Download And Enjoy Viaggio Con Charley Scripted By John Steinbeck Supplied As Print

enjoyed this eventful journey thruStates with Mr, Steinbeck and his dog Charley, The adventure begins in Septemberwith Hurricane Donna before he even leaves home and ends with a historic snowstorm, but everything in the middle is pretty darn good too!The story is written with humor, but with a profound sadness to it perhaps due to Mr.
Steinbeck's declining health and whether the novel is truly fact or just fiction is unimportant to me as I found it an insightful and entertaining ride during a tumultuous time in America.
I usually enjoy fiction, but a mite cheated when I learn that a travelogue isn't, I'm sure some people enjoy the writing regardless of the misleading content, Steinbeck never went to some of the places in the book, he made up the folks that he never met and the hotels and resorts he and his wife stayed in are a bit more luxurious than the camper top on his GMC pickup.


On the plus side, he did purchase a pickup truck and add a camper top to it, His wife did have a poodle named Charley,

John Steinbeck sets off across America with his camper on top of his truck named Rocinante, after Don Quixote's horse.
His French poodle, Charley, joins him on this crosscountry tour,

This book was initially published inbut the sense of adventure that calls to each of us is alive no matter which decade or century.


Steinbeck accurately notes that we do not take a trip a trip takes us, He shares his virus of restlessness and the common theme of the desire to move and explore with everyone he meets across the US.


As he casually meets people at each stop on his journey, he shares his insights, He noticed how one person can saturate a room with vitality and excitement while others drain a room of energy and joy.
My father bought me this book when I was probably about eight years old, and I read it quickly and fell in love with it.
One day now that I've thought of it, probably sooner than later I'll reread it, but for now I'm content believing I would still find it a good read.


My dip into the fiction of John Steinbeck turned into a journey, with East of Eden, Cannery Row, Tortilla Flat, The Winter of Our Discontent, The Grapes of Wrath and Sweet Thursday.
It seemed appropriate to end my tour on Travels with Charley, the author's memoir of a circuitous road trip of the United States he began in Septemberwith his French poodle, Charley.


Steinbeck's account begins at his home on Long Island, New York, Getting on in years, he realizes he's been writing about a country he hasn't actually seen in a quarter century.
To remedy this, Steinbeck obtains a customized threequarter ton pickup truck with a camper on top, Its features include a double bed, stove, refrigerator and chemical toilet, Steinbeck dubs the truck "Rocinante" after Don Quixote's horse and after weeks of planning, pries himself away from his wife, checks for stowaways and heads northeast for Maine.


So as not to distress anyone with the truth behind his rambling, Steinbeck racks a shotgun, two rifles and a couple of fishing rods in Rocinante, ".
. . for it is my experience that if a man is going hunting or fishing his purpose is understood and even applauded.
" He notes a certain look in the eyes of those he talks to about his trip, whether neighbors or strangers, and the longing they express to join him, to break free, go somewhere, anywhere, as long as it's not here.


Many have retraced Steinbeck's famous route, which passes through New England, Michigan, Illinois, Montana, the West Coast, the Southwest, Texas and New Orleans.
Travels with Charley is not a comprehensive study of those areas and anyone expecting chapters to have the sizzle of a travel magazine article might be disappointed, although as a Texan, I found Steinbeck's account of the mystique of the Lone Star State to be on the money and worthy of reprint in Texas Monthly.


The journey has some ups and downs for me as a reader, His visit to offseason Maine, where a motor court's management office is completely deserted when Steinbeck arrives and completely empty when he pulls out of the parking lot the next morning, has the eerie distance of a Stephen King short story.
On the other hand, Steinbeck's return to his hometown of Monterey seems cast with characters from Tortilla Flat or some other book.


Steinbeck's trip culminates in New Orleans, where he witnesses vile protests outside a desegregated school, The racist asides thrown in Steinbeck's direction from one white man to another are sickening, but what's even more revealing is the body language of a black man the author insists on giving a ride, briefly, before the passenger decides he's safer walking the roadside than riding with a white man with New York plates asking questions about the civil rights movement.


One of the revelations of Travels with Charley is how little the news cycle of the United States has really changed in fifty years.
Substitute disillusionment toward FDR for disillusionment toward Obama, Substitute Russians for Al Qaeda, Substitute the debate between Kennedy/ Nixon with any political horse race going on today, Congestion, pollution, inflation are on the rise, The simplicity of our childhoods seems to be on the wane, None of this is novel to our time at all,

My love for this book, however bumpy the account, is the spell it placed over me, Who hasn't wanted to lease a truck, stock up on supplies, call the dog and light out for the road I would never follow the route that Steinbeck chose, and I think that those who've retracted his journey in an attempt to fact check truth from fiction are missing the point.
Steinbeck makes a statement for resisting the comforts of what he refers to as "a professional sick person" and living out what life you have in a rocking chair.
When we surrender our curiosity, we mind as well surrender our life, dude, steinbeck is so much better than kerouac,

and i know that is a totally obvious statement, but if i want to read a story about a man traveling across america and describing his findings, it is going to be a man with a varied vocabulary, a keen eye for detail, and some powers of interpreting his experiences.
john, i am listening

this is my first nonfiction from steinbeck, and i am impressed with how conversational it reads, he has a real skill in making his experiences nearvisible to the reader,in both his physical descriptions and his musings about what an "american" is.
i feel like he would be a fantastic roadtrip companion, and i envy charley,

and that is another thing, when it comes to dogs, i am completely breedist, there are dogs that i love, and then there are dogs i think should be banned from breeding, so i don't have to see them ever again.
poodles are among these breeds, they are the silliest of all dogs, and how a man's man like steinbeck could travel across the country with one of them baffles me.


this is not a dog, it is an aberration:



but, for steinbeck's sake, i can read about a poodle for a little while, and it is sweet how they bond with each other.
but i still think they are ugly and not "real" dogs,

steinbeck misses out on an investment opportunity:

if i were a good businessman, and cared a tittle for my unborn greatgrandchildren, which i do not, i would gather all the junk and the wrecked automobiles, comb the city dumps, and pile these gleanings in mountains and spray the whole thing with that stuff the navy uses to mothball ships.
at the end of a hundred years my descendants would be permitted to open this treasure trove and would be the antique kings of the world.
if the battered, cracked, and broken stuff our ancestors tried to get rid of now brings so much money, think what aoldsmobile, or atoastmaster will bring and a vintage waring mixer lord, the possibilities are endless! things we have to pay to have hauled away could bring fortunes.


of course he is being facetious here, but i for one would kill for some vintage appliances in another life in a better apartment i would have a fantastic kitchen filled with these old timey kitchen things, and i curse steinbeck for not giving a tittle.


steinbeck does not get sucked into revisionist nostalgia:

even while i protest the assemblyline production

of our food, our songs, our language, and eventually our souls, i know that it was a rare home that baked good bread in the old days.
mother's cooking was with rare exceptions poor, that good unpasteurized milk touched only by flies and bits of manure crawled with bacteria, the healthy oldtime life was riddled with aches, sudden death from unknown causes, and that sweet local speech i mourn was the child of illiteracy and ignorance.
it is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge in time, to protest against change, particularly change for the better.
but it is true that we have exchanged corpulence for starvation, and either one will kill us,

i am so glad my realworld book club finally chose something i can review on here instead of just a short story or an essay or a poem.
. . and this time, i will have something to add! they are all european intellectual types, with their tales of berlin and ukraine and their war stories as both witness and participant and i just sit there and drink my wine and play the role of "very good young listener".
thank you, steinbeck for giving america some street cred and fodder for booktalks!

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