up most of the book. The dialogue is so wooden. Steinbeck was extremely depressed, in really bad health, and was discouraged by everyone from making the trip. He was trying to recapture his youth, the spirit of the knight-errant. But at that point he was probably incapable of interviewing ordinary people. He'd become a celebrity and was more interested in talking to Dag Hammarskjold and Adlai Stevenson. The die was probably cast long before he hit the road, and a lot of what he wrote was colored by the fact that he was so ill. But I still take seriously a lot of what he said about the country. His perceptions were right on the money about the death of localism, the growing homogeneity of America, the trashing of the environment. He was prescient about all that." That's good enough for me! A sidenote: Remember when author James Frey was grilled about the "validity" of his supposed "nonfiction" book A Million Little Pieces by the self-righteous likes of this blog's namesake Oprah Winfrey after she had picked the book for her almighty Book Club and had initially "supported" the book even after Frey admitted that he had in fact fudged some of the "facts" in his book about his battles with drug addiction and such? I can just imagine John Steinbeck being grilled by the once-almighty Oprah nowadays over the "validity" of his Travels With Charley book. Quite frankly, I think people will remember John Steinbeck LONG after they've forgotten the self-righteous likes of Oprah Winfrey (and, judging how fast Oprah's popularity has dropped rather significantly since leaving her once-hallowed TV show to run her own apparently failing TV network, that's VERY likely to happen!).
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