Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers.

To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.

With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and the unexpected kindness of strangers.

Why I Picked It Up

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The usual: I'm working my way through Steinbeck. I often cite my book taste as primarily being about "a strong sense of place." I have a particular fondness for tearing across the country in a too-small car, perhaps because of my family's habit of forcing six people, two dogs, a cooler, and all our bags into one car to drive 26 hours from Florida to Canada every summer growing up.

I told my dad a while back that I was working my way through Steinbeck's canon, and this was the one he immediately mentioned. So I also wanted to read it to be able to talk with my dad about it and to feel even closer to him in a way.

The Introduction

At this point, I love reading the introductions to each of Steinbeck's works after having read a good few of them and picking up patterns in combination with his autobiography Mad at the World. Maybe I love him for his prose or mix of insight and gentleness, or maybe I love him so much because we orbit around a lot of the same questions about leaving and return, restlessness, groups vs. individuals, degree of exposure to others, guilt and shame, etc. Either way, I feel like I click with his books specifically.

This introduction talked especially about his habit of fudging details (kindly called "travelogue" in this narrative) versus describing truth as it happened. It charts his disillusionment with the American character (which strengthened in the 1960s and culminated in the broad storyline of The Winter of Our Discontent.)

Absolute banger of a quote:

“[Americans] spend their hours and money on the couch searching for a soul.”

The introduction is spot-on in citing Steinbeck's skill as a sharp sense of landscapes and how people operate within them, and a "keen eye for transactions among people." (I think about transactionalism a lot.)

Voice & Tone

You're going to read your favorite writers for their voice. I have a Post-It on my fridge that says Voice is as much what you notice as how you say it that is my Bible in terms of writing advice, and so of course I connect with Steinbeck specifically in his patterns.

He's observant and sharp and psychological, but he's also warm, gentle, and usually optimistic.

He gives you the full picture and will name your flaws and ways in which you're hiding (you to mean a particular character, our country, etc.) but it's articulation as a form of love, if that makes sense? Like, he thinks the way that I do in that blindness or sticking your head in the sand isn't love at all; Steinbeck's work comes across as curious rather than defensive, and for that reason, he's able to collect a lot of data.

His nonfiction carried over in much of the same way although—again—that might be because plenty of it is also fictional. I relish the precision of it, however, and it remains humble even when it's authoritative.

He muses on journeys and the taking of them. (He named his truck and camper combo Rocinante.) He's very sweet with his dog, Charley. His observations are specific to place, but per his style, an occasional gem of an insight on human nature will appear. He has great parallels within his lines, like "loving all nations and hating all governments" when talking about his detestation of immigration at the U.S.-Canadian border.

Lines & Thoughts I Loved

I think a lot about salience and how we assume our impressions of anything are much more objective than they are—even when backed by "logic." A lot of the feelings you construct for yourself are based on how you've primed yourself to pick up details, which Steinbeck mentions.

“I discovered long ago in collecting and classifying marine animals that what I found was closely intermeshed with how I felt at the moment. External reality has a way of being not so external after all.”

“I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.”

He is very specific with individual states and their characterization, which I love. You do get the sense of having passed through different personalities, and I frequently say my favorite places have their own character. This is the kind of travel writing I love, bound together with the personal flavors of observation.

“I’m in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection. But with Montana it is love. And it’s difficult to analyze love when you’re in it.”

“I wonder why it is that when I plan a route too carefully, it goes to pieces, whereas if I blunder along in blissful ignorance aimed in a fancied direction I get through with no trouble.”

“So much there is to see, but our morning eyes describe a different world than do our afternoon eyes, and surely our wearied evening eyes can report only a weary evening world.”

He's also hilarious at times, like in his hatred of one particular, sterile hotel room. Steinbeck is just so damn spot-on about sensation and perception, and picking the right word every time. I see why my dad loves this one, as he also loves Bill Bryson, and they have similar grounded humor.

“No effort had been spared to make the cabins uncomfortable and ugly.”

“If he were a horse I wouldn't buy him.”

His writing never seems to feel tired or worn to me, even when familiar; it's more so like a comfortable groove you can settle in versus feeling recycled through various writing patterns.

Steinbeck, like me, loves specialists. (In his case, truckers.) He talks about daydreaming while driving, feeling guilty for no reason when approaching the government officials, what we've inherited, the meaning of a place, etc. He's affectionate towards his wife and family, and critical of plenty else.

He can relish solitude while traveling, and also deeply considers the exact line at which that turns lonely and how companionship or lack thereof colors his view of a place beyond the terrain itself. For that reason, his thoughts and descriptions never stop feeling vivid and insightful.

“Having a companion fixes you in time and that the present, but when the quality of aloneness settles down, past, present, and future all flow together. A memory, a present event, and a forecast all equally present.”

“A number of years ago I had some experience with being alone. For two succeeding years I was alone each winter for eight months at a stretch in the Sierra Nevada mountains on Lake Tahoe. I was the caretaker on a summer estate during the winter months when it was snowed in. And I made some observations then. As time went on I found that my reactions thickened. Ordinarily I am a whistler. I stopped whistling. I stopped conversing with my dogs, and I believe that the subtleties of feeling began to disappear until finally I was on a pleasure-pain basis. Then it occurred to me that the delicate shades of feeling, of reaction, are the result of communication, and without such communication they tend to disappear. A man with nothing to say has no words. ”

I loved how he described his reactions "thickening" when alone—which can be both good in a critical mass way and bad in an unduly-weight way. What a great, seemingly accurate line.

“Although they could not say it, my friends wanted me gone so that I could take my proper place in the pattern of remembrance—and I wanted to go for the same reason.”

And then, of course, Steinbeck talks a lot about what makes a journey, the contrast of home, and a lot of other elements of travel that have me constantly passionate and curious about it.

Overall Thoughts

All in all, my review is a little piecemeal, and that's for a book that operates similarly—with an undercurrent affection and complexity I associate with Steinbeck. I find it especially refreshing to read a writer who's fond of the places, cultures, and people embedded in the U.S. and for, that reason, acknowledges its limitations, the roles of politics, and even how his personal lenses affect how he experiences singular moments when traveling.

I think it takes a good dose of humility to be able to take your gut feeling about such broad strokes as sense of place or loyalty to national identity or what-have-you while simultaneously acknowledging all your limitations, and Travels with Charley is so deft and articulate in its road-tripping partly because Steinbeck maintains the balance. When he's observant, he speaks to the universal without assuming his experience is by default "the right" one, which paradoxically makes it even more applicable.

I loved it. I loved the peek at the writer, the sense of his recurring questions, his graceful style, and the topic or journey itself. The book had so many of my favorite traits, and I'll buy a copy for my shelf as soon as I get the chance.

For fans of:

The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck (obviously); A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson; Cannery Row by John Steinbeck; The Solace of Open Spaces: Essays by Gretel Ehrlich; The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac.